Count Basie

By John R. Brown, a.k.a. Black Wolf
Reprinted with permission, Jazz & Blues Notes, Fall Edition 2003. © 2003 JSJBF.

William "Count" Basie was a leading figure of the swing era in jazz and, alongside Duke Ellington, an outstanding representative of big band style. He helped to establish jazz as a serious art form played not just in clubs but in theatres and concert halls. In addition, he established swing as one of jazz's predominant styles, and solidified the link between jazz and the blues.

William Basie "The Kid from Red Bank," was born on August 21, 1904, to Harvey Lee Basie and Lilly Ann Childs Basie in their house on Mechanic Street in Red Bank, New Jersey. The Basie family always owned a piano, and Mrs. Basie paid twenty-five cents a lesson to Miss Vandevere (a Red Bank music teacher) for William to study piano with her.

William Basie did not start out to be a piano player. In fact, his first love was the drums. His father even purchased a drum set for him. However, his drumming ambitions were forever erased after hearing Sonny Greer, another young drummer from Long Branch, NJ. Greer, who would later go on to fame as the drummer for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, was already so much better that Basie beat a hasty retreat to the piano. As a piano and drums duo, the two won first place in an Asbury Park piano competition. Decades later, on an August morning in 1958, the two would be among fifty-seven musicians photographed on the stoop of a Harlem, New York brownstone by Art Kane to accompany an Esquire magazine article on the "Golden Age of Jazz." (Art Kane’s photograph entitled “Jazz Portrait” is shown at the end of this article.) The result of Kane's first professional shoot, the photograph itself would later become as famous as the subjects it depicted, and the subject of a documentary film, "A Great Day in Harlem."

Basie quit high school after his junior year. He moved to and gigged in Asbury Park, before moving on to New York City in 1924. In New York Basie met and was influenced by the great stride pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, and before he was twenty years old he was touring on the black vaudevillian circuit as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians.

Many jazz enthusiasts assume that Count Basie was a native of Kansas City, because that is where he and his band first rose to national prominence. In fact, during 1927 Basie was stranded in Kansas City when a tour went bust. He remained there playing organ for silent films at the Eblon Theater, before joining bassist Walter Page's Blue Devils. Early in 1927, Basie left the Blue Devils to play with other bands in the area. This included the Bennie Moten band. Moten's orchestra already had a piano player in Moten himself, but the band was so superior to all the others in the area, that Basie was undeterred in wrangling a position for himself as staff arranger and substitute piano player.

During an internal dispute about an engagement at the Cherry Blossom club, which had formerly been the Eblon Theatre where Basie secured his first Kansas City gig, the band voted to oust Moten as its leader, and to install Basie as its new leader. The new band was billed as Count Basie and his Cherry Blossom Orchestra, marking the first time that its leader was billed as Count Basie. Although many stories circulate about the genesis of his nickname, Basie recalled it as a tribute to his tendency for slipping off to have some fun during arranging sessions for the Moten band. As soon as the band got a few good bars down Basie would slip out, and Moten would come looking for him saying, "Where is that no count rascal?" Basie and saxophonist Buster Smith pieced together their own nine-piece outfit made up of former members of the Blue Devils and the Moten band. Dubbed Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, the band played a long engagement at the Reno Club in Kansas City, which turned out to be a critical turning point in Basie's career. The Reno Club performances not only established Basie as a permanent band leader, but because they were broadcast over the radio, the band was exposed to new audiences far outside the local area.