Kansas City - Count Basie

Saxophone used to be clown instruments and then Louis taught Coleman Hawkins how to swing and the sax became expressive with a big sound. A New Orleans sax player, Lester Young was gigging round the South with 'The Original Blue Devils' and he like many others gravitated to Kansas City like a magnet.
In Kansas City Major Prendergast encouraged the vice clubs to prosper even during the second Roosevelt depression and every club needed musicians. They all wanted to play stomping, up tempo blues with shouters, head arrangements and riffs. Everyone could play the blues ... all night every night ... expressive individualism, Lester, Hot Lips, Sweets, Mary Lou, Jay McShann and a kid from Red Bank ... Count Basie. Space and time and what a rhythm section - Jo Jones, Walter Page, Freddie Green and Bill Basie ... 'The Barons of Rhythm'.
'Blue Balls' respectfully know as 'One O'clock Jump'.
One night in 1936 John Hammond heard a local radio broadcast from 'The Reno Club' Kansas City ... 
To New York and 9 to 12 sidemen - Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison, Dicky Wells, Lester Young, Hershel Evans and Jimmy Rushing.
Lester was inspired by Frankie Trambauer, and his soft airy tone always 'telling a story', but in partnership with Billie he really prospered.
Basie recruited Billie Holiday in 1937 and eventually settled at 'The Famous Door' in 1938 and secured the recognition he deserved.
Billie after a short stint with Artie Shaw was resident at 'Cafe Society', Greenwich Village, New York singing 'Strange Fruit' to mixed audiences.
Mary Lou Williams played with Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy and wrote for everybody.
1939 Basie was proving jazz with a rhythmic precision and definitive pulse was alive and well without any concession to popular commercialism.
!957 'Sounds of Jazz' - Billie and Lester recording for the last time.
1959 Billie and Lester RIP.

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