Count Basie: "Jazz Casual" - Part 1

Music to Be Thankful For

part one of two

Count Basie sits down at the piano and plays the blues.

Ralph Gleason asks “Was that the way they played the blues in Kansas City when you took over the band 30 years ago?”

Basie answers, “Well, no, that wasn't the way they played the blues, Ralph, because if that was the way they played the blues, then it would have been a pretty bad start of the blues, I think. We'll get further down the line - on them blues - later on.” 

We’re barely two minutes into the program, and already Basie has found a way to denigrate his playing.  Basie’s opinion of his own skills as a musician was unique to him, he might have been the only one who didn’t consider him one of the best pianists in all of jazz.  In fact, along with his colleague Duke Ellington, Basie was regarded as one of the greatest accompanists in all of the music, who always knew how to give a soloist or a singer exactly what they needed.

This conversation and performance were taped during the summer of 1967, when Basie and his Orchestra were touring on the West Coast.  By coincidence, for two nights, August 20th and 21st, Basie and his crew were in San Francisco - literally ground zero for the so-called “Summer of Love,” and they were playing the Fillmore Auditorium, which was soon to become a legendary rock-and-roll venue.  On the afternoon of Monday, August 21 - the Count’s 63rd birthday - Basie stopped in at the local public television station, to give an informal performance and interview with renowned jazz critic and TV host, Ralph J. Gleason.  

He brought along Freddie Green, his career-long collaborator whose guitar was the linchpin of what was called Basie’s “All American Rhythm Section,” along with bassist Norman Keenan and drummer Sonny Payne.

Gleason’s question refers to the received notion that Basie started as a bandleader by taking over the older Benny Moten Orchestra when that pianist and leader died in 1935. That’s the way we were taught in many of the earlier jazz histories, but more recent scholarship, including Basie’s own memoir, reveals that it was somewhat more complicated than that, and that Basie had begun leading early editions of his own orchestra even while Moten was still active.

Gleason asks Basie, “What were they playing when you took over the band?”

He answers, “Well, they were playing swing. I call it swing because truly that's what Benny Moten was playing was swing.”  That’s a good answer - it underscores the larger truth that even though Moten died in the year that is officially considered to be the start of the swing era, that many black bands were already playing pure swing well before Benny Goodman lit the fuse that ignited the era in 1935. Basie continues, “And I don't know whether he called it Western style or not, but it was sort of a western swinger, I guess, if we would describe it that way.” When he says “Western style,” we have to assume he means mid-western Kansas City style, not “Western Swing” in the sense of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys.  Basie adds, “Because it suddenly had a beat! It’s real foot-pattin’.”

Gleason asks if the music has changed much.  “Well, yes, beats change quite a bit, because they've been experimenting on different styles, which have been very successful.”  He continues, “Basically, we haven't changed that much” - meaning his own playing - although we have some soloists that sort of lean toward the modern side. But we sort of remained the same.”

They continue discussing the nature of the blues.  “Truthfully, I really never heard the blues until I had the pleasure of visiting Kansas City, which was in the very, very early days, even before the Blue Devils and Benny Moten's band, because we were traveling through there with a burlesque show.

“I got a chance to wander over on 18th Street [which] at that time was blazing. I mean, everything was happening there. Beautiful! I mean, you could hear the blues from any window or door and it's the most remarkable thing I've ever heard. That's when I first got a good taste of listening to a blues singer. I didn't know anyone's name, but I do know they were belting out these blues: wonderful trumpet players, clarinet players, banjo players, and great piano players, blues pianists. I had never seen anything like it.”

He continues talking about piano players who had an influence on him, “Blues wise.” “There's guys that I can remember, particularly one guy, Pete Johnson. Pete was the guy that I really idolized as far as blues playing was concerned.”

Then he decides to talk about his number one favorite keyboardist. “But really the main guy that really influenced me was Thomas - Fats Waller. That was the man that I really did idolize. Fats taught me how to play what little bit of organ that I do know. And I used to watch him and lay around him long enough to try to style a little piano after him, which was quite difficult.” 

Basie playing a snippet from “A Handful of Keys”

He demonstrates, with about thirty seconds of “A Handful of Keys,” the finger-busting piano feature that Waller introduced in 1929.  What’s especially notable is that, in replicating the style of his idol, Basie really does stop sounding like Basie; even though he can only keep it up for half a minute, he truly becomes Fats for that half a minute. 

Basie plays the blues

But then Basie moves back into his comfort zone, in playing his second impromptu blues of the set.  This one is slower than the first, though anything would sound slow after the breakneck tempo of “Handful of Keys.”  As Dick Hyman has observed, stride piano, of the sort that Fats Waller played, was essentially a soloist’s art; when Basie emulates Fats, the bass and the drums don’t have what to do.  But when he switches gears into the blues improvisation, the rest of the quartet becomes much more engaged.  That’s one of the key differences between Waller’s style and Basie’s style, in that Basie shares the musical responsibilities with the rest of the rhythm section much more democratically.

Gleason then asks, “So did Pete Johnson and other piano players turn you more into the blues?” 

Basie responds, “I think so, but they really played the blues. That's just my thought of it - and it's a pretty good thought at that! But the influence was there. I never heard anybody quite playing like Pete and Albert and Lux. These guys really did it right.” 

Basie’s attention turns to Fats Waller again, and he plays a lovely two-minute rendition of Waller’s blues-influenced ballad, “Squeeze Me,” starting with the verse, but then treating us to two brief choruses of the tune.  His playing here is sort of a hybrid of Waller and Basie.  Just enough of the rhythmic phrasing and the note placement is completely faithful to Fats, but the overall texture, with Freddie Green’s signature emphasis on the afterbeats, is much more Basie-esque.

to be continued in part two

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