Back to Basie ...

Press, 18 June 1986, Page 16

Back to Basie ...

BY

ALLAN FRANCIS

COUNT BASIE BAND. 1941 to 1967. C.B.S. “i LOVE JAZZ” series LJIO. This high quality package complements the earlier Affinity recording titled “Big Band Bounce and Boogie” defining the 1937-1838 band. In place of the strong nucleus of Buck Clayton, Earle Warren, Lester Young, Dickie Wells and the immortal rhythm section of Greene, Page and Jo Jones, the later band brought to light Buddy Tate, the rebel, Marshall Royal, Wardell Gray and Joe Newman. However, Freddie Greene was forever the common denominator. Others from Duke Ellington drifted in from time to time. As with Ellington, Basie wisely stuck fairly closely to his own repertoire. The Basie style was less complicated than Ellington, but he kept his

strength in the front line. With each decade the band’s ensemble playing became tighter, with greater precision. Whether it was actually better is debatable.

The chief exponents of the art on the review album are Joe Newman and Harry Edison, trumpets, Buddy Tate and Illinois Jacquet, saxophones, with the rhythm section comprising Freddie Greene, Rodney Richardson and Shadow Wilson, drums.

The usual hardy annuals, "Jumping at the Woodside” and “One O’clock Jump,” are present, but there is a good selection of less heard numbers too. This was the band that won honours in “Down Beat Poll” in the early fifties before everyone economised and went into temporary recession. The recorded sound has been sharpened, so one gets the

impression of much more recent recording than it actually is — mono originally and it remains the same here. In a band that prides itself on pulsating excitement throughout, the one incongruous note in this programme is on side Two — "Boone’s Blues” with Richard Boone singing his own composition. One can only wonder how this one came about, both parties edging towards a centre line, with commercialism and jazz at both ends of the scale. The old Basie standard, “Nails,” is the most recent track, arranged here by top A. and R. man, Nat Pierce, reflecting the band’s most polished effort to date. One could never say that this compilation is anything less than interesting. It is full of typical Basie excitement, well chosen selections and worth hearing.