History of the Count Basie Theatre

Even though there were already several other theatres in the Borough of Red Bank, New Jersey by 1925 (including the Strand, Palace, Empire and Lyric Theatres), on July 29, 1925 the Red Bank Register reported that Joseph Oschwald of Little Silver had announced plans to build a theatre on Monmouth Street for a partnership of Joseph Stern of Newark, the Burns and Schaffer Amusement Co., and Walter Reade. Joseph Stern was already operating the Tivoli, Central, Plaza, Savoy and Regent Theaters in Newark, the Castle Theater in Irvington, the Lincoln Theater in Bloomfield, the Capitol Theater in Belleville and the Grand and Casino Theaters in Kearney. Walter Reade, for whom the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City is now named, was already New Jersey's largest theatre owner, with ownership or an interest in thirty-one other venues in the state.

Projected to open eight months later on April 1, 1926, the new theatre would have seating for about 2,000 persons and be equipped for moving pictures, vaudeville and dramatic shows. The ninety foot by one hundred and ten foot theatre would include a wide lobby on Monmouth Street flanked by two storefronts, and a stage entrance for scenery via a ten-foot wide strip of land around the corner on Pearl Street. The noted theatre architect Thomas W. Lamb was reported to be drawing the plans for the new building, with an exterior of white terra cotta, and an interior finished in Old Gold and Red. The property and the rights of way for the land were purchased for $21,000, and the projected construction cost was $300,000 to $500,000.

Construction plans were issued to various contractors, but by October the plans had changed significantly enough that they were recalled. A new architect, William E. Lehman of Newark, ultimately assumed responsibility for the project, and by December the construction contract was "awarded" to the Oschwald Construction Company of Newark, owned and operated by Joseph Oschwald's son Gustave. Stryker & Stryker of Red Bank were awarded the contract for excavating and for hauling brick, lumber, sand and other building material, and ground was broken on December 9, 1925.

Construction proceeded through the winter, but in late April of 1926, almost one month after the originally scheduled opening, Joseph Stern sold his interest in the thirty-one year lease for the new theatre to Burns & Schaffer and Walter Reade. Each of the remaining partners would now have a fifty percent interest in the lease, and were represented in the lease transaction by M.H. Jacks, then the manager of the Strand Theatre in Lakewood, another Walter Reade theatre. Jacks, who would ultimately be named the new Red Bank theatre's manager, told the Red Bank Register that the yearly rental would be equal to eight to ten percent of the cost of the building, and that the new partnership was changing the name of the theatre from the State Theater to the Red Bank Theater. The Register later reported that, "At present the name State Theatre is engraved on the front of the building, but this will be effaced. The change is one that will probably meet with general approval at Red Bank for the new building may well appropriately bear the name of the town where it is located." With a stage being built "...large enough to play any traveling attraction now on the road," the theatre's programming was announced as including Shubert & Erlanger attractions during the summer, and vaudeville and motion pictures during the winter.

By August 18, 1926 the opening was already four months late, but the Register was reporting that the new building would be well worth waiting for. "There are bigger buildings in town, but none so substantially built nor so attractive..." Construction materials alone, including brick, steel, concrete and marble were reported at $48,000.

"The work of building a large sunburst dome inside the building is nearly completed. This dome will be studded with hundreds of electric lights concealed in such a way as to hide them without obscuring the light. Marble stairways have been made." "On a wall in the lobby will be a huge painting, thirty feet long and ten feet high...The arched dome which covers the main part of the theatre is a striking feature. It is painted in many colors. The ceiling is studded with vari-colored lights, numbering about 1,000. The lights are so arranged that the bulbs cannot be seen."

By October, with the opening already six months overdue, M.H. Jacks was formally named as the new theatre's manager, and construction was now reported to be finished by November 1. The opening performance of vaudeville and moving pictures was scheduled for between November 1 and 5. Like all the previously announced openings, this date would be missed as well, but this time by just six days, and on November 2 the Asbury Park Evening Press announced that the theatre would open on Armistice Day, November 11. However, it would open under yet another new name, the Carlton Theater. This time however the name would apparently stick, and the Red Bank Register reported that Walter Reade had formally asked the Borough in a letter for, "...permission to put up a large electric sign in front of his new Carlton Theatre on Monmouth Street. The request was referred to the sign committee of the council with the power to act."

Just one day before the opening, the Register reported that little remained to be done "except the odds and ends of things," and that "workers are working at top speed." The Asbury Park Evening Press reported that, "The Carlton Theater... interior architecture will be of Spanish effect," and the Register reported that one of the last operations was to set up a new electrical organ, "...a job which is now underway. The organ cost $25,000." At the same time, apparently to consolidate his operations and ensure the success of his new theatre, Walter Reade announced plans to close his other theaters in town, including the Palace, which Reade had just purchased one year previously, and the Red Bank Strand, which he had leased from the J. Clark Company. The Register reported that most of the employees from these theaters would work at the new venue, and that in total, thirty Red Bank residents would work at the new theater.

Opening night on Thursday, November 11, 1926 was a grand affair, with many prominent persons invited, including E.F. Albee, Nicholas Schenck, Adolph Zukor, Hiram Abrams, B.S. Moss, A.O. Erlanger, A.H. Woods, Joseph Denahy, Mayor William White of Red Bank, Mayor W.C. Wilson of Perth Amboy, Mayor Runyon of Freehold, Mayor Frank Howland of Long Branch, Mayor James T. McMurray of Plainfield, Mayor F.W. Donnelly of Trenton, Mayor C.E.F. Hetrick of Asbury Park, former Mayor C.W. Housman of Long Branch, the theatre's original architect Thomas W. Lamb, Judge Ward Kremer, Lewis Latham Clark, Arthur Hammerstein, S. Jay Kaufman, Prosecutor John E. Toolan, and various stage and screen stars.

The opening night attraction was headlined by the Keith-Albee Vaudeville, with the feature film "The Quarterback," starring Richard Dix, Carlton's News Events, and a ten piece orchestra. Almost four thousand people attended the two shows, and the crowds began forming at five o'clock, an hour and forty-five minutes before the first performance. Even on opening night there were delays, but the Register reported that, "...folks waited patiently and good-naturedly." "The interval before the opening of the performance gave the audience a good opportunity to walk around and inspect the playhouse. They found much to admire in the beautiful decorations and the richness of the furnishings there." During a brief intermission in the performance Walter Reader made an address in which he described the theatre's policies. During the summer and fall it was planned to use the theater to try out musical comedies and other shows to be produced in New York. Admission would never be more than 75 cents for picture and vaudeville shows, although the price might be higher when musical comedies and other special attractions were played.

Two name changes and sixteen months after the first announcement of its construction, when it finally opened the Register reported that the new Carlton Theater, was "...a marvel of beauty, convenience and comfort. Outside and inside it is a veritable and architectural triumph." "Color and light are two of the outstanding features of the new building. Thousands of electric lights stud the ceilings and sidewalls. In the center of the main part of the building is an enormous dome-like sunburst illuminated with myriad concealed lights. A very large glass chandelier is suspended from the center of the dome. This contrivance is brilliant with lights." "The interior of the theatre is rich with colors harmoniously blended. The colors will stand out more prominently six months from now than they do at present. This is especially true of the side walls. The material used in the walls is of such character that time brings out color." "...many folks entered the theater to satisfy their curiosity as to its appearance...They were particularly impressed with the furnishings, which are rich in velours and velvets in contrasting shades." A grandly painted vaudeville curtain, still in use today, filled the proscenium arch.

For the next forty-seven years the theatre was one of the highlights of nightlife in downtown Red Bank, and it outlasted all of its contemporaries, including the Strand, Palace, Empire and Lyric Theatres. Walter Reade himself would operate the theatre for decades using several corporate entities, including Walter Reade's Theatre, Inc., Perthbank Realty, Inc., which acquired the building in 1951, and Carlton Operating Co., which acquired Perthbank Realty in 1970.

The theatre would operate through the golden age of radio and television, and through the rise and fall of drive-ins, until finally the dawn of shopping mall culture and multiplex cinemas would draw enough people out of downtown that the building was no longer profitable, and it went dark in 1970.

In 1973, as the result of a significant anonymous donation, the Monmouth County Arts Council was able to acquire the building and preserve the now historic theatre for cultural uses. It was renamed the Monmouth Arts Center. On December 28, 1973, the building was purchased for $96,665; several hundred thousand dollars less than it cost to construct 47 years earlier. Included in the purchase were the storefront leases of the Greater Red Bank Area Jaycees, the Outreach Center and the Monmouth County Unit of the New Jersey Association for Retarded Children; an automatic ticket machine; a steel rod ticket box; a set of plastic marquee letters; two projectors with Motio-Grapher bases and Simplex-Sound Heads; assorted lenses; a Strong Trouper follow spot; assorted lighting and sound gear; a baby grand piano; and drapes and drops including the original Act Curtain.

The theatre was rechristened the Count Basie Theatre in 1984, in honor of jazz pianist, composer and band leader William "Count" Basie (1904-1984). Even though jazz historians most commonly associate Count Basie with Kansas City, where he formed his first band, Basie was in fact a Red Bank native, born in his parent's house on Mechanic Street on August 21, 1904. The arts council would operate the theatre for the next twenty-six years, until a long-running internal debate about the council's mission (to serve the county's cultural community vs. managing the theatre) resulted in the divestiture of the council and the theatre, and on June 30, 1999 the Count Basie Theatre, Inc. was established as an independent nonprofit corporation to maintain ownership of and to manage, program and preserve the theatre.

Today, much remains the same about the building. Despite the Red Bank Register's 1926 report that the theatre's original name would be effaced from the façade, the word "State" and the initials "ST" for "State Theatre" are still visible on the peak of the building's façade. The old storefronts still flank the lobby entrance, and the magnificent dome still dominates the theatre's expansive ceiling. The original Act Curtain is still in use. Stage scenery is still loaded in via a ten foot wide strip of land off of Pearl Street, a tribute to the ingenuity and perseverance of the theatre's current stage crew when one considers that vaudeville performances generally relied upon backdrops, and modern scenery, staging and sound gear are now delivered in a tractor trailer or two.

Yet much is different. No longer a commercial concern for the benefit of a private partnership, the Count Basie Theatre is now owned and operated by the Count Basie Theatre, Inc., a nonprofit corporation formed solely to operate the theatre for the benefit of the community. The Theatre presents "live" music, dance, theatrical performances, and with the restoration of our projections equipment, films are once again being shown.

In an age of faceless wireless communication, when you can watch two hundred channels of television at home, or a movie on your laptop computer, people still want and need to get out of the house, go downtown, and be entertained by live performers in the company of other people. Through war and peace, economic upturns and downturns, the Count Basie Theatre has continued to thrive. In 2004, the Basie completed Phase 1 of a multi-phase project to restore the entire theater to its original splendor, replacing all of its seating with brand new, historically accurate seats. Alabaster lighting fixtures have been added to the auditorium and a side-panel of theatre's plasterwork has been restored and painted in the theatre's original color-scheme, giving audiences a glimpse at what the theatre will look like when fully restored.

To learn more about the Theatre's ongoing restoration project, visit the Restoration Updates & Photos page on our website.



Even though the title of one of his band's most famous tunes, "The Kid from Red Bank," should have been a tip-off, many jazz enthusiasts assume that Count Basie was a native of Kansas City, because that's where he and his band first rose to national prominence. In reality, William Basie was born in Red Bank, to Harvey Lee Basie and Lilly Ann Childs Basie on August 21, 1904, in their home on Mechanic Street in Red Bank, NJ.

Harvey Lee Basie was a coachman and caretaker, and Lilly Ann Childs Basie was a laundress, taking in washing and ironing. A brother, James, died when William was a young boy. The family always owned a piano, and Lilly Ann paid twenty-five cents per lesson to a Miss Vandevere to teach William to play.

In addition to assisting both parents with their work, Willie would also do chores at the Palace Theater in Red Bank so that he could get in free. The projectionist George Ruth taught him to rewind the movie reels, change back and forth between projectors, and operate the spotlight for the vaudeville shows. One day, the Palace's house piano player was unable to make it in to work. Basie offered to fill in, but the manager declined. Basie waited until the picture started, then crept into the orchestra pit and accompanied the film anyway. He was invited back to play the evening show.

Basie also went to the Lyric Theatre in Red Bank, just to hear the organ played by Harold LaRos, a local music appreciation teacher. Basie would later trace his life-long interest in the organ (which he never did get to play), back to those days.

William Basie did not start out to be a piano player. In fact, his first love was the drums, and his father even purchased a trap kit for him. However, his ambitions in that direction were forever erased after hearing Sonny Greer, another young drummer from nearby Long Branch. Greer, who would later go on to fame as the drummer for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, was already so obviously superior that Basie beat a hasty retreat to the piano.

As a piano and drums duo, William Basie & Sonny Greer won first place in an Asbury Park piano competition. (Decades later, on an August morning in 1958, the two would be among fifty-seven musicians photographed on the stoop of a Harlem, New York brownstone by Art Kane to accompany an Esquire magazine article on the "Golden Age of Jazz." The result of Kane's first professional shoot, the photograph itself would later become as famous as the subjects it depicted, and the subject of a documentary film, "A Great Day in Harlem." An interactive version of Art Kane's "Great Day in Harlem" photograph can be found at harlem.org, which allows the user to click on each musician pictured for a brief bio and links to more detailed sites.)

Basie quit school after his junior year in high school, a decision he would later call the worst mistake he ever made, and moved to Asbury Park with his friend and sax player Elmer Williams. Both had been gigging steadily in the area, and their plan was to seek permanent work as musicians. They soon returned to Red Bank after discovering that autumn was a bad time of year for entertainers to find work in a resort town. However, they returned successfully to Asbury the following summer.

In 1924, Basie moved to New York City. In New York Basie met and was influenced by the great stride pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, and before he was even twenty years old he was touring as a pianist and accompanist on the Columbia Wheel and TOBA vaudeville circuits. This experience as a supporting musician would later prove invaluable to his career as a band leader. In the history of jazz, there have been few band leaders as savvy and generous as Basie about allowing his fellow musicians to take the spotlight.

In 1927 Basie was stranded in Kansas City when a tour went bust. He remained there playing organ for silent films at the Eblon Theater, before joining bassist Walter Page's Blue Devils, an outfit that also included vocalist Jimmy Rushing and trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page. Each would later figure prominently in Basie's own band, and thus another hallmark of Basie's career was established -- the ability to strike up professional and personal relationships that would last for decades over many bands and many solo careers. Basie left the Blue Devils early in 1929 to play with other bands in the area, and later that year he schemed his way into the top band in the territory, the Bennie Moten band.

Moten's orchestra already had a piano player in Moten himself, but the band was so superior to all the others that Basie was undeterred in wrangling a position for himself as staff arranger and substitute piano player. Many of the other key members of the Blue Devils followed Basie to the Moten band as well.

Like many bands of the day, the Moten band was run as a "commonwealth band," with each member of the band having a say in the band's operations if he wanted it. During an internal dispute about an engagement at the Cherry Blossom club, which had formerly been the Eblon Theatre where Basie secured his first Kansas City gig, the band voted to oust Moten as its leader, and even though he was not one of the instigators, to install Basie as its new leader.

The new band was billed as Count Basie and his Cherry Blossom Orchestra, marking the first time that the "Count" was officially added to Basie's name. Although many stories circulate about the genesis of his nickname, Basie recalled it as a tribute to his penchant for slipping off to have some fun during arranging sessions for the Moten band with Eddie Durham. As soon as they got a few good bars down Basie would slip out, and Moten would come looking for him saying, "Where is that no 'count rascal?"

Despite a great love and respect for Bennie Moten, Basie recognized and accepted the opportunity to try his hand at leading his own band, but after a few months he jumped at the opportunity to work with Moten's new band, where he stayed until 1935, when Moten died unexpectedly while having his tonsils removed. After Moten's death, Basie and saxophonist Buster Smith pieced together their own nine-piece outfit made up of former members of the Blue Devils and the Moten band. Dubbed Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, the band played a long engagement at the Reno Club in Kansas City, which turned out to be a critical turning point in Basie's career.

The Reno Club performances not only established Basie as a permanent band leader, but because they were broadcast over the radio, the band was exposed to new audiences far outside the territory. In Chicago, the broadcast was heard one night by a young music writer named John Hammond, who had slipped out to the parking lot during intermission at a club to fiddle with the shortwave radio set in his car. Hammond had already been instrumental in resurrecting the career of Bessie Smith, and during a later career as an A&R man at Columbia Records, he would be influential in the careers of artists as diverse as Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and another Jersey Shore native, Bruce Springsteen. But at the time, Hammond's interest in the Basie band was only in getting the band heard by a wider audience. He began writing about the band, inviting Basie in print to contact him, and repeatedly wondering why the Count hadn't done so yet. When Basie finally did write to him, Hammond immediately sent back word that he was coming to Kansas City, and he announced his presence one Sunday night by walking right onto the bandstand during a broadcast and sitting down on the piano bench next to Basie in between numbers. Hammond and Basie would share a lifelong friendship, and Hammond would later feature Basie during the famous "Spirituals to Swing" concerts that he organized at Carnegie Hall. Hammond arranged for a national booking deal with MCA and a record deal with Decca Records, and by 1937 an enlarged thirteen piece band known as the Count Basie Orchestra had moved to New York City and become one of the leading big bands.

Even though his first marriage was disappointing and short, he relentlessly pursued his second wife, the dancer Catherine Morgan for years until she would go out with him. In fact, the first two times that he saw her, they didn't even speak. The second time that they "didn't meet," she had him thrown out of the doorway of her dressing room. However, the third time that they met and finally spoke, Basie cockily announced that one day he was going to make her his wife. Despite the fact that their courtship dragged on for a decade, interrupted again and again by the demands of two entertainment careers, they were married by a justice of the peace in Seattle on Basie's birthday, August 21, 1942. They would spend over thirty years together and have a daughter, Diane. The Basies lived in New York, first in Manhattan and later in St. Albans, Queens, and finally in Freeport, Bahamas.

Over the next thirteen years the band toured and recorded relentlessly. They established a new home base at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, playing there regularly several times a year. Their recordings, including "One O'clock Jump," "Jumpin' At the Woodside," "Taxi War Dance," and "Lester Leaps In," marked the peak of the Kansas City sound. In 1950, financial considerations forced Basie to disband the orchestra, and for the next two years he led small groups of between six and nine pieces, until in 1952 he reorganized the band again. The "second" Count Basie Orchestra was just as exciting and vibrant as the first, and perhaps even more important. This band toured even more aggressively than the first, but now to several continents as well. They played command performances for kings, queens and presidents, and issued a large number of recordings both under Basie's name and as the backing band for various singers, most notably Frank Sinatra.

After more than thirty years in the business, at an age when most musicians, if they have even lasted that long are coasting on their elder statesman status, Basie made some of his best and best-known work. "April in Paris," "Shiny Stockings," "L'il Darling," "Corner Pocket," and even a hit single, "Everyday I Have the Blues," with Big Joe Williams singing, are just some of the monumental works produced by the band during this period. For most of his career Basie chose to blend in with his own band, but with a good push from producer Norman Granz, in the last decade or so of his career he made a series of stellar small group recordings with featured guests including the pianist Oscar Peterson, the trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, the tenor sax player Zoot Sims, and the singers Joe Turner and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. When the sixteen-piece big band was stripped down to just a rhythm section and a guest or two, it was impossible not to recognize the full dimensions of Basie's own abilities as a soloist.

In 1976 Basie suffered a heart attack, and although he recovered, he performed only when his health permitted, sometimes in a wheelchair. He died of cancer on April 26, 1984, and is buried in Pine Lawn Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York.

Over a sixty-plus year career, William "Count" Basie helped to establish jazz as a serious art form played not just in clubs but in theatres and concert halls. He established swing as one of jazz's predominant styles, and solidified the link between jazz and the blues. Compared to the more complex, almost symphonic compositions and arrangements of some of the other leading bandleaders and composers of his time, most notably Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, the Basie band's arrangements were usually straightforward "head arrangements," based on a simple riff or melody (the "head") made up and memorized by the band in rehearsal, and later played in performance as the background for soloists. The "first" Basie band was without peer in this regard, and many of their tunes began life as head arrangements.

For instance "One O'clock Jump" was made up on the spot at the end of a radio broadcast. With ten minutes to spare in the broadcast, the announcer asked Basie what the next tune would be. The band had already played everything in its book for the evening, so Basie, noticing that it was almost one o'clock in the morning, said, "Call it 'One O'clock Jump,'" and launched into the stride influenced opening of the tune with the rhythm section. The band followed the rhythm section and the cues of each other, deploying and building upon riffs developed in their rehearsals, spontaneously creating a tune that would become one of the band's standards, and a jazz classic.

In the later years of his career and with the "second" Count Basie Orchestra, which relied more upon actual arrangements, Basie continued to use a simplicity of style as the basis for incorporating the more complex ideas of new composers and arrangers such as Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones, Wild Bill Davis, Sammy Nestico, and band members Frank Foster and Thad Jones. He would even edit their written scores, stripping down their work to what he recognized as the essential elements that would make a good work great. In the early days of his career, Basie performed in a hard, two-hand stride style suited more to solo work and accompanying silent films, but by the mid 1930's his playing had evolved into a more relaxed, spare style that made for an exciting interchange with the radiant soloists he chose to be members of his band. In a phrase, "less is more" perfectly describes Basie's style. He used simple, melodic phrases that were never overstated. His playing was deeply rooted in the 4/4 rhythms and chord progressions of the blues, making frequent use of "blue notes," flatted notes in a musical scale, even when not playing a straight blues.

All of this was possible because in addition to the musical skills of its leader, the Count Basie Orchestra was equally famed for the strength of its individual members. All luminous musicians and soloists in their own right, as members of the Count Basie Orchestra they played as a tight ensemble. Whether the tempo was fast or slow, whether they were punching an accent or quietly underscoring a soloist, the Basie band was loose, but played with authority as an ensemble. The influence of Basie's brilliance as a band leader cannot be underestimated in this regard. He had a knack for picking just the right musicians for the job that needed to be done at any given time. He filled holes in the band's sound by choosing players whose tone or style complemented that of the existing band members, and on occasion he even chose band members to set up internal competition. In the first Basie band, Lester Young and Herschel Evans would battle it out night after night, driving each other to new heights in their attempts to outdo each other, as would Frank Wess and Frank Foster in the second band.

Yet the soloists needed a foundation, and they had the best in the Basie band's rhythm section. For years the section featured Basie on piano, Freddie Green on guitar, Walter Page on bass, and Jo Jones on drums, but even after some of these members moved on, the Basie band's rhythm section swung with more flexibility, and was more responsive to the rest of the band than the rhythm section of any other band. Influenced by Basie's early work as an accompanist on the vaudeville circuit, the Basie rhythm section drove the rest of the band forward without ever overwhelming them.

The band's roster over its forty plus years under its leader does not just read like a who's who of jazz, it is a "who's who of jazz": the trumpet players Harry "Sweets" Edison, Thad Jones, Buck Clayton, Clark Terry, and Joe Newman; the trombone players Bennie Powell, Dickie Wells and Grover Mitchell; the sax players Don Byas, Paul Gonsalves, Illinois Jacquet, Charlie Rouse, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Frank Foster, Frank Wess, Herschel Evans, Earl Warren and Lester Young; the drummers Jo Jones and Sonny Payne; the guitarist Freddie Green; and of course the band's outstanding vocalists, including Jimmy Rushing, Billie Holiday, Helen Humes and Joe Williams are just some of the Count Basie Orchestra's alumni.

Basie was self-effacing to a fault, always ready to share the spotlight, always willing to acknowledge the genius of others. Yet he was ambitious, always willing to take a chance and see what happened, and always willing to persevere when things didn't turn out exactly as planned. As a young man he left his hometown to see if he could make a name for himself in the world, and even though he moved to a resort town just when everyone had left for the winter, he successfully returned the next year and never looked back. Despite being conflicted about the Moten band's mutiny, he recognized and accepted the opportunity that it presented him to try his hand as a band leader.

The story of Basie's life and career, and the history of his music and orchestra are of course not a linear tale that can be told succinctly in just a few pages. Musicians, singers, composers and arrangers came and went over many years and over many ensembles, grouping and regrouping like the audience in a club. Some dropped by for just a night. Some stayed for years. Some came and went and came again. Many had important and influential careers in their own right, and perhaps more than anything else that is the legacy of William "Count" Basie. His orchestra was a unique band during a unique time in the history of jazz and American music. It was full of outstanding musicians, composers and arrangers, but it was built and sustained by a man who as a musician, composer, arranger and band leader always seemed to know just the right note to strike at just the right time. No more, and no less.

For more information about the life and career of William "Count" Basie, two good places to start reading are "Good Morning Blues," Basie's autobiography as told to Albert Murray (Random House), and "The World of Count Basie," a collection of interviews with various Basie musicians by Stanley Dance (C. Scribner's Sons).

Downbeat.com, the web site of Down Beat Magazine, is an excellent starting point for any investigation of jazz past or present.

Contact Us FAQ