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Backgrounder: Count Basie's Have a Nice Day

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Sammy Nestico arranged nine Count Basie studio albums, starting in 1969:
  • Straight Ahead (1969)
  • Standing Ovation (1969)
  • Good Time Blues (1970)
  • Have a Nice Day (1971)
  • Bing 'n' Basie (1972)
  • Basie Big Band (1975)
  • Prime Time (1977)
  • Warm Breeze (1981)
  • 88 Basie Street (1983)


One of his breeziest was Have a Nice Day (Daybreak). As with all of Sammy's Basie albums, Have a Nice Day was a finger-snapper packed with catchy mid-tempo swingers.

The band featured Paul Cohen, Sonny Cohn, George “Pete" Minger and Waymon Reed (tp,flh); Al Grey, Melvin Wanzo, Grover Mitchell and John Watson (tb); Bill Hughes (btb); Bobby Plater (as,fl); Curtis Peagler (as); Eddie “Lockjaw" Davis (ts); Eric Dixon (ts,fl); John C. Williams (bar); Count Basie (p); Freddie Green (g); Norman Keenan (b) and Harold Jones (d). [Photo above of Count Basie and Sammy Nestico]

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This story appears courtesy of JazzWax by Marc Myers.
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