Count Basie Celebration - 2

Appreciation by Albert Murray

Nowhere else have blues musicians ever been more firmly dedicated to the proposition that "it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" than in Kansas City in the early 1930s. What they were playing was, above all else, good-time, honky-tonk, dance-hall music for people to stomp away their troubles, etc. This is the source of the Basie sound.

After work, nightly jam sessions sometimes turned into battles or "cutting contests." Sometimes they showcased new talent, but mostly the musicians played for sheer enjoyment, for trying new ideas, and to keep current with the latest innovations. But the Kansas City jam session was no less dance-beat oriented for being an experimental laboratory, for it is the drive with which they swing the blues and anything else that these musicians are most widely celebrated. Many of the most enduring examples of Kansas City composition, such as "Moten Swing," were jam session renditions that became memorized "head arrangements." The Southwestern stomp style of which Basie was associated featured 4/4 time in all tempos, riff ensembles and shout-style choruses as well as vocal and instrumental solos. All that Basie had to do was recognize it, and refine it, and bring it out to the rest of the world.

Indeed, Basie's status as a great musician was not a matter of extension and elaboration of blues idiom basics as was the case of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Basie's claim to fame and prestige was based on his refinement of the fundamentals that make jazz music swing.

The Basie hallmark was always simplicity, but it is a simplicity that is the result of a distillation that produced music that was as refined, subtle and elegant as it was earthy and robust. There is no better example of the ungaudy in the work of any other American artist in any medium.

Count Basie's music is not about protest. It is about celebration, and celebration is about achievement, whether material or better still existential (intrinsically personal) and what it generates is a sense of well-being that even becomes exhilaration!
http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/ijs/cb/murray.htm