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Count Basie music biography continued...

piano and organ for theater and vaudeville in the 1920s. He segued into playing for Walter Page's Blue Devils Band, a Kansas City-based outfit, and following that, The Moten Band, until Benny Moten's death in 1935. Basie then decided to start his own band and soon found a steady gig at the Reno Club in Kansas City employing some of the best personnel from the Moten band himself. 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. With Hammond's support and financial backing The Count Basie Orchestra moved to New York in 1936. Hammond installed Willard Alexander as the band's manager and in January of 1937 the band made its first recording with the Decca record label. The contract expanded and within a year the Count Basie Orchestra, as it had become known, was one of the leading big bands of the swing era. By the end of the 1930s, the band had acquired international fame with such pieces as One o'clock Jump (1937), Jumpin' at the Woodside (1938), and Taxi War Dance (1939). 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," several of whom were famous in their own right.



In 1950, financial considerations forced Basie to disband, and for the next two years he led a six- to nine-piece group. After reorganizing a big band in 1952, he undertook a long series of tours and recording sessions that eventually established him as an elder statesman of jazz. With a host of accolades over the years, Basie's band was established as a permanent jazz institution. Following a stay in the hospital in 1981, Basie began appearing on stage driving an electric wheel chair. He died of cancer at 79, leaving a sumptuous musical legacy.