Basie count biography samples

Jazz album: “The Jazz Biography” by Count Basie, released in 2004 on Victor.

Lewis Porter's Coltrane book and the recent Sonny Rollins bio are musts, and if you can find it the Duke Ellington Reader as well.

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Broad Street’s former Pearl Theater was the site of a historic moment in 1932.

Bennie Moten and the Kansas City Stompers, key parts of the Big grupp Jazz movement in the first half of the century, played so well that, according to The One O’Clock Jump by Douglas Henry Daniels, the crowd demanded encore after encore, until the theater owners opened the doors of the theater to the public. Here’s the sound that had everyone talking.

One member of the band that night was the legendary Count Basie, who just before the historic show, was recording with Moten’s band for Victor just across the river in Camden. Basie, pictured here, would leave Moten’s band in 1929, taking with him members that would form the core of the Count Basie Orchestra. Then Basie would take over Moten’s whole operation after his untimely death in 1935.

Big Band Jazz and swing music took hold so firmly that it dominated music for a decade, from 1935 to 1946. Philadelphia played

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Count Basie on the left, from "Stage Door Canteen" (1943)

William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was a prominent American jazz pianist and band leader. Like his contemporary Duke Ellington, Basie assembled a group of premiere musicians and through innovative use of rhythm and improvisation, and his spare yet suggestive piano work, Basie largely defined the distinctive Kansas City jazz style that would, in turn, influence the emergence of modern jazz. For his contribution to classic jazz and his anticipation of modern developments, Basie is regarded as one of jazz music’s all time greats.

Basie is known for his inimitable statements on the piano, but it has also been said that his real instrument was his band. Basie brought to perfection the union of opposites characteristic of much great art: His crisp, contrapuntal piano and the relaxed, even swing of the rest of his rhythm section; his incisive, minimalist piano and the powerful sound of hi

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Count Basie - Chairman of the Board - Roulette Jazz 81664

In 1950, weary of the road and discouraged by a drop in bookings, Count Basie broke up his nonpareil big grupp. He continued to perform with an all-star septet, but, the ultimate big band warrior, Basie missed the power and glory of sixteen men swinging. So, in the fall of 1951 the Count began to reassemble his orchestra - but with a difference.

Where the original band was built largely around its corps of distinctive solo voices, Basie founded his new edition on an ever-growing book of first-rate charts by top-rung arrangers. It quickly evolved into an ensemble of amazing power and precision, but also one of many moods and colors, as strong at pianissimo as it was at fortissimo, as swinging at slow tempos as it was at fast ones. But make no mistake, this reborn unit was packed with accomplished soloists. One by one, the Count brought in modern, bop-inspired improvisors who also were completely at home in the Basie i