Count Basie by Alun Morgan - Part 8

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

"'I don't think that a band can really swing on just a kick-off, you know; I think you've got to set the tempo first. If you can do it the other way, that's something else. Anyway, we do it our way; I set it with Freddie, sometimes for a couple of choruses. That's it, see. We fool with it and we know we've got it, like now'. The simplicity of the statement is typical of the Basie philosophy over the years but so many others have tried and failed; they have found that 'simple is difficult'. The creation of a floating beat, a four-man rhythm section which thinks, breathes and plays as one, is something which has eluded many, even the Basie band itself when Count was absent."

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.

All good things come to an end and such is the case with this wonderful tour of Basieland from the pen of Alun Morgan whose treatment of his subject contains more than a modicum of reverence and respect.

Chapter Eight

The show must go on and show business people are endowed with supernatural powers at moments of crisis. Count Basie came back to work after his heart attack and although he may have slowed down, this was certainly not apparent to those who heard the band after Nat Pierce and Clark Terry relinquished the joint leadership role. In january, 1977, three months after the tragedy, Basie was back in the studio for the recording of the Prime Time album, another of Sammy Nestico's sets of arrangements. (Nat Pierce was on hand for the three dates which went into the making of the LP and Basie had him take over the piano bench on Ya gotta try. 'I feel very privileged to be Basie's Number One substitute pianist' Pierce told Stanley Dance. 'That's what he told me I was.’ Pierce played piano on a number of Basie recordings, usually uncredited; he remembers There are such things from the album with Sarah Vaughan and Tell me your troubles with Joe Williams.

In Las Vegas the following month Basie got together with Dizzy Gillespie on an album which found the two principals exploring a surprisingly large tract of common ground. And then there was the eternal round of the international jazz festivals with Count playing a very large part at Montreux, both with the full band and at jam sessions. The orchestra now had a new and driving drummer in Butch Miles and an eclectic but commanding tenor soloist in Jimmy Forrest. Forrest could bring an audience to its feet with his quote-filled version of Body and Soul. Metronome magazine was proved right; the Basie band never again spawned soloists of the calibre found at the Reno Club or the Roseland Ballroom. At the same time it had to be recognised that the band was playing an entirely different set of venues to audiences who were content simply to see a world famous leader and his well-drilled, efficient band in the flesh.

This was to become the pattern until the end with the difference that Basie's failing health kept him away from work more than at any time in the past. Yet he struggled manfully to take his place in the rhythm section as much as possible. As Chris Sheridan wrote in his uncredited obituary in Jazz Journal, 'the band held together doggedly through Basie's latter-day periods of convalescence, even when, in the last few years, Basie himself was needing six weeks rest for every four on the road. He fought off a heart attack, pneumonia and, latterly arthritis to continue his musical life'. When he came to Britain for the last time, in September 1982, he came riding on stage in a motorised wheelchair equipped with a special hooter to announce his arrival.

He looked for, and found, the easy way much of the time but, thanks to Norman Granz, we have some exceptional examples of his piano playing both in solo and as an accompanist. On the Basie/Zoot Sims album, for example, there is an animated and two-handed solo on Honeysuckle rose following the tenor choruses, as if Count wanted to play his own personal tribute to composer Fats Waller. And in a Las Vegas recording studio on November 1,1981 Norman Granz put Basie at the keyboard with his so-called Kansas City Six to make music as blues-filled and as timeless as anything he had ever done before. With trumpeter Willie Cook, alto saxist Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson, guitarist Joe Pass, bass player Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen and drummer Louie Bellson the clock was wound back to the halcyon days for 40 minutes of superb music.

Basie was the last of the great piano-playing band leaders, outliving Duke Ellington, Earl Hines, Fletcher Henderson, Claude Hopkins and the rest. He would probably not have put himself in that category for modesty was an omnipresent characteristic of this man. Yet he probably achieved more than any of the others as an influence. He showed what could be done with a big band in terms of keeping the dancers happy while still providing musical interest for the dedicated jazz lovers. His timekeeping was impeccable and the very mention of his name in a description of someone else's musical style immediately implants an accurate idea in the mind.

Some stock arrangements for big bands are still marked 'Basie style' or 'Basie tempo' as a guide to budding musicians anxious to learn the finer points of orchestral jazz. Some of his best performances were heard live, or at least as recordings of a concert event, for they enabled Basie the luxury of getting the tempo right over a series of opening choruses by just the rhythm section. A lasting favourite was I needs to be bee'd with written in 1958 by Quincy Jones for the Basie-One More Time album on Roulette. The original studio version opens with a brass shout before leading into one piano chorus which acts as a prelude to Al Grey's solo. A number of ‘live' versions, both on record and video, made over the ensuing years, open with as many as nine choruses of rhythm section only before the band makes its appearance. Bill Coss described the way Count eases the band into a performance: 'you'll often see and hear Freddie and the Count playing introductions which may be several choruses long, changing tempos, checking with each other, finding the groove which pleases them most, (Basie smiling with evident glee and Freddie nodding with sophisticated satisfaction when they reach that point), then the Count's right foot, which is most often wound around the chair until then, kicks out, there is a sound of command and the band is unleashed in all its fury'.

Basie himself was probably thinking of the time-restrictions of record-making when he spoke of getting started; 'I don't think that a band can really swing on just a kick-off, you know; I think you've got to set the tempo first. If you can do it the other way, that's something else. Anyway, we do it our way; I set it with Freddie, sometimes for a couple of choruses. That's it, see. We fool with it and we know we've got it, like now'. The simplicity of the statement is typical of the Basie philosophy over the years but so many others have tried and failed; they have found that 'simple is difficult'. The creation of a floating beat, a four-man rhythm section which thinks, breathes and plays as one, is something which has eluded many, even the Basie band itself when Count was absent.

Johnny Mandel tells the story about listening to the Basie band rehearse one afternoon while the Count wandered about the empty nightclub, paying no attention to his band or its playing. The musicians were obviously uncomfortable and they practically forced him to the piano. Suddenly the band smashed right and left as it had not done earlier. That was no reflection on the other three members of the rhythm section. The Basie magic was hard to explain.

Harder to explain was the Count himself for he allowed very few people ever to get close to him. 'No member of the jazz pantheon smiles so much and says so little as Count Basie' wrote Nat Hentoff in 1962. '"Except for Freddie Green nobody really knows Bill" says a veteran member of the band. "He keeps in most of what he feels, and the face he presents to the public is usually the one we see too. Once in a great while he'll explode or do something else that isn't in keeping with the usual picture of him, but he quickly picks up his customary role. And from time to time, we'll see Freddie Green lecturing him off to one side- never the other way around. But I don't know what those conversations are about"'. Basie as leader was unlike any of his contemporaries. For years he travelled in the band bus with everyone else, unlike Duke Ellington, who always travelled in Harry Carney's car or some bandleaders who drove their cars a mile or so behind the band bus to ensure there was no stopping en route. Count fostered the happy family atmosphere, a rare commodity in a touring band with all the pressures that that throws up.

When his fortunes improved Basie invested money in a 132nd Street and Seventh Avenue club named after him. He also bought a house in St. Albans, Long Island, which became home for his wife, Catherine, and their daughter Diane. On the few occasions he was at home he relaxed in front of the television set or operated his model railway layout down in the basement. In an obviously ghosted article in 1955 Down Beat he wrote 'Not too long ago there was a real "crazy" dog in our household with a pedigree a mile long and natch we called him "One O'Clock Jump". All house broken and lovable, he was a nice little fella, but we had to get rid of him because he just couldn't get used to the two-legged man of the house, namely me. You see, in the past so many years I just haven't been around home long enough for him to dig me. You know, that darn "mutt" wouldn't let me get past the first crack in the door. But don't get me wrong, I love the road. It may be a little tough on my wife and kid, never seeing their father and husband until Birdland time comes around, but it has and will remain a great thrill and challenge to me'. Like many others, Basie had been around so long that he could not envisage a time when he would fail to answer the band call.

His wife, Catherine, first met Bill Basie when he was touring with the Bennie Moten band. She was one of the dancing Whitman Sisters (although her maiden name was Morgan). They were married for more than forty years and her death, in April, 1983, was a severe blow at a time when Count's own health was at a low ebb. He looked for, and sometimes found, solace and companionship on the bandstand where the roar of the crowd provided a satisfaction equal to none.

We are fortunate that Basie left a huge legacy of recorded work and also enabled a large number of young musicians to develop their talents as soloists. Everyone played better when Basie was at the piano and no band has ever swung more. As an epitaph that sentence tells half of the story. The other half is that Bill Basie brought a warm feeling of happiness to millions.”