Count Basie

His mother took in laundry and baked cakes for sale, and out of that she paid 25 cents a lesson for her son's piano instruction. His father had driven a wealthy judge's carriage in Red Bank, New Jersey, until automobiles ended the job and he went to work as a groundskeeper. Basie wanted to be a drummer, heard Sonny Greer play, and switched to piano for good at 15. By 1920 he was in Harlem, where Fats Waller, accompanying silent films at the Lincoln Theater, taught him the organ. Vaudeville circuits then carried him west behind blues singers and comedians, and one of them set him down in Kansas City, where he took a job playing organ at the Eblon Theater and stayed.

Kansas City made him, and municipal corruption made Kansas City. Tom Pendergast's machine ran the town wide open — liquor laws and closing hours ignored straight through Prohibition and the Depression — so the clubs never shut, and a jazz of riffs and all-night solos grew out of the hours the city kept. Basie came up through Walter Page's Blue Devils and Bennie Moten's orchestra, took over what was left of it when Moten died in 1935, and was broadcasting from the Reno Club when John Hammond found the band on his car radio in 1936.

Duke Ellington composed his orchestra and wrote it down. Basie edited his. The band built numbers on the stand and kept them in collective memory with nothing notated at all — One O'Clock Jump began as filler late one night at the Reno Club. What held the method together was four men billed as the All-American Rhythm Section. Older bands hit two heavy beats a bar on the bass drum. Walter Page walked an even four on the bass, Freddie Green chorded under him for close to 50 years without ever taking a solo, and Jo Jones moved the timekeeping off the bass drum onto the hi-hat, two cymbals opening and closing. The thump became a current. Basie's own playing thinned every decade after that, until he was placing three notes where a lesser pianist used 30.

The big-band economy collapsed after the war and took him with it. In 1950 he gave up the orchestra and spent two years leading six to nine men, an integrated group that at times carried Buddy Rich and Buddy DeFranco. Billy Eckstine talked him into trying again, Norman Granz got the new 16-piece band into Birdland, and after 1952 he never stopped — Neal Hefti's charts, The Atomic Mr. Basie, three albums with Sinatra. Critics still split on that second band, Gunther Schuller calling it a glorious dead end, while nobody argues about the 1930s rhythm section. He died in Florida on April 26, 1984. The orchestra he could not afford to keep in 1950 is still touring.

Count Basie's life against the full span of the corpus.

• One O'Clock Jump song
  Worked up as filler at the Reno Club and never written down. Recorded for Decca on July 7, 1937. 1937
• Jumpin' at the Woodside song
  Named for the Harlem hotel where the band lived and rehearsed in the basement. 1938
• Blue and Sentimental song
  The slow side of the riff band, with Herschel Evans on tenor. 1938
• April in Paris album
  The Wild Bill Davis arrangement of the title tune became his biggest instrumental hit. 1957
• The Atomic Mr. Basie album
  Every chart by Neal Hefti. Issued first as E=MC2 and retitled ever since. 1958
• Sinatra at the Sands album
  Live in Las Vegas, arranged and conducted by Quincy Jones. 1966

• 1925 aged ~21 Fats Waller teaches him the organ in Harlem Waller was accompanying silent films at the Lincoln Theater. Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City.
• 1928 aged ~24 Hears Walter Page and his Blue Devils in Tulsa and joins them months later Accounts differ on when he began to be called Count — some place it here, others at the Reno Club radio broadcasts years later.
• 1929 aged ~25 Becomes pianist with Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra
• 1935 aged ~31 Moten dies after a failed tonsillectomy and Basie forms the Barons of Rhythm Nine pieces, built from Moten men — Walter Page, Jo Jones, Lester Young and Jimmy Rushing among them.
• 1936 aged ~32 John Hammond hears the Reno Club broadcast on his car radio He drove to Kansas City to find the band, then took it to Chicago and New York.
• July 7, 1937 aged 32 Records One O'Clock Jump for Decca in New York A head arrangement of riffs that stayed his signature tune for the rest of his life.
• 1950 aged ~46 Gives up the big band and works two years with six to nine men The reduced group at times included Buddy Rich, Buddy DeFranco and Serge Chaloff.
• 1952 aged ~48 Reforms a 16-piece orchestra, later called the New Testament band Billy Eckstine pushed him back to a big band. Norman Granz got it into Birdland.
• April 26, 1984 aged 79 Dies of pancreatic cancer in Hollywood, Florida, at 79 Reagan awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously on May 23, 1985.

• Duke Ellington 1899–1974
  Composer and bandleader who expanded the artistic ambition and vocabulary of jazz. rival
• Billie Holiday 1915–1959
  Jazz singer whose intensely personal phrasing and performances, including 'Strange Fruit,' transformed American vocal music. sang with his band
• Frank Sinatra 1915–1998
  Crooner and actor whose voice and charisma made him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. recorded with
• Ella Fitzgerald 1917–1996
  Singer whose technical command and interpretations helped define jazz and the Great American Songbook. recorded with
• Louis Armstrong 1901–1971
  Trumpeter and singer whose innovations and worldwide fame made jazz a central American art form. never recorded with
• Dizzy Gillespie 1917–1993
  Jazz trumpeter who co-founded bebop and invented Afro-Cuban jazz shared the Birdland stand with