![]() Boone’s crisp snare drum work provided the rhythmic punctuation that’s always been an essential part of the CBO’s trademark style. They kicked the second show at Crooner’s off with a driving version of talk show pioneer Steve Allen’s theme “This Could be the Start of Something Big,” with some dueling alto interplay from Marcus Howell and David Glasser. ![]() Glen Pearson currently occupies the piano chair, what Barnhart refers to as “the hot seat.” “We spread the first trumpet parts around” and the spotlight, Barnhart said in a KBEM radio interview, recalling Basie’s dictum that “A happy band is a great band.” ![]() The band’s more recent recruits include bassist Trevor Ware, trumpeters Brandon Lee and Shawn Edmonds, lead trumpeter Frank Greene III and the youngest, 20-something members Robert Boone on drums, Joshua Lee on baritone saxophone and Markus Howell on alto and flute.īarnhart who has been with the band since 1993, said its trumpeters trade off playing lead trumpet parts, depending on the song. Other long-time members include Doug Miller (1989, formerly with Lionel Hampton), and members who have joined in the last 15-25 years trombonists Isrea Butler (lead), Alvin Walker and Mark Williams, guitarist Will Matthews, trumpeter Endre Rice, saxophonists Doug Lawrence (formerly with Benny Goodman and Buck Clayton) and lead alto saxman David Glasser. ![]() The band’s current personnel includes a couple of musicians hired by Basie himself: frequent “guest” vocalist Carmen Bradford (joined in 1983) and trombonist Clarence Banks (joined in 1984). Since Basie’s passing in 1984, Thad Jones, Frank Foster, Grover Mitchell, Bill Hughes, Dennis Mackrel, and now Sc otty Barnhart have led the CBO. Over the decades, Eddie Durham, Thad Jones, Ernie Wilkins, Quincy Jones, Neal Hefti, Sammy Nestico, and Frank Foster became star arrangers. In the mid ’50s the band evolved into a more structured format, but Basie still allowed band members to craft arrangements tailored to famous soloists like Snooky Young, Thad Jones, Frank Foster, and Frank Wess. But one quality that the Basie band has defined is the ability to play music that seems simultaneously “tight” (precise) and “loose.” The looseness dates back to the CBO’s origins in the funky Kansas City scene, stemming from the “Old Testament” Basie band’s reliance on loosely-organized head arrangements that – as jazz historians have pointed out – provided soloists with more improv freedom than was usually the case with the big bands of the era. ![]() On a less-humid summer evening, it was a beautiful, lakeside setting.īecause swing is an art, not a science it defies precise definition. The spaces he left between the notes and beats, and his sly use of dynamics, created the template for what might be the most-perfect-ever expression of swing.īasie’s been gone since 1984, but the still-powerful Count Basie Orchestra showed that his musical blueprint is still intact, in two shows in the tent at Crooner’s in Fridley, July 21. The phrase “less is more” has long since become a cliché, but it could have been coined to describe the way Basie played the piano and arranged his music. William “Count” Basie’s world-changing sound originated in a raucous Petri dish that will never be replicated – 1930s Kansas City – to become a band that will never be duplicated. This article originally appeared on Jazz Police. ![]()
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