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Jazz Articles about Count Basie
Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Charlie Parker & Ella Fitzgerald
by Joe Dimino
We dedicate the entirety of the 843rd Episode of Neon Jazz to the history and culturally vital institution, Harlem's Apollo Theater. After finding an illustrated book on the history of this landmark institution in the history of African American culture, it was essential to cover the jazz side of things from the book's perspective. We begin with the legendary Duke Ellington and end with Tiny Bradshaw. In between, we get into classics from the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Earl Hines, ...
read moreThe Best of Basie
by Bob Bernotas
In 1935, pianist William “Count" Basie (born August 21, 1904), a fixture on the jny: Kansas City jazz scene since the late 1920s, organized his own rocking, riffing, blues-based big band. The following year this freewheeling unit came east and took New York by storm. For the next decade and a half, Basie's stellar cast--which included such original jazz stylists as tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry “Sweets" Edison, trombonist Dicky Wells, drummer Jo ...
read moreSubtle Is as Subtle Does
by Patrick Burnette
Ya want big bands? We got big bands. Sometimes we got one in each speaker. In this exploration of the more extroverted side of jazz, the boys check out works by a blazing trumpet player (and world-class womanizer), a so-so clarinetist with a heart of gold, two piano-playing band leaders who both worship Duke Ellington, and two (but it sounds like thirty) major-league skin-pounders. Much musing on the glory days of fifteen musicians criss-crossing the nation via bus routes, and ...
read moreDocumenting Jazz 2019
by Ian Patterson
Documenting Jazz Conservatory of Music and Drama TU Dublin jny: Dublin, Ireland January 17-19, 2019 Jazz music, which has pretty much always meant different things to different people, has been comprehensively documented since its arrival in the first decades of the twentieth century. The most obvious form of documentation, that's to say studio recording, is almost as old as the music itself, whilst live recordings, both official releases and bootlegs, radio ...
read moreCount Basie - Dueling Tenors and the Great American Rhythm Section (1937 - 1940)
by Russell Perry
In the eleventh hour of Jazz at 100, we followed Count Basie through the Benny Moten Band in Kansas City and heard his first recordings as a leader. In 1937, after Benny Moten's death, he took the nation by storm with his driving band lead by the “All American Rhythm Section" and the dual tenor saxophones of Herschel Evans and Lester Young. We are joined in this hour by Robert Jospe—drummer, recording artist, composer and member of the ...
read moreLove Songs for August
by Mary Foster Conklin
"What fresh Hell is this?" We begin with songs by Dorothy Parker, who, though best known for her sharp wisecracks, turned out several luscious standards in her day. In the second hour, we salute the great Count Basie then usher in the Leonard Bernstein centennial celebration; plus there is a bumper crop of new releases to share. Playlist Harry Allen “I Wished on the Moon" from The Candy Men (Arbors) 00:00 Rosemary Clooney “I Wished on the Moon" ...
read moreBlue Highways and Sweet Music: The Territory Bands, Part I
by Karl Ackermann
Part 1 | Part 2 OriginsBy the second half of the 1920s, New York had supplanted jny: Chicago as the center of jazz. The “Jazz Age"--a label incorrectly ascribed to F. Scott Fitzgerald--could rationally have been framed as the “Dance Age." Prohibition, and the speakeasies that it spawned, were packed with wildly enthusiastic patrons of the jny: Charleston, Black Bottom, Shimmy, Collegiate Shag, the jny: Baltimore and the Lindy Hop. It was often a simple step or two ...
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