Hank Mobley - Soul Station

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

“Hank has also carried a liability around with him for a long time-a liability, that is, as far as commercialism is concerned: he is not easily classified. Everyone knows by now how writers on jazz like to trot out phrases like Hawkins-informed, Rollins-derived, Young-influenced and the like, and then, having formed their pigeon-hole, they proceed to drop the musician under discussion into it and fill the dirt over him. That is not easily done with Hank Mobley. He is, to be sure, associated with East coast musicians and material, but he has never had the so-called "hard bop" sound that is generally a standard part of the equipment of such tenormen.

At the same time, Charlie Parker was certainly a greater part of his playing than Lester Young, which is often enough to label a man a bopper, so what was Mobley doing? The answer is so simple as to be completely overlooked in a mass of theory, digging for influences, and the like: he was working out his own style.”

- Joe Goldberg, insert notes to Soul Station [emphasis, mine]

Continuing with my MobleyQuest [an effort to get anything of importance from the Jazz literature available on Hank posted to my blog], I am returning to individual Mobley album features, this time with a focus on Hank’s Soul Station  Blue Note LP which was released on CD as 95343-2 for as Richard Cook and Brian Morton state so explicitly in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:

“Mobley fans are divided as to whether Soul Station or Roll Call is his masterpiece, but the Rudy Van Gelder Edition of the former is a welcome reminder of how creative a player Mobley was, here transcending his normal consistency and making a modest classic. Good as the other drummers on his records are, Art Blakey brings a degree more finesse, and their interplay on This I Dig Of You is superb. Hank seldom took ballads at a crawl, preferring a kind of lazy mid-tempo, and If I Should Lose You is one of his best. Dig Dis is a top example of how tough he could sound without falling into bluster. A virtually perfect example of a routine date made immortal by master craftsmen.” [Wynton Kelly on piano and Paul Chambers on bass round out the quartet on this date].

Cook and Morton also go on to address the two main issues that critics [in the negative sense] seemed to persistently underscore throughout Mobley’s career: his tone and his style of improvising:

“Mobley's music was documented to almost unreasonable length by Blue Note, with a whole raft of albums granted to him as a leader, and countless sideman appearances to go with them. … A collectors' favourite, his assertive and swinging delivery was undercut by a seemingly reticent tone: next to his peers in the hard-bop tenor gang, he could sound almost pallid. But it shouldn't detract from appreciating a thinker and a solidly reliable player. Despite frequent personal problems, Mobley rarely gave less than his best in front of the microphones.”

As a contemporary of blustery tenor sax players such as Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane and Johnny Griffin, to cite only a few, Hank was wrongly condemned for using a lighter tone which allowed for a very fluid expression of ideas. Sometimes one wonders what these [negative] critics were listening to because there was so much original invention to be had in Hank’s solos.

In the following insert notes to Hank’s classic Soul Station LP, Joe Goldberg stresses another significant point that many of the critics may have missed in their all-too frequent critical assessment of his playing and that is - “He was working out his own style.”

I always thought that developing an individual voice, one that is instantly recognizable by the listener, is something that a Jazz musician strives to achieve and that Hank’s successful efforts in this regard were often overlooked.

Joe Goldberg elaborates on this point and other significant features [including how Hank’s style forms a parallel alliance with “the music of the dance”] of Hank’s playing in the following insert notes to Soul Station, Blue Note CD 95343-2.

“RECENTLY, it has become more and more incorrect to pass off a jazz record as a "blowing date" (a term, by the way, that has become at least semi-derogatory) simply Because there are only four or five musicians involved. The days of men coming into a studio and "just blowing" (a practice that only the very greatest jazzmen have ever been able to get away with) are apparently over, for the most part. At one time, you could safely assume that a forty-minute LP had taken, at most, an hour to put together. No more.

What has this to do with Hank Mobley? Quite a bit, to judge from this LP, Soul Station. On the surface, it contains all the elements of a blowing session - tenor sax and rhythm, a few originals, a couple of seldom-done standards, and a blues. But the difference is to be heard as soon as you begin to listen to the record. And let us take things in what might seem to be reverse order for a moment, and discuss the reasons for the difference before we even talk about the difference itself. Hank has always been a musician's musician - a designation that can easily become the kiss of death for the man who holds it. Fans and critics will reel off their list of tenor players, a list that is as easily changed by fashion as not, and then the musician over in the corner will say, "Yes, but have you heard Hank Mobley?" The musician saying that, in this particular case, might very well be a drummer. The groups Hank works with are often led by drummers  - Art Blakey and Max Roach, to name two men who need, as they say, no introduction, and the first of whom contributes in a great degree to the success of this album.

One might suppose, considering this, that Hank is possessed or an unusual rhythmic sense, and one would be right. In a conversation I had with Art Blakey while preparing the notes for his two Blue Note LPs caned Holiday for Skins (BLP 4004-5), he was discussing the fact that while many songs are written in complex rhythms, the solos generally revert to a straight four. His reason for this was that most soloists probably could not play them any other way. "Hank Mobley could do it, though" he said. But even while possessing this definite asset, Hank has also carried a liability around with him for a long time-a liability, that is, as far as commercialism is concerned: he is not easily classified. Everyone knows by now how writers on jazz like to trot out phrases like Hawkins-informed, Rollins-derived, Young-influenced and the like, and then, having formed their pigeon-hole, they proceed to drop the musician under discussion into it and fill the dirt over him. That is not easily done with Hank Mobley. He is, to be sure, associated with East coast musicians and material, but he has never had the so-called "hard bop" sound that is generally a standard part of the equipment of such tenormen.

At the same time, Charlie Parker was certainly a greater part of his playing than Lester Young, which is often enough to label a man a bopper, so what was Mobley doing? The answer is so simple as to be completely overlooked in a mass of theory, digging for influences, and the like: he was working out his own style.

But - and here again, he suffers from a commercial liability - he did not do it in a spectacular way. He did not, in the manner of Sonny Rollins, in 1955 emerge from a long self-imposed retirement with a startling new approach. Nor did he, in the manner of John Coltrane, come almost completely unknown under the teaching influence of the great Miles Davis (for how many men has that recently been the key to success). Instead, he worked slowly and carefully, in the manner of a craftsman, building the foundations of a style, taking what he needed to take from whom he needed to take it (everyone does that, the difference between genius and hackwork is the manner in which it is done), and finally emerging, on this album, not with a disconnected series of tunes, but with a definite statement to make.

Evidence of that, to get back to the idea with which these comments began, is to be found in the care with which this set has been assembled. First of all, there are the sidemen-Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Art Blakey. To discuss Blakey again on each new record release is almost to insult him and his contribution to jazz, particularly since he says it himself very well, clearly, and with great authority in his solo on This I Dig Of You. But about Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers, for a moment. It is probably no accident that both of them are members of Miles Davis' group -I hesitate to call it a quintet or sextet, since that is so often in doubt. Miles has been famous for the superb quality of his rhythm sections as much as for any of his other contributions, and some of the ideas that started in his group or in his observance of Ahmad Jamal's group are to be found on this record. The basis of these ideas - pedal point, rhythmic suspensions, a general lightness of approach-all have their basis in one underlying idea - the best music is never very far from dance.

This concept can be found not only in Miles' work, but in the solo albums made by Coltrane, in those of Sonny Rollins, and even in the work of Thelonious Monk, who has taken to doing his own extremely expressive dance in front of his group. This is not to say that any of these men, or Hank Mobley either, "play for dancing" although whal they play is certainly more conducive to dancing than the music of Freddy Martin or Guy Lombardo but that the qualities that are essential to dance - a lightness, flow, and flexibility, all within the confines of a definite form and overall sense of a structure - are essential to their music.

The unusual sound of Mobley's tenor might very well come of this idea of dance. Jazz is rich in legends of unknown saxophonists, celebrated only in their immediate area, but having an enormous effect on men who went on to much wider acclaim. These men being small-town on-the-stand musicians, playing for dances, for the most part, have had, in all likelihood, a sound very much like the sound of Mobley's tenor, or like Coltrane's or Rollins' for that matter. And it would take a man with a knowledge of dance music to pick as fine and unlikely an old song as Irving Berlin's Remember to start his set with. (Monk, incidentally, also has a penchant for old Berlin tunes.)

I think also, that dance must be behind as charming, lightly swinging and immediately attractive a song (song is the right word here, not "tune" or "original") as Hank Mobley's composition This I Dig Of You, which brings out the best of all the musicians - Blakey's solo has been mentioned before, and I am particularly charmed by Wynton Kelly's solo, with its ever-present echoes of The Party's Over.

These ideas are present, but the four men involved are all excellent craftsmen, so the ideas do not intrude upon the music as sometimes happens with the sometimes over-self conscious Modern Jazz Quartet. You do not think of dance, or rhythmic shifts, or the changing approach to the tenor saxophone, or the old tunes, or the inevitable funky blues. You simply hear, at first, four men swinging lightly, powerfully, and with great assurance and authority. You relax, listen, and enjoy yourself. And then later, when you think about it, you realize just how much of an achievement this apparently casual LP represents. And you think with new admiration and respect about Hank Mobley, because you realize how much of that achievement he has been able to make his own.”

-JOE GOLDBERG

Bill Crow: Memories, 1950-1953

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

Bill Crow has had such a long, distinguished career, both as a bassist and writer, that it’s sometimes difficult to believe that he just didn’t appear fully formed on the Jazz scene.

And yet, as he nostalgically reminds us in the following piece, we all have beginnings in the music.

In describing how his own career evolved, the late author Ray Bradbury commented: “You Make Yourself as You Go.”

From his own pen, here’s how it was for Bill when he first arrived in New York in 1950 and how he made himself “go” [grow] during his first three years in the business.

© -  Bill Crow: copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission. [Paragraphing modified in places.]

“When I left Seattle to live in New York City in January of 1950, I got off the bus with 50 dollars in my pocket, carrying a suitcase and a valve trombone. My friend Buzzy Bridgeford, a drummer, had convinced me that if I wanted to be a musician I had to be where the music was. In his estimation, New York was the only place to be.

I didn't see any reason not to believe him. When we arrived, Charlie Parker was playing with his quintet at Birdland, with Red Rodney, Bud Powell, Tommy Potter and Roy Haynes, and opposite him was a house band made up of Max Roach, Al Haig, Miles Davis, J.J. Johnson, Curley Russell and Sonny Stitt. The admission price was 95 cents, and you could listen to great music all night long without spending another dime.

After our first tough winter scuffling in New York, Buzzy wound up with a summer gig in the Adirondacks, at the Altamont Hotel in Tupper Lake, N.Y. It was originally Gene Roland's gig, but on opening night Gene had a fight with the boss's wife and walked off in a huff. Buzzy salvaged the job, and a week or two later he got me hired as a trombone player.

The boss wouldn't hire a bass player... he felt that piano and drums were enough rhythm. So Buzzy found a local kid who owned a Kay bass and paid him 20 bucks to rent it for the summer. Then he told me, "When you're not playing the trombone, you've got to try to play the bass. I can't stand playing without a bass player."

The other musicians sort of gaslighted me into staying with the bass... they didn't give me any positive feedback about my trombone playing, and constantly encouraged my bass playing. "Wow, on that last tune, you sounded just like Ray Brown!"

By the time I got back to the city, I had taught myself to play the bass well enough to accept gigs. I would rent a bass when I got work. It took a while to find one of my own.

As soon as I met a few New York musicians, I began to discover all the places where jam sessions might take place. Nola Studios, on Broadway in the 50s, was a main location.  (Not to be confused with Nola Penthouse, the recording studio on 57th Street.) Nola's had a number of small rehearsal rooms, each with a piano, and one large room that could hold a big band. That was the room where jam sessions were often held, with a collection being taken up to pay the rental.

I found out about Nola's during a visit to New York City while I was still in the Army, stationed at Fort Meade, Md. I looked up a friend of a friend, who took me to a session there. About 20 people were in the big room, but only five or six were playing. A good rhythm section, a trumpet player, and Brew Moore on tenor. Brew had finished most of a gallon jug of Gallo wine, and was lying on his side on the floor, playing, with a lit cigarette tucked into his octave key. I was impressed with his ability to still swing when so far into the bag.

There were several private lofts and back rooms of bars where we could play, and on one nice afternoon when no one had any money for studio rental, Gerry Mulligan rehearsed some of his big band arrangements on the shore of the 72nd Street lake in Central Park. Until I got my own bass, I would hang out at sessions and rehearsals until the bass player got tired, and then would get a chance to play his bass. I played a lot on Teddy Kotick's bass, and on one owned by a Spanish bassist, Louis Barreiro.

Another great location was a room at 136th Street near Broadway. It was a basement that extended out under the street, so you could make noise all night without bothering anyone. A baritone player named Gershon Yowell found the place, and when he moved out, it was taken over by Joe Maini and Jimmy Knepper. We played there a lot. Sometimes Charlie Parker would drop by just to hang out, and he would occasionally play. 1 was too shy to play while he was around, but I enjoyed getting to know him. A very sweet, funny, intelligent and generous man, no matter what Miles Davis said about him in his book.

Whenever Bird played, Jimmy Knepper would turn on his tape recorder, and then, during the next day, he would listen to the tapes and write out Bird's solos. Those transcriptions became Jimmy's practice material.

A club date bass player in the Bronx let it be known that he had a bass for sale, and I heard about it at Charlie's Tavern. I went up to look at it, an old Kay that was in good shape, and he said he wanted $75 for it. I only had five dollars to give him, but he agreed to hold the bass for me until I got the rest of the money together.

I wasn't making much profit at the time... a club date might pay $15 or $20, and I had to pay five bucks to rent a bass for the weekend, and maybe another five to rent a tux. But I was also finding other work. Dave Lambert, who was also scuffling at the time, would come up with jobs we could do together, like moving somebody from one apartment to another, or painting someone's apartment, or babysitting, or doing minor carpentry jobs. I took a traveling job for a few months with Mike Riley's trio playing drums and singing, and even with the low pay I was getting, I managed to save a few bucks and send them to the bassist in the Bronx.

When I finally paid off the $75 and took possession of my bass, I quit my job with Riley and started working with Teddy Cohen's trio, with Don Roberts on guitar. After I'd been with Teddy for a couple of months, he told me one day that he was changing his name to Charles. "Charles Cohen," I said. "That sounds pretty good." He laughed, and said it was the Cohen he wanted to get rid of. He felt that the Jewish name was holding back his career.

He did all right with the new name, so maybe he was right. Other friends had already done the same thing: Donald Helfman became Don Elliott, Julius Gubenko was now Terry Gibbs, Herbert Solomon became Herbie Mann, and Anthony Sciacca became Tony Scott.

We rehearsed every day, and worked occasionally. Teddy taught me the right changes to all the bebop standards of the day, and playing with no drummer helped me develop a strong sense of time. I'd invented my own fingering system for the bass, which was a little awkward, but I didn't know any better. I improved it several years later when I began studying with Fred Zimmerman, of the New York Philharmonic.

Don Roberts got a better job and left us, and Jimmy Raney replaced him. Jimmy had been working with Stan Getz, but Stan had gone alone for some work on the west coast, and so Jimmy was available for a job we had on West 46th Street in the Iroquois Hotel, playing jazz and accompanying Amanda Sullivan, who was billed as "The Blonde Calypso."

At the end of that summer, Jimmy got a call from Getz. "I've got a week at the Hi-Hat in Boston. Roy Haynes is living up there, and says he'll do it. And I got Jerry Kaminsky on piano. So find a bass player and come on up." Jimmy asked me if I wanted to do it, and of course I did.

We got together at his apartment one afternoon and he taught me Stan's tunes, and then we took the train up to Boston.

I met Stan at the hotel where we were staying, and he said, "Do you mind if I check into your room with you? I'll split the bill with you, but I won't be staying there... I've got a chick in a room upstairs. This is just for the record." I agreed, and became Stan's roommate, on paper.

On opening night, we started the first tune and my D string broke during the first chorus. I tried to play around it, but was having a terrible time. There was another bass under the piano, which belonged to the house group that was playing opposite us. I decided to quickly switch basses, hoping the other guy wouldn't mind.

But when I began to play it, I discovered that it was set up for a left-handed player, with the strings in the opposite direction from mine. I fumbled through the tune, making many mistakes; and at the end Stan gave me a minute to put a new D string on my bass, and the worst was over.

By the second night I was pretty comfortable with the quintet, and the music went smoothly. But I was amazed at Stan's love life. In addition to the girl in the room upstairs, he was spending time during the day with another girl he had met at the club. And on the weekend, his wife came up for a surprise visit, and checked into the hotel. At the club that night all three women were sitting at a table in front of the bandstand, and each one was sure she was the one with Stan, and the other two were just friends.

When we got back to New York the next week, Stan called and said he had a week at Birdland. Jerry Kaminsky and Roy Haynes had stayed in Boston, so he hired Duke Jordan and Frank Isola. During that week we also played a concert at Carnegie Hall opposite Charlie Parker's quintet. Then Stan found us a week each in Baltimore and Washington, and we came back to New York for a week off.

That Tuesday, Stan called to say Birdland had a last minute opening for a week, so I went there and found Kenny Clarke setting up. I assumed Frank had already booked something and wasn't available. We began to play, and I got along with Kenny very well. We played the radio broadcast that was always done on the first set of opening night at Birdland each week.

When I got up for the second set that night, I looked over in the Peanut Gallery, the seating area beside the bandstand, and saw Frank Isola there. "What's up, Frank?" I asked. "I don't know," he grinned. "I turned on the radio and discovered I was fired!" Stan pretended not to notice him.

We did a recording session for Norman Granz and another for Teddy Reig, and then Jimmy Raney left us to take a steady gig at the Blue Angel with Jimmy Lyons. So we worked a couple of weeks as a quartet. Then Duke and Klook left to do something else, and Stan said, "Well, I guess I have to form a new quintet." So he hired Bob Brookmeyer, John Williams and Alan Levitt, and I stayed on bass.

That was an interesting group, but the rhythm section never really jelled. John wanted the time feeling to be up on top, and Alan wanted it more relaxed. I was too inexperienced to have a strong point of view, and Stan and Bob weren't comfortable with us. So Stan decided to go back to his original bass player, Teddy Kotick, and that was the end of my six month tour with Stan. Teddy had been doing one-nighters with Claude Thornhill's band, and I wound up taking that job for the next summer, and my musical education continued. I learned a lot from playing with Stan and with Claude, and had a lot of fun doing it.”

Monk in Copenhagen - 1963

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

It’s always an event when’s there more newly discovered recorded music by Thelonious Monk to enjoy, whatever the period and whatever the context.

The composer of 70 tunes, many of which have become Jazz standards, when performing in night clubs and concerts, Monk was constantly reworking his repertoire and to some extent, even recomposing it.

And, of course, there’s also what the other members of the band brought to the music: Johnny Griffin, John Coltrane and Charlie Rouse [1924-1988], his long-time associate, on tenor saxophone and the bassists and drummers who made up his various rhythm sections over the years.

Unfortunately, the sound quality of potential reissues is often a challenge, but thankfully,  the sound recreation techniques available today are often a remedy for audio distortion problems.

Thankfully, too, the quality of the audio on Monk in Copenhagen [Gearbox GB 1541 CD], a reissue ot the most recent discovery of one of Monk’s “live” performances, is first rate as is the playing of Charlie Rouse on tenor, John Ore [1933-2014] on bass and Frankie Dunlop 1928-2014] on drums.

Here’s more about this wonderful addition to the Monk discography from James Hale in an article that appears in the December 2018 edition of Downbeat.

“If the 1990s represented the golden age of the CD box set, we might be amid the Age of Found Sound. "Lost" recordings by John Coltrane have made a huge splash, and last year, jazz sleuth Zev Feldman unearthed a 1960 soundtrack by Thelonious Monk,

Now, Monk again is in the spotlight, thanks to the discovery of a March 5, 1963 Danish concert featuring the pianist alongside saxophonist Charlie Rouse, bassist John Ore and drummer Frankie Dunlop. Released by London-based Gearbox Records on a number of media formats — including a deluxe, limited-edition LP — Monk captures the pianist's long-running quartet amid a triumphant European tour.

"That tour was a great success for Monk," said Robin Kelley, the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA and author of 2009's Thelonious Monk: The Life And Times Of An American Original (Free Press)- "In 1962, he hadn't done that much, but suddenly things were happening for him. Personally, he was in a great place, and in terms of his career, he was a rising star."

Kelley pointed to the pianist's new contract with Columbia Records, the stability of his quartet and his pending cover story in Time magazine as signs that Monk never had found himself in a better situation.

"He was recording a lot, the band had been together for two years, and this return to Europe gave him the opportunity to really showcase his music," Kelley said. "The tour was pretty well documented, but this Copenhagen gig [at the 210-seat Odd Fellow Palwet] has never surfaced before."

The recording's journey to the consumer market is the stuff of audiophile's fantasy, and it began with the decision by a Danish producer to purchase almost 90 reels of tape about 20 years ago.

"He was going to use them for samples," said Gearbox's Darrel Sheinman. who helped master the recording. "He never got around to it, and he was going to give them to the Danish National Jazz Archive. I knew him through buying some rare jazz records in Copenhagen, so I bought the tapes from him about five years ago."

Sheinman said he began making his way through the tapes, discovering that most of them were "cracking titles procured by the Danish Debut label, which was Charles Mingus' franchise label," run by another Dane.

"It took us an age to review them all," he said. "Since they were mostly broadcast tapes, they were either quarter-track or halftrack recordings, made at either 3.75 or 7.5 inches per second. To save money, broadcasters often used both sides of the tapes."

Despite its age and provenance. Sheinman said the Monk recording was in great shape — probably the best of his purchase, making restoration remarkably easy.

"We simply did some high-frequency riding on EQ to deal with dropouts, but that was it.  We were very lucky with this tape; it was recorded onto quarter-inch tape at 15 inches per second, then straight to all the formats, from vinyl to CD and digital."

Gearbox prides itself on using a completely analog signal chain to create its products, even when the final format is digital.

"We feel analog sound has a bigger soundstage and some gentle, natural compression, while keeping good dynamic range," Sheinman said. "It often depends on the equipment used. We like Studer machines, and their tube ones, in particular, are astonishing."

Sheinman admits that staying true to the analog commitment and refusing to go down the road of full digital restoration is always a challenge.

What Monk showcases is a particularly raucous concert, with the pianist and his bandmates digging deep into their standard repertoire, including "Bye-Ya," "Nutty," "Body And Soul" and "Monk's Dream."

Kelley said that while this was standard fare for the quartet, the music continued to yield new secrets.

"Monk was a composer," Kelley said, "and he tried to make these songs perfect. He played this music in so many different ways. Take "Body And Soul" as an example. He played it over and over, and it reveals him as this master piano player who has this deep knowledge of structure. He could turn it around so many different ways, yet keep returning to that melody."”  

                     

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.”