COUNT BASIE
By Mahnuel Muñoz
On August 21, 1904, William “Count” Basie, one of the great Big Band leaders of the 20th century, was born in Red Bank, New Jersey.
Music was part of his DNA. He was attracted to the drums, but his hands were born to work on the piano keyboard. He played to accompany silent films and vaudeville shows. In 1925 he moved to Harlem, the hotbed of West Coast jazz, and undertook the legendary Fats Waller.
After spending a few years training in the exciting Kansas jazz scene, he returned to New York with his own 13-piece orchestra, with top-notch soloists such as trumpeter Harry “Sweets” Edison and saxophonist Lester Young. Recording and concert success did not take long to arrive; The best venues in the Big Apple polished their boards to make way for Basie’s orchestra, and the Decca and Columbia record companies kept the record presses hot with titles like “One O’Clock Jump.” His growing prestige earned him the nickname “Count.”
The second half of the 1940s marked the beginning of the decline of Big Bands, and those that were able to survive did so by restructuring and adapting to changes. Basie reduced the band and worked as an octet. He was able to enjoy a second artistic youth during the 1950s in Europe and the United States, in a way so miraculous and impactful that he called his new formation “The New Testament.”
In 1962, Basie signed with Reprise, the label founded by Frank Sinatra. His music took a popular turn and great works came with singers of the stature of Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Sammy Davis Jr., Jackie Wilson and, above all, his magnificent trilogy with Frank Sinatra (“Sinatra- Basie” (1962); “It Might As Well Be Swing” (1964) and “Sinatra At The Sands” (1966).
In the 1970s and 1980s he would continue to work with Frank live and on television, and returned to jazz, recording for the exquisite Pablo Records label, run by Norman Granz.
He died on April 26, 1984 in Florida.
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