Basie liebe ich sehr – die beste Zeit ist natürlich diejenige von 1936-38, die folgenden Jahre sind auch noch sehr toll, 1944 war Lester Young wieder zurück, danach wird’s etwas weniger spannend, bis Basie 1950/51 die Big Band für kurze Zeit aufgeben musste. Die guten Jahre gingen danach weiter, die Musik war aber völlig anders – der lose Haufen der ersten Big Band, die aus exzellenten Musikern bestand, die ihre Arrangements oft on the spot entstehen liessen, war verschwunden, Arrangeure wie Neal Hefti verhalfen Basie zu einem neuen, völlig anderen Sound, der stark von den Arrangements abhing, die jetzt sehr viel strikter geworden waren, von der Band mit der Präzision eines Uhrwerkes umgesetzt wurden und viel weniger Raum liessen für die Solisten (von denen es allerdings auch weiterhin einige sehr tolle gab in der new testament Band: Paul Quinichette, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Lockjaw, Al Grey, Benny Powell, Henry Coker, Joe Newman, Thad Jones…)
2004 gab’s mal einen leider nicht zu Ende gebrachte Anlauf zu einer Basie-Website… ich hab später einige Stücke daraus auf einen Blog gestellt, der allerdings auch nicht weit gediehen ist:
http://count-basie.blogspot.com/
Mein biographischer Abriss von dort:
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:: 1904-1924 :: The Kid from Red Bank – Childhood & Youth ::
On August 21, 1904, William James Basie is born at his parents’ house on Mechanic Street in Red Bank, NJ. Basie’s father, Harvey Lee Basie, worked as a coachman and caretaker for a local judge; his mother, Lilly Ann Childs Basie, earned some money by taking in washing and ironing. A brother who was about eight years older, Leroy. He died when William was a young boy. His father played the mellophone and his mother gave William his first lessons on the family piano; later she paid for her son to take piano lessons with Miss Vandevere.
Besides assisting both his parents with their job, William helps out at the Palace Theater in Red Bank. He learns to operate movie reels and the spotlight for the vaudeville shows.
The story goes that one night the piano player of the Palace Theater – who lived in New York – did not make it to the theatre. Basie offered to sit in, but his offer was declined by the manager. Once the film had begun though, Basie sneaked into the pit and accompanied it nonetheless. He was invited to play the evening show as well that day.
Basie didn’t start out on the piano, his first love was for the drums; his father even bought him a set of traps. After hearing Sonny Greer, a young drummer from nearby Long Branch, though, Basie wisely left the drums for the piano. (Greer, of course, would become famous as the original drummer of Duke Ellington’s orchestra.)
Basie quit school after his junior year in high school and moved to Asbury Park with his saxophone playing friend Elmer Williams. After a bad autumn start, they returned with more success the following summer, leaving for New York in 1924.
:: 1924-1927 :: First steps as a professional musician ::
1924 >> After moving to New York in the summer of 1924, Basie meets fellow pianists James P. Johnson, Lucky Roberts, Willie „The Lion“ Smith, and Fats Waller. Their stride style remained a strong component in Basie’s music throughout his career, despite his more minimalist aesthetic.
Fats Waller
Basie recalls: „I saw Fats Waller. I dropped into the old Lincoln theatre in Harlem and heard a young fellow beating it out on the organ. From that time on, I was a daily customer. Hanging onto his every note, sitting behind him all the time, fascinated by the ease with which his hands pounded the keys and manipulated the pedals. He got used to seeing me. As though I was part of the show. One day he asked me whether I played the organ. ’no‘, I said, ‚but I’d give my right arm to learn.‘ The next day he invited me to sit in the pit and start working the pedals. I sat on the floor, watching his feet, and used my hands to imitate them. Then I sat beside him and he taught me.“
Basie gained valuable experience as house pianist in “Leroy’s,” the first Harlem cabaret open to black patrons.
A nineteen year old, Basie started playing on the Columbia Wheel and TOBA vaudeville circuits. He worked as a solo pianist, accompanist, and musical director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. One of his first jobs was with an act called Kattie Crippin and Her Kids, later with another act called Hippity Hope. Early in his career, he also played with June Clark’s band and accompanied singers Clara Smith and Maggie Jones. Soon, he joined a road show led by Gonzel White, where he played in a four-piece band and even acted the part of a villain in one of the comedy skits. While on tour with White, he first heard Walter Page’s Blue Devils, a band he would join soon.
The Count (I)
Just when William „Bill“ Basie threw off his former nickname „Nutty“ to become „The Count“ is not clear. But by 1927, his business card told fellow musicians: „Beware, The Count Is Here“.
One morning, Basie would later recount in his autobiography „Good Morning Blues,“ he was woken up in a Tulsa, Oklahoma hotel room by what he thought was a record playing. Checking out the source of the music, he found out it was actually a band: Walter Page and His Blue Devils.
The Blue Devils
Basie recounts: „Everybody seemed to be having so much fun just being up there and playing together, and they looked good and sounded good to boot. There was such a team spirit among those guys, and it came out in the music… hearing them that day was probably the most important turning point in my musical career, so far as my notions about what kind of music I really wanted to try to play were concerned.“ (from „Good Morning Blues“)
The next time Basie met the Blue Devils, their pianist was sick, and Basie sat in for a couple of nights. Walter Page, the leader of the band, was sufficiently impressed to give the young pianist his address.
Soon thereafter, Gonzelle White’s troupe broke up. Basie got ill with a spinal meningitis, and although he recovered within a few weeks, he was broke and stranded in Kansas City. In those years, there were enough jobs for a musician in Kansas City, though, and Basie soon found himself playing organ in a silent movie house, the Eblon Theater.
:: 1928-1935 :: Blue Devils, Bennie Moten ::
1928 >> In July 1928, Basie joined Walter Page’s Blue Devils, then one of the best if not the best band playing the mid west. Other members of the Blue Devils at that time were Oran „Hot Lips“ Page and Jimmy Rushing, both of whom would figure prominently in Basie’s bands later.
Basie toured with the Blue Devils into early 1929. During this time, his ideas of orchestral jazz started to take shape. A hallmark of Basie’s career was established at this early time already: his ability to strike up personal and professional relationships that would last for decades, across many bands and solo careers.
1929 >> Early in 1929, Basie left the Blue Devils without notice, to play with two lesser known bands in the Kansas City area. He only left Jimmy Rushing a note, explaining: „Once a Blue Devil, always a Blue Devil.“
Back to Kansas City
But not long after that, Kansas City began calling me again. I liked Oklahoma City fine, but not much was happening with the Blue Devils. We were still laying off, and I started thinking about getting back to the Eblon Theatre and that organ and all of those joints around Kansas City. There was so much happening all the time in Kansas City. There was a lot of action that I hadn’t had time to get into yet.
So I saved enough money for train fare… and then early one morning I got up and took that hat, which I hadn’t paid anything on, and a little note by Jimmy Rushing’s father’s restaurant and left it there. Then I went on down to the station and took the first train to Kansas City.
I hadn’t talked to anybody about what I was going to do. I just sort of eased on out of town. I figured that was the best way, because I really hated to leave those guys, and I know they would have tried every tack I could think of to talk me out of it again.
(„Good Morning Blues,“ p. 23)
Basie resumed his job at the Eblon Theater, but now his goal was to join Bennie Moten’s highly esteemed band. Basie wouldn’t be withheld by the band already having a piano player in Moten himself and schemed his way into Bennie Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra by becoming friendly with their arranger, Eddie Durham. He mentioned some ideas for charts and got Durham to take him and his charts to the next rehearsal. Thereupon, Moten hired Basie as staff arranger and soon Basie sat in for Moten at the piano as well. Later he took over all piano duties and would continue to play like that for almost four years.
1930 >> Several other members of the Blue Devils joined Moten around this time. Jimmy Rushing came in late 1929 or early 1930 and Hot Lips Page a few months later. Trombonist Dan Minor, another ex-Blue Devil, followed the next year. That same year Walter Page switched from tuba to string bass and the band’s rhythm changed from the old-style two-beat to a more even 4/4.
The Moten repertoire expanded under the guidance of Basie and Durham. Their arrangement of „You’re Driving Me Crazy,“ retitled „Moten Swing,“ became the unofficial anthem of Kansas City styled jazz.
1932 >> The band made a series of recordings for Victor, culminating in the December 13, 1932 session, which may mark the highlight of Moten’s career. Featuring musicians such as Oran „Hot Lips“ Page, Eddie Durham, Ben Webster, Walter Page, Jimmy Rushing, and – of course – Count Basie on piano, tunes recorded that day include „Toby,“ „The Blue Room,” „Lafayette,“ „Prince of Wails,“ and an outstanding take of „Moten Swing.“
Some weeks later, the band breaks up and many of the men return to their families on Christmas.
1933 >> In summer 1933, the Moten orchestra reunited to play at the former Eblon Theater in Kansas City, now called the Cherry Blossom Club. As business was slow, Moten proposed to join the accomplished K.C. bandleader George E. Lee, whose band had preceded them at the Cherry Blossom Club. Most of the men wanted to stay, though.
The Moten band was a „commonwealth band,“ with each member having a say in the band’s operations. Moten was ousted and Basie – although not one of the instigators – was chosen as its new leader. The ten piece group, full of ex-Blue Devils, including Hot Lips Page, Minor, Buster Smith, Walter Page, and Jo Jones was now billed as Count Basie and His Cherry Blossom Orchestra. Herschel Evans, who came to Kansas early in 1933, played tenor.
The Cherry Blossom band played the Reno consistently for a year and a half. As the musicians already had been working together in various bands, the band was well trained Some Durham-Basie charts were still around from the Moten band, but most of the music was done on the spot, as „head“ arrangements. One of the most famous arrangements to be developed like this is „One O’Clock Jump“.
One O’clock Jump
One night we were on the air and we had about ten more minutes to go, and the announcer asked what we were going to do, and I said I didn’t know. We were talking off the mike because there wasn’t but one microphone in there anyway in those days, and that was the one the announcer was on. I said, „I’m just going to start playing,“ and he said, „What is this?“ and I saw how many minutes to one o’clock it was getting to be, so I said, „Call it the ‚One O’clock Jump.'“ And we hit it with the rhythm section and went into the riffs, and the riffs just stuck.
The Count (II)
By now, the Nickname of “The Count” had been set. Many stories circulate about the origin of Basie’s nickname. Basie Recalls: “One night, while we were broadcasting (it was W9XBY, an experimental broadcast station), the announcer called me to the microphone for those usual few words of introduction. He commented that Bill Basie was a rather ordinary name, and further that that werea couple of well-known bandleaders named earl Hines and Duke Ellington. Then he said ‘bill, I think I will call you Count Basie from now on. Is that alright with you?’ I thought he was kidding, shrugged my shoulders and said ‘okay.’“
On another occasion, Basie mentioned the nickname originated out of his penchant for slipping off with Eddie Durham during arranging sessions for the Moten band. Durham remembered: „When Bennie used to come looking for Basie and Basie wasn’t there, he’d say, ‚Aw, that guy ain’t no ‚count.‘
Basie and I were supposed to be making up new arrangements, but as soon as Basie would hit on something and get me started on the scoring, he would slip on off somewhere, looking for something to drink and some fun. He never got tired of partying. So Bennie would come in and say, ‚Where is that no ‚count rascal?'“ („Good Morning Blues,“ p. 147)
1934 >> Lester Young, who heard the Cherry Blossom band on the air, sends Basie a telegram stating that he doesn’t think much of his current tenor player – Basie invites Young to join.
When the Cherry Blossom band went on tour in early 1934, Evans, reluctant to travel, Lester Young took his place. At twenty four, Young was already a highly original musician. He started on drums, playing in the band of his father, who also taught him to play trumpet and violin. At age thirteen he started on alto sax: „Just picked the motherfucker up and started playing it,“ he would later recall. At age nineteen, he switched to tenor. He arrived in Kansas City late in 1933, after touring with various bands, among them the Blue Devils (briefly in 1930 and later in 1932-33). In 1933 he was hired by Fletcher Henderson to replace Coleman Hawkins, who had left to tour Europe. Most of Henderson’s band though weren’t ready to accept the new sound of Young, altogether different from Hawkins, and so Young was dropped from the band.
The Cherry Blossom band broke up later in 1934.
1935 >> „Hot Lips“ Page, Jimmy Rushing, and eventually Basie too, rejoined Moten’s new band, staying until Moten’s untimely death on April 2, on the operation table, after a botched tonsillectomy. The band was continued shortly by his brother, Buster Moten, but Basie left soon thereafter. The Moten era was over.
Together with Buster Smith, Basie organised a new group of nine musicians, consisting of members of the Blue Devils and the Moten band, among them Walter Page, Jo Jones and later also Lester Young. Jimmy Rushing became the band’s singer.
That band, starring three trumpets, three reeds, and three rhythm, was called Three, Three, and Three.
The band was named the Barons of Rhythm and soon started playing the Reno Club in Kansas City. This wasn’t exactly a high-class joint. A small club serving liquor and food, it had a small band playing for dancing, girls available to dance with, and a whorehouse upstairs.
During the time at the Reno, Walter Page started to replace the tuba more and more with the string bass.
Basie would lead his own orchestra from then until his death, almost fifty years later, with the exception of a brief period in the early fifties.
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Weiter ist das nur in Notizenform gediehen bisher.
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #151: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv – 09.04., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba