When Moten and band went to New York in 1928, he did not bring his jumpy sweet band sound with him, instead he went for the sophisticated sounds of Henderson and Redman and began incorporating their arranging style into his own. Many Southwestern bands followed suit. This was aided in part by the fact that many of Southwestern bands were landing gigs at venues populated by white patrons who were not well versed in the blues tradition to begin with so the swingier arrangements were fine with them.
The white attitude towards the more traditional jazz styles is summed up in the August 1926 edition of The Etude Music Magazine:
“Why have the words Jazz and Jagg the same meaning?” asks the humorist.
“Because they are both an irregular, jerky movement from bar to bar,” chortles the joker.
The world has been passing through a kind of musical jamboree. Jazz, with all its symptoms, was literally a species of musical intoxication. Starting in America, it spread over all the globe. Out of the mēlée came a few minds which had been trained in the better schools of music. With great ingenuity, Whiteman, Gershwin, Lopez, Lange, and others, modified and beautified the Jazz orchestra until the results were often surprisingly interesting. Thus we believe that Jazz, like new wine, is purifying itself.
That it will unquestioningly have a bearing upon American music of the future is generally conceded. How could it be otherwise? The ears of our children have been filled to the brim with these inebriating rhythms, for years. When maturity and training of the right kind is given to these youngsters the “pep” of Jazz will still remain in their subconscious minds. Like the voice of an epoch it will appear in its proper way and in its proper place and at the proper time.
The old Jazz of the screeching Jazzomaniac will not torture victims much longer. Our sympathies go out to the old gentleman on the cover of this month’s issue. He is merely one of the thousands of parents who have invested in a musical education for daughters only to hear as a result the abominations of Jazz. Now that fashion for Jazz is passing and better music is taking its place, we may look forward to a time when our aural tympani will not be shattered by a pandemonium of horrible noises.
The primal rhythms and beats of the jazz that jumped up out of New Orleans and socked the world in the jaw were being toned down and refined for more orchestral settings and whites related to that quite naturally as did the wealthier blacks and this was as true for the Southwest as it was for New York or Chicago and Moten recognized that this change had come. Some may argue that the above quoted passage refers to bands like Whiteman’s rather than swing which is likely true enough but The Etude was really a classical music periodical and the average white person being less highbrow felt about swing the way that the staff of The Etude felt about Whiteman-type sweet jazz—that it was more cosmopolitan and accessible than the old jass.
In 1935, Moten fell ill while the band was touring through Denver. Doctors examined him and said he needed surgery immediately and began operating but Moten would not survive and died on the operating table at the age of 40. Afterwards, Basie was elected by the other members to take over the band. Walter Page rejoined the band that year and played with them until 1942.
Unlike the others, Basie was not born in Missouri or Kansas but New Jersey on August 21, 1904. Basie grew up hearing different style of music and especially liked the stride piano that came out of Harlem from the likes of James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Willie “the Lion” Smith. He began playing both drums and piano. He was largely self-taught and so was not a sight-reader but still displayed considerable skill. He was hired at the local movie theatre doing chores until the manager trusted him enough to run the projector. When the house pianist was absent, young Basie was already good enough to fill in for him. He made only a little money, his payment consisting of getting to see all the movies for free. Basie loved all the faraway places seen in the films and wanted to visit them. “I just wanted to be on the road with a show so much that I would have gone along just to be a water boy for the elephants if I could,” he said.
Basie played with a few bands around town mainly as a drummer. Basie’s best friend was Sonny Greer who was also a drummer. When Basie saw the proficiency of Greer’s drumming compared to his own, he decided to shelve his drumming career and devote himself to piano. Greer, as we know, went on to play drums for Ellington pretty much for the entire life of the band.
Basie eventually went to New York, unable to resist the allure of the Harlem music scene. There he met Johnson, Smith and Waller. Waller, in particular, took an interest in Basie and let him occasionally play the house organ at the Lincoln Theatre in Harlem where Waller had a steady gig (movies were silent at that time and required musical accompaniment sometimes provided by a hired musician or by a nickelodeon of the player-piano type). Waller then helped Basie land a job in vaudeville with a burlesque show. Basie also ran into his old buddy, Sonny Greer, who was, by now, playing drums for Ellington.
When Basie’s show reached Kansas City, Basie encountered blues piano which he had not paid much attention to earlier and he began incorporating blues into his sparse stride style. Blues offered Basie and, through him, the entire jazz world, a new vocabulary. This was due mainly to the fact that many of the KC bands started as sextets in the Southwest. Upon coming to KC, they expanded to ten pieces. Because it is harder to let 10 players improvise around each other, they worked from charts and lead sheets that were based on blues vocal traditions. Kansas City jazz was largely blues-based even if less so after 1928 but blues was favored in the KC jazz scene largely because of the success of Basie.
After being stranded in Oklahoma in 1927 when his touring show fell apart, Basie ended up in a cheap hotel room in Tulsa without much to do. He would wile away the hours in the local bars. One night, he went back to his room rather inebriated and collapsed in his bed. He awoke late the next morning to the sounds of Louis Armstrong until he realized the impossibility and came fully awake now wondering where the jazz music was coming from—it was beautiful! He staggered downstairs, hung over, and saw the Blue Devils in the back of a truck playing for all they were worth to a crowd that had gathered to hear them.
Basie stated: “I just stood there listening and looking because I had never heard anything like that band in my life.” Basie felt compelled to join them saying, “…hearing them that day was probably the most important turning point in my musical career.” So Basie joined the Blue Devils as pianist and his career as a premier jazzman had begun. Basie was among the first bandleaders in the Southwest to abandon the tuba for the double bass which had the effect of converting jazz from 2/4 to 4/4 time. 4/4 time is an essential ingredient for swing because swing relies on a walking bass line which walks in 4/4 time.
By 1936, Basie moved his band out of Kansas City and into Chicago for an extended gig at the Grand Terrace Ballroom under the name of the Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm. Basie began innovating with his orchestral setup. He hired two tenor saxes instead of one—Herschel Evans and Lester Young. Young thought Evans played with too much vibrato so Basie separated them by having them flank the alto sax man, Earle Warren. This introduced an interesting tension between Evans and Young that often resulting in cutting contests between the two men. Audiences loved it and soon other big bands were featuring two tenor saxes.
When Basie moved the band to New York in 1937, he began using a variety of singers to front the band. The first was Billie Holiday to supplement the band’s longtime male singer, Jimmy Rushing. She never recorded with Basie because her voice was such a jazz instrument of itself that producers were afraid its nuances would be lost in a large orchestra so she always recorded with small combos. But in live performances, Billie was as happy to sing with a big band as not and her work with Basie is said to be legendary. It may have been at this time that Billie and Lester Young began their long affair.
They first played the Woodside Hotel, then the Roseland (Fletcher Henderson’s main haunt) and then the Savoy in 1938, home of the lindy-hop, where Chick Webb’s band ruled and a battle of the bands was planned. This battle has taken on legendary proportions but the general consensus is that Basie’s band won. Webb’s band, fronted by Ella Fitzgerald, played forcefully and aggressively but Basie’s band, fronted by Billie, responded with finesse. The battle really put Basie on the map. Major gigs and recording contracts flowed Basie’s way and he soon became world-renowned.
Count Basie and His Orchestra: One O' Clock Jump (Basie) - November 3, 1937 - YouTube
Basie’s signature song recorded in New York.
Chick Webb - STOMPIN' AT THE SAVOY - YouTube
Chick Webb’s signature song written by the band’s saxophonist, Edgar Sampson. Chick Webb’s orchestra played hardcore flag-wavers, even more so than Lunceford’s. The remarkable thing about Chick Webb was that he was crippled. He could stand on his own but could not walk without help yet he had no trouble operating the foot pedals of his drum kit.
But even before Moten’s band was playing in the white hotels, Alphonso Trent had already started this in 1924 with is gig at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. This led to other gigs and then to broadcasts. By 1928, the band was recording and became nationally known. Despite recording only four sides, their arrangements were complex and rivaled anything by Fletcher Henderson or Ellington.