Count Basie & His Orchestra

Genres:	Big Band & Swing • Blues • Jazz • Vocals
Descriptive "tags":	jazz • swing • big band
Decades Active:	1940s • 1950s • 1960s • 1970s • 1980s • 1990s • 2000s

Biography

William Allen Basie, 21 August 1904, Red Bank, New Jersey, USA, d. 26 April 1984, Hollywood, California, USA. Band leader and pianist Basie grew up in Red Bank, just across the Hudson River from New York City. His mother gave him his first lessons at the piano, and he used every opportunity to hear the celebrated kings of New York keyboard - James P. Johnson, Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith and especially Fats Waller. Ragtime was all the rage, and these keyboard professors ransacked the European tradition to achieve ever more spectacular improvisations. The young Basie listened to Fats Waller playing the organ in Harlem’s Lincoln Theater and received tuition from him. Pianists were in demand to accompany vaudeville acts, and Waller recommended Basie as his successor in the Katie Crippen And Her Kids troupe, and with them he toured black venues throughout America (often referred to as the ‘chitlin’ circuit’). Stranded in Kansas City after the...

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