Ellington, Basie and others
Count Basie (1904-1984)
• Bill Basie studied music with his mother as a child
and played piano in early childhood. He picked up
the basics of early ragtime from some of the
great Harlem pianists and studied organ
informally with Fats Waller. He made his
professional debut as an accompanist for
vaudeville acts and replaced Waller in an act
called Katie Crippen and her Kids. He also worked
with June Clark and Sonny Greer who was later to
become Duke Ellington’s drummer.
Basie
• It was while traveling with the Gonzel White vaudeville
show that Basie became stranded in Kansas City when
the outfit suddenly broke up. He played at a silent
movie house for a while and then became a member of
the Walter Page Blue Devils in 1928 and �29. Included
in the ranks of the Blue Devils was a blues shouter who
was later to play a key role as early male vocalist with
Basie�s own big band, Jimmy Rushing. It was in fact
the rotund Rushing who happened to hear Basie
playing in Kansas City and invited him to attend a Blue
Devil's performance. Basie soon joined the band after
sitting in with them that night.
Basie
• After Page's Blue Devils broke up Count Basie
and some of the other band members
integrated into the Bennie Moten band. He
remained with Moten until his death in 1935.
After Moten�s death the band continued
under the leadership of Bennie�s brother
Buster, but Basie started a group of his own
and soon found a steady gig at the Reno Club
in Kansas City employing some of the best
personnel from the Moten band himself.
Basie
• The band gradually built up in quantity and quality of
personnel and was broadcast live regularly from the club by
a small Kansas City radio station. It was during one of these
broadcasts that the group was heard by John Hammond, a
wealthy jazz aficionado, who had himself worked as an
announcer, disc jockey and producer of a live jazz show on
radio. Hammond decided that the band must go to New
York. Through his efforts and support (at times even
financially) the band enlarged its membership further and
went to New York in 1936. Hammond installed Willard
Alexander as the band�s manager and in January of 1937
the Count Basie band made its first recording with the
Decca record label.
Basie
• By the following year the Basie big band had become
internationally famous, anchored by the leader’s
simple and sparse piano style and the rhythm section
of Freddie Greene guitar, Walter Page bass, and Jo
Jones drums. The great soloists of this band included
Jimmy Rushing as vocalist, Lester Young and Herschel
Evans tenor saxes, Earl Warren on alto, Buck Clayton
and Harry “Sweets” Edison on trumpets, and Benny
Morton and Dickie Wells on trombones, among others.
Also contributing to the bands success were the
arrangements by Eddie Durham and others in the band
and the “head” arrangements spontaneously
developed by the group.
Basie
• Despite the occasional losses of key soloists, throughout
the 1940�s Basie maintained a big band that possessed an
infectious rhythmic beat, an enthusiastic team spirit, and a
long list of inspired and talented jazz soloists. Among the
long line of budding stars to pass through the Basie
aggregation's ranks during these years were tenor men,
Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Don Byas, Buddy Tate, Lucky
Thompson, Illinois Jacquet, and Paul Gonsalves. On
trumpets the list includes Buck Clayton, Harry "Sweets"
Edison, Joe Newman, and Emmett Berry. In the trombone
section Dickie Wells, Benny Morton, Vic Dickenson, and J.J.
Johnson all had stints with Basie in the 40�s.
Basie
• Except for a period in 1950 and �51, when economic conditions forced
him to tour with a septet, Basie maintained a highly swinging big band
that, at one time or another, included Clark Terry, Wardell Gray, Al Grey,
Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Thad Jones, Sonny Payne, Joe Wilder, Benny
Powell, and Henry Coker. In 1954 Joe Williams became the band's full time
male vocalist. By 1955 he had infused the Basie band with new life and
further commercial success beginning with Every Day I Have The Blues.
Also during this period arrangers Neal Hefti and Ernie Wilkins contributed
many fine swinging arrangements to the band's book. These great men of
music coupled with Basie�s undying allegiance to the beat and the 12 bar
blues allowed the band to consistently turn out records of extremely high
caliber well into even the 1970�s.
• Count Basie's health began deteriorating in 1976 when he suffered a heart
attack that put him out of commission for several months. Following
another stay in the hospital in 1981 he began appearing on stage driving
an electric wheel chair. Count Basie died of cancer at 79.
Kansas City Musicians
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Karrin Allyson
Count Basie
Buck Clayton
Everette DeVan
Herschel Evans
Coleman Hawkins
Pete Johnson
Jo Jones
Andy Kirk
Julia Lee
George E. Lee
Harlan Leonard
Jimmie Lunceford
Jay McShann
More K.C. Musicians
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Bennie Moten
Hot Lips Page
Walter Page
Charlie Parker
Sammy Price
Jimmy Rushing
Joe Turner
Bobby Watson
Ben Webster
Claude Williams
Mary Lou Williams
Lester Young
Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
• pianist who was the greatest jazz composer and
bandleader. One of the originators of big-band jazz,
Ellington led his band for more than half a century,
composed thousands of scores, and created one of the
most distinctive ensemble sounds in all of Western music.
• Ellington grew up in a secure middle-class family in
Washington, D.C. His family encouraged his interests in the
fine arts, and he began studying piano at age seven. He
became engrossed in studying art during his high-school
years, and he was awarded, but did not accept, a
scholarship to the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York.
Inspired by ragtime performers, he began to perform
professionally at age 17.
Duke
• Ellington first played in New York City in 1923.
Later that year he moved there and, in Broadway
nightclubs, led a sextet that grew in time into a
10-piece ensemble. The singular blues-based
melodies; the harsh, vocalized sounds of his
trumpeter, Bubber Miley (who used a plunger
[“wa-wa”] mute); and the sonorities of the
distinctive trombonist Joe (“Tricky Sam”) Nanton
(who played muted “growl” sounds) all
influenced Ellington's early “jungle style,” as seen
in such masterpieces as “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”
(1926) and “Black and Tan Fantasy” (1927).
Duke
•
The expertise of this ensemble allowed Ellington to break away from the
conventions of band-section scoring. Instead, he used new harmonies to blend his
musicians' individual sounds and emphasized congruent sections and a supple
ensemble that featured Carney's full bass-clef sound. He illuminated subtle moods
with ingenious combinations of instruments; among the most famous examples is
“Mood Indigo” in his 1930 setting for muted trumpet, unmuted trombone, and
low-register clarinet. (Click here for a video clip of Duke Ellington and his band
playing “Mood Indigo.”) In 1931 Ellington began to create extended works,
including such pieces as Creole Rhapsody, Reminiscing in Tempo, and Diminuendo
in Blue/Crescendo in Blue. He composed a series of works to highlight the special
talents of his soloists. Williams, for example, demonstrated his versatility in
Ellington's noted miniature concertos “Echoes of Harlem” and “Concerto for
Cootie.” Some of Ellington's numbers—notably “Caravan” and “Perdido” by
trombonist Juan Tizol—were cowritten or entirely composed by sidemen. Few of
Ellington's soloists, despite their importance to jazz history, played as effectively in
other contexts; no one else, it seemed, could match the inspiration that Ellington
provided with his sensitive, masterful settings.
Duke
• Extended residencies at the Cotton Club in Harlem (1927–32, 1937–
38) stimulated Ellington to enlarge his band to 14 musicians and to
expand his compositional scope. He selected his musicians for their
expressive individuality, and several members of his ensemble—
including trumpeter Cootie Williams (who replaced Miley), cornetist
Rex Stewart, trombonist Lawrence Brown, baritone saxophonist
Harry Carney, alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, and clarinetist
Barney Bigard—were themselves important jazz artists. (The most
popular of these was Hodges, who rendered ballads with a full,
creamy tone and long portamentos.) With these exceptional
musicians, who remained with him throughout the 1930s, Ellington
made hundreds of recordings, appeared in films and on radio, and
toured Europe in 1933 and 1939.
Duke
• A high point in Ellington's career came in the early 1940s, when he
composed several masterworks—including the above-mentioned
“Concerto for Cootie,” his fast-tempo showpieces “Cotton Tail” and
“Ko-Ko,” and the uniquely structured, compressed panoramas
“Main Stem” and “Harlem Air Shaft”—in which successions of
soloists are accompanied by diverse ensemble colours. The variety
and ingenuity of these works, all conceived for three-minute, 78rpm records, are extraordinary, as are their unique forms, which
range from logically flowing expositions to juxtapositions of line and
mood. Tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and bassist Jimmy Blanton,
both major jazz artists, were with this classic Ellington band. By
then, too, Billy Strayhorn, composer of what would become the
band's theme song, “Take the ‘A' Train,” had become Ellington's
composing-arranging partner.
Duke
• Not limiting himself to jazz innovation,
Ellington also wrote such great popular songs
as “Sophisticated Lady,” “Rocks in My Bed,”
and “Satin Doll”; in other songs, such as
“Don't Get Around Much Any More,” “Prelude
to a Kiss,” “Solitude,” and “I Let a Song Go out
of My Heart,” he made wide interval leaps an
Ellington trademark. A number of these hits
were introduced by Ivy Anderson, who was
the band's female vocalist in the 1930s.
Duke
• During these years Ellington became intrigued with the possibilities of
composing jazz within classical forms. His musical suite Black, Brown and
Beige (1943), a portrayal of African-American history, was the first in a
series of suites he composed, usually consisting of pieces linked by subject
matter. It was followed by, among others, Liberian Suite (1947); A Drum Is
a Woman (1956), created for a television production; Such Sweet Thunder
(1957), impressions of William Shakespeare's scenes and characters; a
recomposed, reorchestrated version of Nutcracker Suite (1960; after Peter
Tchaikovsky); Far East Suite (1964); and Togo Brava Suite (1971).
Ellington's symphonic A Rhapsody of Negro Life was the basis for the film
short Symphony in Black (1935), which also features the voice of Billie
Holiday (uncredited). Ellington wrote motion-picture scores for The
Asphalt Jungle (1950) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and composed for
the ballet and theatre—including, at the height of the Civil Rights
Movement, the show My People (1964), a celebration of African-American
life. In his last decade he composed three pieces of sacred music: In the
Beginning God (1965), Second Sacred Concert (1968), and Third Sacred
Concert (1973).
Duke
• Although Ellington's compositional interests and ambitions changed
over the decades, his melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic
characteristics were for the most part fixed by the late 1930s, when
he was a star of the swing era. The broken, eighth-note melodies
and arrhythms of bebop had little impact on him, though on
occasion he recorded with musicians who were not band
members—not only with other swing-era luminaries such as Louis
Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Coleman Hawkins but also with later
bop musicians John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. Ellington's
stylistic qualities were shared by Strayhorn, who increasingly
participated in composing and orchestrating music for the Ellington
band. During 1939–67 Strayhorn collaborated so closely with
Ellington that jazz scholars may never determine how much the
gifted deputy influenced or even composed works attributed to
Ellington.
Duke
• The Ellington band toured Europe often after World War II;
it also played in Asia (1963–64, 1970), West Africa (1966),
South America (1968), and Australia (1970) and frequently
toured North America. Despite this grueling schedule, some
of Ellington's musicians stayed with him for decades;
Carney, for example, was a band member for 47 years. For
the most part, later replacements fit into roles that had
been created by their distinguished predecessors; after
1950, for instance, the Webster-influenced Paul Gonsalves
filled the band's solo tenor saxophone role originated by
Webster. There were some exceptions to this
generalization, such as trumpeter-violinist Ray Nance and
high-note trumpet specialist Cat Anderson.
Duke
• Not least of the band's musicians was Ellington himself,
a pianist whose style originated in ragtime and the
stride piano idiom of James P. Johnson and Willie “The
Lion” Smith. He adapted his style for orchestral
purposes, accompanying with vivid harmonic colours
and, especially in later years, offering swinging solos
with angular melodies. An elegant man, Ellington
maintained a regal manner as he led the band and
charmed audiences with his suave humour. His career
spanned more than half a century—most of the
documented history of jazz. He continued to lead the
band until shortly before his death in 1974.
Duke
• Types of Ellington compositions
• Jungle Pieces: drums, muted instruments and
effects to give character to floor shows at
Cotton club (Caravan)
• Dance Pieces (In a Mellow Tone, Don’t Get
Around Much Anymore, It don’t mean a
thing…, Sophisticated Lady)
• Mood Pieces (Mood Indigo, In a Sentimental
Mood)
Duke
• Solo Pieces (Features): Concerto for Cootie
• Concert Works: most daring and not of the
typical big band mode: Far East Suite, Liberian
Suite, Togo Brava, Black, Brown and Beige
(1943), A Rhapsody of Negro Life was the basis
for the film short Symphony in Black (1935),
which also features the voice of Billie Holiday
(uncredited).