Count Basie's Sidemen

Buck Clayton



Trumpet player Buck Clayton hooked up with Count Basie's band in late 1936 after dropping in on them in the Reno Club in Kansas City. However he had enjoyed a lot of success prior to joining the orchestra at this time. A native of Kansas he had toured around the south in the late 1920's getting into various scrapes with the locals before heading out to California in in the early 1930's. It was here that he had a chance encounter with Louis Armstrong. Clayton endeavoured to study Armstrong's technique after seeing him play at Frank Sebastian's Cotton Club.

At this time Clayton was to make a remarkable career move by moving to Shanghai. He ended up staying there for two years playing at the luxurious Canidrome for high society types including Chiang Kai-shek's wife who was a regular at the club.

Success with the Basie band lasted right through to 1943 when he was inducted into the army. During this time Clayton recorded on many of the big hits including One O'Clock Jump. He was also heavily involved in the celebrated recordings in 1937 with Billie Holiday and Lester Young, played at the Benny Goodman show at Carnegie Hall and the From Spirituals To Swing shows in New York.

In the mid 40's he managed to make some recordings with the rising star of jazz at that time, Charlie Parker. Clayton more than held his own. He went on to become a leading figure in the mainstream jazz scene of the 1950´s when he recorded and gigged prolifically.

Check out Clayton jamming with Dexter Gordon and Charlie Parker on the track Takin' Off



Jo Jones



Jo Jones' name has cropped up quite recently due to the massive success of the film "Whiplash". In it one of the main protagonists tells the story of how a young Charlie Parker had a cymbal thrown at him during a jam session by Jones for simply not being up to scratch. Parker subsequently began a period of obsessive practicing before appearing on stage again. While this apocryphal tale suited the narrative of the bullying teacher for the film it never quite happened like that. Jones however did "gong" Parker, an act of throwing down the cymbal at someone's feet. Ultimately they were jazz worlds apart. Jones, one of the main proponents of the "All-American Rhythm" that propelled the Count Basie band and Parker, who would steer away from the notes on the page to establish bebop as the driving force of jazz in the 1940s.

Jones was pretty much one of the inventors of swing jazz drumming, up there with Chick Webb and Gene Krupa in establishing the instrument as the backbone of any jazz orchestra. The four-four glide on the ride cymbal that is the pulse of swing jazz was invented by these guys. They were true innovators in that the instrument that they played did not physically exist 10 years before. Jones was to differ from Krupa's bombastic bass notes and would often omit the bass drum in favour of a ride rhythm on the high hat while it was continuously opening and closing.

Jones was to earn his stripes playing with the Walter Page's Blue Devils in the late 1920's. He was present for Basie's very first recordings in 1936 and stayed with the band until 1948. He was an ever present in a plethora of recordings in the 1950's due to his association with Norman Granz's Verve label. A true artist on the drums.



Herschel Evans



Count Basie employed two tenor saxophonists. In one corner was Lester Young whose sound would be emulated by all and sundry in the following decades. In the other corner was Herschel Evans one of the earliest "tough Texas tenors" whose sound and style could not be more different. Yet the two complimented each other superbly and brought a freshness and verve to the early Basie recordings.

Tragically Evans' career was all too brief. He died in 1939 at the young age of 29. As with some of his contemporaries we can only wonder at the direction his musical career would have taken.



Jimmy Rushing



John Hammond introduced him to stage with tongue firmly in cheek as "Little" Jimmy Rushing in Newport in 1957. His actual nickname was Big 'Un

Count Basie needed a blues shouter to augment the big sound emanating from his orchestra. The man who provided that sound was Jimmy Rushing who was in the band from the beginning right through to 1948. As with many others he cut his teeth with The Blue Devils and later with Bennie Moten's band in the late 20's/early 30's. Songs like Pennies From Heaven, Boogie Woogie and Sent For You Yesterday exemplify Rushing's sound on the early Basie records.

For me his influence lay in the fact that he was unique. Taking his jazz queue from the vocals of Louis Armstrong he brought a powerful subtlety to the songs that he sang. You couldn't label him as a blues shouter (indeed he considered himself a ballad singer.) He could probably sing anything such were his vocal talents.



Freddie Greene



The guitar as a solo instrument really began to blossom in the mid 1930's with the advent of amplification and the Gibson ES-150 model becoming popular among jazz musicians post 1936. It was the era of Django Reinhardt and Charlie Christian who tried to emulate the saxophone and trumpet solos that dominated jazz music up to that time. So it is perhaps all the more remarkable that one of the most popular guitarists of the era was Freddie Greene. He never opted for a solo. His raison d'etre was to augment the rhythm of the band, hence his place firmly among the All-American rhythm section of the Basie orchestra was established from the time he joined in 1937. He was even to say that "You should never hear the guitar by itself. It should be part of the drums so it sounds like the drummer is playing chords—like the snare is in A or the hi-hat in D minor".

He remained with the Basie band for over 50 years.

Here's a 1962 called The Elder. It has all the ingredients; Basie piano, walking bass, riffs, bombastic drums and wailing trumpet. But check out a beautifully rare Green rhythm solo halfway through.



Walter Page



The final piece of the All-American Rhythm jigsaw. Page had established himself well enough in the 1920's that he was the boss of one of the most innovate bands of the time, The Blue Devils. The band consisted of at one time or another Jimmy Rushing, Count Basie, Hot Lips Page and later Lester Young. After Bennie Moten lured Count Basie to his band the writing was on the wall for Page as a band leader. He eventually joined Moten's Kansas City Orchestra which went on to become Basie's big band after Moten passed away in the mid 30's.

Page will forever be associated with the incredible chemistry that he developed with Jo Jones and Freddie Greene, especially on those early Basie tunes. He is also credited with inventing or at least innovating the "walking" bass style that would become synonymous with swing jazz in the late 30's. Along with Wellman Braud and later Jimmy Blanton he was one of the key figures in establishing the bass as harmonic as well as a rhythmic instrument.

Check him out on Pagin' The Devil a song that he recorded with the Kansas City Six in 1938. The musicians on this track include Lester Young, Eddie Durham, Freddie Greene, Jo Jones and Buck Clayton.

Hot Lips Page

One of the tracks that blew me away when recently listening to an album by Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra for the jazz library was "Lafayette". The reason? The absolutely scorching trumpet solo from Oran "Hot Lips" Page. Before we continue, please have a listen.

Early Basie, no? Perhaps a little more up tempo than the classic Basie riff sound that was to dominate jazz five years later. Some ingredients for a classic pre-swing jazz track are included in this track. An opening tenor sax solo from one of the legends of the instrument, Ben Webster; jazz bass innovator Walter Page and Count Basie himself on the piano. However, for me, the outstanding moment is Hot Lips Page's blistering solo. Such was his talent that he opted to leave the Basie band right before they were to make it big in 1936. He had decided to try for a solo career under the guidance of Louis Armstrong's manager, Joe Gleason. The fact that you may not have heard of Hot Lips Page but you know undoubtedly who Louis Armstrong is, is an indication of where Hot Lips Page's career sadly went. 

 

Oran Thaddeus "Hot Lips" Page was born in 1908 in Dallas Texas. His early musical career saw him move around the States quite a bit. Before the age of 20 he had already provided backing for such blues legends as Ma Rainey, Ida Cox and Bessie Smith. His grounding in the blues was to remain with him for the remainder of his career and provided a very important element to his jazz improvisation. In fact a lot of Page's recordings that I have listened to recently are pure out and out blues. Not surprisingly then he is regarded as an innovative force in early R 'n' B. Yet he was also involved in many musical events that were to shape the direction of jazz from the early 30's onward. 

He was a member of the hugely important band The Blue Devils in the late 1920's which was eventually to become Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra. He was prominently featured in a legendary recording session that took place in New Jersey in December 1932. Some of the tracks that were recorded that day included Moten Swing and the above mentioned Lafayette. This was the music that was to pave the way for the Swing era that dominated jazz in the 1930's. After opting to go solo, Page had modest success fronting his own orchestra in the latter part of the decade. As well as a superb trumpeter he was also a formidable vocalist very much in the style of Louis Armstrong. 

Page was never to achieve much success as an orchestra leader. Yet as a sideman he made some fantastic tracks in the 1940's. His travels across the country were to see him work and record with Artie Shaw, Ben Webster and Sidney Bechet, to name a few. He performed in Carnegie Hall in 1942 with Fats Waller, although sadly only one track of the concerts has survived. Page also pushed himself musically and was unafraid to experiment as evidenced by his attendance and participation at the 1942 jam sessions various Harlem nightclubs. These sessions involved many of the artists that would make bebop the next driving force of jazz. 

Hot Lips Page & Sidney Bechet (New York 1947)

I have really enjoyed researching and listening to the music of Hot Lips Page. It is really hard to pin his musical style down and to put a label onto his work as a whole. Riff style jazz, smooth orchestra, small combo stuff, pop, novelty songs, duets, out and out blues - he covered a lot of bases and it would be unfair to characterise him solely as a blues singer or a jazz trumpeter. His body of work speaks for itself. So too perhaps do his last known recordings which were of a raucous live show that included the tracks St Louis Blues, Sheik of Araby, On The Sunny Side Of The Street and a fantastic St James Infirmary. Unfortunately after much trawling of the internet I cannot find any versions to embed here. They are on the Chronological Classics album 1950 - 1953 and are well worth seeking out. Traditional good time jazz at its best performed by one of the greats who deserves way more recognition. 

Here's another earlier cracking version of St James Infirmary that Page recorded in 1947.  

Kansas City

“If you want to see some sin, forget about Paris, go to Kansas City”. Omaha Herald.

Kansas City from the mid 1920’s to the end of the 1930’s was a melting pot akin to what Storyville was in New Orleans at the turn of the century. It is at this time that KC becomes a major factor in the development of jazz. Perhaps it was the hardships of the Great Depression that turned people away from the popular sweet dance tunes of the time to the more sexually unabashed rawness of what was to become “swing” music and, from 1935 to the end of World War II, the only time in its history that jazz was the popular music of the day. KC seems to have been the most natural place for this to happen – and probably because of one man, Tom Pendergast.

Tom Pendergast was not a jazz musician. He was the Democratic Boss of Jackson County who shaped the fortunes of KC and its surroundings from 1926 right through the 1930’s. He was no doubt corrupt, with powerful mob ties but, along with his ownership if the Ready Mixed Concrete Company, he ensured that his city and county would benefit from a massive public works program that went in some way to insulating them from the effects of the Wall Street Crash. His connections with the police department ensured that Prohibition was essentially null and void – not one conviction was made under the Volstead Act during his reign. Contrast this with the 27,301 convictions made in the rest of the country between 1920 and 1933.

Thus Kansas City was to become the place to be. There were bars and nightclubs everywhere, most notably at 18th Street and Vine, that stayed open all night. This is an important factor that goes hand in hand with the style of music that was developing in KC at this time – the idea of forming songs from riffs and giving the rhythm section a whole lot more responsibility that freed up the saxophonists and pianists to improvise more. This is the time when the walking bass comes to the fore, essentially making the stride piano form redundant. A lighter, airier piano style was now complemented by a new style of drumming, where the drummer would keep time on the ride cymbal, not the snare. I personally have played gigs in bars that have gone on into the wee small hours. After your original material has been exhausted you are forced to become a little more innovative and it’s surprising the amount of new music that can come from a long jam session (with the wheels of inspiration being highly lubricated!)

The man synonymous with the evolution of Kansas City jazz was Bennie Moten. Moten’s Kansas City Orchestra was the most popular jazz band in what was known as the “territories”, and over its existence it incorporated a who’s who of Kansas City jazz men, most notably Count Basie. Recordings made by the band from 1929 to 1932 are a clear demonstration of how the music was evolving. Here’s “New Vine Street Blues”. The style is very much of the 1920’s with a tuba providing the bass lines.




A few years later Moten hired Walter Page, who is regarded as a pioneer of the walking style bass. ( Here is an article about Page and his band The Blue Devils) Check out "Moten Swing” from 1932, with Page on bass and Count Basie on the piano. Contrast this with the previous song – here the rhythm section is a lot more controlled and fluid, a precursor to the swing explosion that was to happen in a few years



Here's a video with some commentary on Kansas City jazz and Tom Pendergaast.