Product Description:
Personnel: Count Basie (piano, organ); Big Joe Turner (vocals); Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Zoot Sims (tenor saxophone); Harry "Sweets" Edison (trumpet); J.J. Johnson (trombone); Irving Ashby (guitar); Ray Brown (bass); Louis Bellson (drums).
Recorded at MGM Recording Studios, Los Angeles, California on December 11, 1973. Includes original release liner notes by Benny Green.
Digitally remastered by Phil De Lancie (1994, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California).
This 1973 recording features two of the great swingers, Count Basie and Big Joe Turner, in collaboration with an impressive "Who's Who" of jazz. The essence of Kansas City drifts across the tracks on this album. As usual, Basie employs his unobtrusive yet strident approach; his piano playing seems to be the musical incarnation of the 12th Street clubs where Midwestern swing matured.
Basie seems to have the secret ingredients for swing baked right into his nimble finger tips, and Big Joe Turner's baritone voice commands attention like no other blues singer in his generation. On songs like "The Honeydripper" and "Good Mornin' Blues," Turner sings with a beautiful sinuous and gritty legato. On "Flip, Flop and Fly," Turner's thunderous voice booms over the sax riffs of Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Zoot Sims, making this uptempo shuffle a brisk, festive musical sojourn. THE BOSSES resonates with emotion, both sorrow and bliss; it's certainly one of the most honest, down-home swinging records in the vast canon of blues recordings.
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