Count Basie by Alun Morgan - Part 6

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Born in Wales in 1928, Alun Morgan became a Jazz fan as a teenage and was an early devotee of the bebop movement. In the 1950s he began contributing articles to Melody Maker, Jazz Journal, Jazz Monthly, and Gramophone and for twenty years, beginning in 1969, he wrote a regular column for a local newspaper in Kent. From 1954 onward he contributed to BBC programs on Jazz, authored and co-authored books on modern Jazz and Jazz in England and wrote over 2,500 liner notes for Jazz recordings.

Chapter Six

“The new Basie band was a musical success on and off records and did good business around New York but its nationwide tours were disappointing in terms of financial return. The breakthrough came in the summer of 1953 and it was probably coincidental that a change took place in the reed section around this time. Frank Wess joined the band on tenor as a replacement for Paul Quinichette then, a few weeks later on July 27, Frank Foster took over from Eddie Davis and stayed for exactly eleven years.

Metronome magazine published a very perceptive review of the band at this time: 'This is obviously the way a big band should sound; with an even attack, a brace of excellent soloists, a dedication to the beat and a library of arrangements that permit the soloists and the sections to keep the rhythm going always…. This is not the incubator of jazz of the future as the first Basie band was. It is unlikely that a Pres will emerge out of this group to shape a whole new era of jazz. This is rather a band that sums up, that shows how it is done and how it is played, what was good and what still is good in the jazz of twenty years ago and of today. In the other arts, it is always those who sum up, who demonstrate the enduring in the past and present, who make the great artists'.

The essential rightness of these opinions was to be proved time and again during the next three decades for no barrier-breaking soloist was to emerge from the Basie ranks, rather it was a band which became the curator of jazz big band tradition. During the years Basie spent under contract to Norman Granz the impresario tried to arrange a recording session at which Charlie Parker was to have been featured with the band. (Granz had both men under contract at the time.) Parker refused because, he said, Basie would never let him sit in back in Kansas City in 1936. Count, for his part, probably found the sixteen-year old Parker too wild and unschooled a musician in the Reno Club days; a pairing on record in 1953 or 1954 might well have resulted in some extremely interesting music.

The arrival of Frank Wess was to give the band an additional tone colour for, as well as playing excellent tenor, Frank was a flutist, a not too common 'double' in jazz at the time. In fact Basie was unaware of Wess's second instrument for some weeks. 'It wasn't until Frank had been in the band for some time before Don Redman said to me one night, "Frank played any flute for you yet?" I said I didn't know he played it. So a few nights later I said to Frank, "Why didn't you tell me you play flute?" and he said "you didn't ask me!" so I said, bring your flute tomorrow night'.

Thus began a long line of flute features including She’sjust my size, The midgets, Flute juice and Perdido. In Frank Foster, Basie had not only an excellent tenor soloist rooted in the Wardell Gray and Sonny Stitt tradition, but also a most workmanlike arranger. In fact the quality of the scores produced by men within the band equalled that of the more experienced outside writers.

Neal Hefti, a man with a considerable reputation gained from his work for the Woody Herman Herd, had enhanced his reputation with his scoring for the septet and octet then followed it with more writing for the new big band. Johnny Mandel, who played bass trumpet with Basie from June until December, 1953, wrote about ten arrangements for the Count of which only Straight life seems to have been recorded. Manny Albam, Sy Oliver, Buster Harding, Don Redman and Nat Pierce were the most prominent of the 'outside' arrangers.

The band recorded material in 1953 which Granz put together as a ten-track album called Count Basie Dance Session; it was greeted so enthusiastically by critics and public alike that Count Basie Dance Session No.2 was soon in the shops. The albums were important in two respects, apart from their great musical value. Firstly, the titles showed the public that Basie still considered himself to be the leader of a band which played music for dancing and secondly, the very fact that the LPs were given titles was something of an innovation. Previous Basie albums tended to be made up of 78rpm titles simply programmed as ten-inch or twelve-inch discs. The Count's Dance Session LPs were referred to as such by critics and public both at the time and even years later when the discs were reissued. Subsequently the practice of giving albums generic titles was to become the norm and in Basie's case his best-known LPs, for example The Atomic Mister Basie. On My Way And Shoutin' Again  etc., have become part of jazz history.

In March, 1954 Count made his first trip to Europe, touring Scandinavia, France, Switzerland etc. but missing out the United Kingdom due to the lingering dispute between the musicians' unions of the two countries. Back home business was good and the band was finding its feet, financially, but it needed just one extra effort to take it to the top. The missing ingredient was a singer with a commanding personality and on Christmas Day 1954, that singer arrived on stage with the big band for the first time, Joseph Goreed Williams, born in Cordele, Georgia, raised in Chicago, and just two weeks past his 36th birthday. Joe was an immediate success to the point where Granz rushed out his versions of The comeback and Everyday as a 45 rpm single suitable for the jukebox operators. This was followed by the band's Alright, okay you win and When the sun goes down-, with that rich voice well to the fore. At the recording session in May, 1955 when Williams's hits were taped (Frank Foster and Ernie Wilkins provided the scores) Basie recorded another best selling title, April in Paris. This was arranged by organist Wild Bill Davis and it was the original intention for Davis to record it with the band. Unfortunately Wild Bill's vehicle broke down on the way to the studio and what turned out to be a best-selling record was made without him. 'I sure fixed Bill's truck that day!' joked Basie years later.

The purists sneered at the Joe Williams vocals and the April in Paris record, with its 'one more time' ending and its Pop goes the weasel quotation in Thad Jones's trumpet solo but the fact remained that Basie, at long last, had financial stability. The payroll to keep sixteen men swinging got bigger each year and although the relationship between Count and his men was more cordial, relaxed and closer than that of any other band, it did not prevent the sidemen taking the leader to the union when they felt they had a case on matters such as overtime payments etc. As Nat Hentoff wrote in his revealing essay in his book The Jazz Life, 'Basie is quite conservative concerning money. He has to be pressured into giving a rise, and he deals with each man in the band individually in a divide-and-conquer technique that lessens the possibility of mass mutiny with regard to Basie pay. This absence of collective bargaining exists in many other bands. Basie was not always so close, but he has been mulcted outrageously in his years as leader'.

With his fortunes now on an upward trajectory, Basie made a change in the band which some of his men disagreed with; he sacked drummer Gus Johnson. 'I was in the band until December 22, 1954' Gus told Stanley Dance. 'On the 23rd, I was in hospital with appendicitis. I was there ten days or so when Basie wrote me to say he had got Sonny Payne and that he was doing a good job. Basie liked a lot of flash, and some of the fellows in the band though Sonny was better than me because he was more of a showman. Charlie Fowlkes told me later on that he (Charlie) fell and broke his kneecap and Basie didn't hire him back either. The same thing happened to Marshall Royal when he had to go into hospital. Moral: Don't get sick!'

Sonny Payne, who had worked with the Erskine Hawkins band and was the son of drummer Chris Columbus, was expert at juggling sticks and generally playing to the audience when the occasion demanded (and sometimes when it was not demanded). As Nat Hentoff described Payne, he was 'inclined to send up rockets when the music called for indirect lighting'. He also had a tendency to rush the beat and, for a time, Freddie Greene kept a long stick with which he poked Sonny when the time started to go awry. Gus Johnson was the very finest drummer Basie had, after the departure of Jo Jones, but the employment of a showman on the drum stool was part of the change which the band was experiencing.

More and more the bookings were for concerts and less for dancing. Audiences paid to see and hear the band as a band and Basie, who probably recalled those years in vaudeville, loved the reaction of a crowd to pure showmanship. This did not, of course, lower the band's musical abilities in any way, in fact some of the new scores called for a degree of musicianship which previous line-ups would have found too demanding. In 1956 Norman Granz released an album on which Basie and Joe Williams shared equal billing. It was clear thai Joe was now one of the band's biggest assets. Most critics damned Williams with faint praise, accusing him of not being a true blues singer and of using material which was weak, pallid and generally unsuited to the context. It is highly likely that Count smiled benignly at such criticisms as he turned to check the full list of bookings which the band was enjoying. To Count, Joe Williams was always 'my favourite son' and it is not difficult to see why he was held in such esteem for his addition to the band moved Basie into a new strata as far as fees for engagements were concerned.

In 1956 the band took off on another European tour (again missing out Britain; the inter-union problem had still to be finalised) and Granz recorded the band in concert at Gothenburg. The resultant LP came out misleadingly titled Count Basie In London but at least it gave us the opportunity of hearing how the band performed in front of an audience. Apart from the expected Joe Williams favourites, the programme also contained a new and attractive work by Frank Foster, Shiny stockings, which the band had first recorded in the studio at the beginning of the year. To be fair to Basie, he was also recording more challenging works including the extended Coast to coast suite by Ernie Wilkins.

In April, 1957 Count Basie paid his first visit to Britain and met with a most enthusiastic response wherever he played. So great was the demand for the band that arrangements were immediately put in hand to bring Basie back in the October of that year. In between the UK bookings, Count made a considerable impact on the 8,000 audience at the Newport Jazz Festival. The final concert was held on Sunday, July 7th and for the occasion John Hammond came on stage to effect the introductions. After the regular band had played its opening number a quartet of distinguished Old Boys made their appearance to be featured with the band. Lester Young, Jo Jones, Jimmy Rushing and Illinois Jacquet added their own special magic and excitement to the occasion and on the final One o'clock jump trumpeter Roy Eldridge also joined in. Granz taped almost the whole of the Newport Jazz Festival that year and the two albums on which Basie may be heard from this event were the last under his contract with Clef/Verve. In the autumn he signed with the comparatively new Roulette company and commenced his new affiliation with an album of Neal Hefti compositions which, rightly, has become a classic by any standards, The Atomic Mr. Basie.

A few days after completing the album the band flew to Britain where they performed a number of the new Hefti works including the slow and beautiful Li’l darlin and the hectic Whirly bird. So great was the response and so outspoken were British musicians in their claims that they had no chance to hear the band (as the concerts were held, naturally, while other musicians were working) that a special concert was arranged, commencing at midnight. The Roulette recording contract lasted for five years during which time Basie made some 20 albums for the label, the majority of which are excellent. Not only are they musically brilliant but the recording quality is outstanding, thanks to the experienced Teddy Reig who produced most of the LPs. While the Clef/Verve issues were acceptable some sessions, noticeably those which went into the making of the Dance Sessions albums, suffered from a slight muddiness. With The Atomic Mr Basie the music jumped from the speakers, even in mono, with a degree of separation and perspective which the Count had never previously enjoyed.

Before the European tour in the autumn of 1957 Basie made some changes, two of them to tighten discipline within the band. Bill Graham had been playing alto in the band since the early part of 1955 when he took Ernie Wilkins's place and his departure was not unexpected. As Nat Hentoff tells it 'Billy Graham, an extrovert and prankster, "played himself out of the band" as one of his fellow roisterers puts it. "Billy was not only too playful, but he used to get a little too familiar with the Chief himself. He'd even heckle Basie on the bandstand. As usually happens when a guy goes, Graham got the news during a layoff! When we came back, he just wasn't there" '.The other man to go about the same time was trumpeter Reunald Jones; born in 1910 he was older than anyone else in the band, apart from the Count himself Hentoff again: 'Seated at the extreme left end of the trumpet section, Jones was always one level higher than his colleagues. He played with one hand, as if in derision of the simplicity of the music. When the rest of the section would rise in unison, Jones invariably remained seated. His expression - no matter how much joking was going on among the men - was constantly sour. Jones's childish campaign of passive contempt was in protest at the fact that Basie never assigned him any solos. Jones was fired finally because, as a section mate says with satisfaction, 'he drank too much water'. Jones was a clubhouse lawyer, and occasionally complained to the musicians' union about overtime matters. He went to the union one time too often'. These two incidents give an insight to the extra-musical problems facing a band leader and although Basie tried to distance himself always from internal troubles, the final decision had to be his.

The other side of the coin was the excellence of the music which the band was placing on record for Roulette. Neal Hefti wrote the music for two albums, Quincy Jones another and Frank Foster was responsible for all the music on Easin' It. And Benny Carter, the master of orchestration, came up with two suites, -Kansas City Suite and The Legend; on the latter Benny sat in the reed section at the recording session. And the band was recorded 'live' to very good effect at Birdland (with Budd Johnson taking some virile tenor solos) and again down in Miami.”

To be continued