Recalling an Era of Count Basie

Mention the Count Basie Orchestra, and several aural images spring quickly to mind. The grooving, in-the-pocket swing of the rhythm section, its drive energized by Basie’s brisk piano punctuations and the subtle understatement of Freddie Green’s guitar; the crisp, utterly unified thrust of the ensemble, swinging as a single man; the instantly memorable compositions; the extraordinary soloists, from Lester Young and Harry Edison to Frank Foster and Thad Jones.

But there was never just one Basie ensemble, and each installment, over the more than six decades of its existence, has had its own character. Initially a group whose personality was centered on its superb soloists, the Basie band was reduced to the small group sound of six- to nine-piece ensembles in the cost-cutting post-World War II years. The big Basie units that followed in the ‘50s and ‘60s were composer-arranger-oriented, with a series of vigorous charts provided by Neal Hefti, Quincy Jones, Frank Foster, Thad Jones and others. Succeeding groups--including the Basie ghost bands that continued under varying directors after the leader’s death in 1984--have survived by feasting on the still-fertile music that emerged in the band’s first three decades.

The band that Basie took into Las Vegas in the ‘60s was a good example. Notable for its sheer power, driven by Sonny Payne’s flashy but authoritative drumming, with strong soloing from tenor saxophonist Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and trombonist Al Grey, the ensemble was a perfect show band, its hard-edged dependability the ideal foil for its role as accompaniment for Frank Sinatra’s mid-’60s macho style.

In between its backup responsibilities, the band also played opening sets, and Reprise has gathered a collection of largely familiar numbers from those performances in this new collection.

It is not exactly vintage Basie, either in the quality of the soloing or the subtlety of the playing. This is a band in which the airy openness of Basie’s playing and the infectious minimalist urgency of the rhythm section are heard only rarely (“I Needs to Be Bee’d With” is one exception). But there is no denying the primal rhythmic potency of many of the tracks, especially those--listen to the passage that follows Davis’ solo in “Splanky” or the collective segment in the middle of “Flight of the Foo Birds”--in which the entire band roars with one voice. And Payne is the galvanizing force behind much of it.

(Reprise, however, can be faulted on two counts with this album. First, the notes don’t list either the band’s personnel or specific soloists. Second, the title “Hello, Little Girl” is actually the Goffin-King tune “Go Away Little Girl.”)

“Count Plays Duke,” by the current Basie ghost band, is a bit more problematic. The Basie and Ellington orchestras got together in 1961 for a superb interfacing between both ensembles. But the concept here has far more modest goals, with the Basie band merely running through a set of Ellington numbers--”It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “Mood Indigo,” “Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me” and “Take the ‘A’ Train” among them.

Obviously, there’s no impugning the caliber of the material. But problems arise from the fact that these are compositions that are deeply, intimately related to the Ellington sound. And this Basie band--good as it is--simply doesn’t have the personality it had when Basie was present. Nor does it help that all the arrangements were written by a single person, Allyn Ferguson. Without criticizing Ferguson’s obvious skills, his charts’ similarities of style further emphasize the album’s general sense of musical anonymity--a quality that rarely has afflicted any of the numerous Basie orchestras.

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