Count Basie
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William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Widely regarded as one of the most important jazz bandleaders of his time, Basie led his popular Count Basie Orchestra for almost 50 years. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were " One O'Clock Jump" and "April In Paris".
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[edit] Legacy
Count Basie introduced several generations of listeners to the Big Band sound and left an influential catalogue. Basie is remembered by many who worked for him as being considerate of musicians and their opinions, modest, relaxed, fun-loving, drily witty, and always enthusiastic about his music.[1] As he summed up the key to his understated style, in his autobiography, “I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter”.[2]
Other cultural connections include Jerry Lewis using "Blues in Hoss' Flat" from Basie's Chairman of the Board album, as the basis for his own "Chairman of the Board" routine in the movie The Errand Boy, in which Lewis pantomimed the movements of a corporate executive holding a board meeting. (In the early 1980s, Lewis revived the routine during the live broadcast of one of his Muscular Dystrophy Association telethons). Blues in Hoss' Flat, composed by Basie band member Frank Foster, was also the longtime theme song of San Francisco and New York radio DJ Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins. In addition, Basie is one of the producers of the "world's greatest music" that Brenda Fricker's "Pigeon Lady" character claims to have heard in Carnegie Hall in 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Drummer Neil Peart of the Canadian rock band Rush recorded a version of "One O'Clock Jump" with the Buddy Rich Big Band, and has used it at the end of his drum solos on the 2002 Vapor Trails Tour and Rush's 30th Anniversary Tour.
The Count Basie Theatre and Count Basie Field in his hometown of Red Bank, New Jersey were named in his honor. The street on which he lived, Mechanic Street has the honorary title of Count Basie Way.
[edit] Count Basie and His Orchestra
The musicians associated with Count Basie over the years included the following:
- c.1937: Joe Keyes, Buck Clayton, Carl Smith, George Hunt, Dab Minor, Caughey Roberts, Henchel Evans, Lester Young, Jack Washington, Claude Williams, Walter Page, Jo Jones.
- c.1939: Ed Lewis, Buck Clayton, Shad Collins, Harry Edison, Earle Warren, Buddy Tate, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells, Freddie Greene.
- 1940: Al Killian, Vic Dickenson.
- 1943: Joe Newman, Snooky Young, Eli Robinson, Robert Scott, Louis Taylor, Jimmy Powell, Rudy Rutherford, Rodney Richardson.
[edit] Count Basie with Clark Terry
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Basie biography at swingmusic.net
- BBC Profile of Count Basie
- Downbeat Magazine
- NY Times Obituary, April 27, 1984
- U.S. Postal Service Biography
- Basie biography and album list
Categories: Count Basie | Swing pianists | Swing bandleaders | Big band bandleaders | American jazz pianists | American jazz organists | American jazz bandleaders | Vaudeville performers | Grammy Award winners | Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners | Hollywood Walk of Fame | New Jersey musicians | People from Kansas City | People from Red Bank, New Jersey | African American musicians | Mercury Records artists | African American actors | Deaths from pancreatic cancer | 1904 births | 1984 deaths | Kennedy Center honorees
