Complete Decca Recordings

Count Basie and His Orchestra

album cover

The Definition of Swing

The first great minimalist of jazz, Count Basie said more with three carefully placed notes than most musicians do with three thousand. The pianist, organist, and bandleader had a distinctive touch and the rare ability to get a whole band swinging just through offbeat plinks and chordal jabs. Basie (1904–1984) was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, and after studying briefly with Fats Waller, was hired as an accompanist on the vaudeville circuit of the 1920s. He wound up in Kansas City, Missouri, and in 1929 became the pianist for the Bennie Moten band. His experience playing for dancers during that town's party boom of the 1930s taught him that sometimes the simplest ideas are the most effective ones. After Moten died in 1935, Basie built his own big band around this concept, and stuck to it for almost fifty years. His legacy isn't a single tune, but the singular swing feel, which reverberated from the piano through his tight band and into the culture at large.

Basie shows that teamwork counts. Because in isolation, the individual ingredients that go into Basie's music seem unspectacular—the steady chop of acoustic guitar chords (from Freddie Green, the band's unwavering secret weapon), the plink-plink dance of a few stray chords from Basie's piano, or the brass chirping its riffs with staccato certainty. Assembled just so, these ordinary elements become a screaming locomotive of rhythm, boogying down the tracks and levitating just above them, sweeping up everything in its path.

This three-disc anthology documents the first great Basie band, circa 1937, just after it arrived in New York. The starring role goes to the torrid rhythm section—guitarist Green, drummer Jo Jones, bassist Walter Page, and Basie—a combination talent scout John Hammond found "overwhelming" when he first heard the band live in K.C. But also on hand are some of the most exciting soloists ever to grace the bandstand, among them trumpeter Buck Clayton and saxophonists Lester Young and Chu Berry (heard here in an epic battle on "Cherokee"); several tracks also feature the authoritative singer Jimmy Rushing. The material is basic blues shouts (the first recording of the Basie anthem "One O'Clock Jump" is here) and juiced-up ragtime ("Pennies from Heaven"), plus novel pop songs like "Honeysuckle Rose," which Basie interprets as a breezy stride. As the emphasis switches from soloist to shout chorus and back, nobody showboats for long, because all Basie hands know that the groove is the holy grail. Get this to discover the feel-good essence of swing.

Genre: Jazz
Released: 2000, Decca/MCA
Key Tracks: "Listen My Children and You Shall Hear," "Roseland Shuffle," "One O'Clock Jump."
Catalog Choice: Atomic Swing
Next Stop: Bennie Moten: 1923–1927
After That: Jimmie Lunceford: Rhythm Is Our Business
Book Pages: 50–51