Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are shifting
gears a bit today. Usually we're tearing apart
a specific book or maybe some breaking news,
but today we're looking at a system. A method,
really. Yes, a method of organization that kind
of disguised itself as a band. We're talking
about William James Count Basie. Oh, count. And
I want to set the stage here immediately. We
aren't just doing a biography of a guy who played
the piano. I mean, probably 90 % of the picture.
He wasn't the most technical player of his generation.
No. That was probably someone like Art Tatum.
And he wasn't the most prolific composer. That
was Duke Ellington, hands down. Sure. But Basie,
Basie was the architect of something arguably
more physical. He built the engine of swing.
That's it. That's the angle I really want to
unpack. I was looking at the timeline while prepping
for this, and the longevity is frankly... It's
wild. He leads a band from 1935 until his death
in 1984. Almost 50 years. It's unheard of. It's
nearly half a century. I mean, he steered this
massive ship through the vaudeville era, the
depression, the swing craze, the death of the
big bands. The rise of bebop. The rise of bebop,
rock and roll, and even into the synthesizer
era of the 80s. And he didn't just... survive
all that. No, he thrived. He remained the gold
standard through all of it. It's the ultimate
case study in adaptability, isn't it? It really
is. You have to remember, the big band is. It's
a dinosaur by 1950. Economically, it just shouldn't
exist anymore. Right. Logistically, touring with
16 to 18 people is a complete nightmare. Yet,
Basie kept it viable. And he didn't just have
one great band. He created two entirely distinct
legendary bands. The Old Testament, the New Testament
band. Exactly. The band of the 30s and the reinvented
one from the 50s onward. And he did it all with
a leadership style that I find so fascinating,
counterintuitive. And a genre just filled with
these massive egos, these loud personalities.
Oh, absolutely. You know, think Betty Goodman
or, God forbid, Buddy Rich. Bessie was the quiet
man. He led by listening. So our mission today
is to figure out how a failed drummer from New
Jersey became, you know, American jazz royalty.
The Count. The Count. And specifically, I want
to drill down into the mechanics of that rhythm
section, the physics of it. In the all -American
rhythm section. We are definitely going to spend
some time there because that is where the DNA
of modern music really shifts. Okay, so let's
start at the beginning. But I want to skip the
standard, he was born, he went to school stuff.
Let's talk about Red Bank, New Jersey, around,
say... 1915 1920 right we know his mother Lillian
taught him his first piano notes his father was
a groundskeeper it's a humble beginning we know
about the 25 cent lessons but the pivotal moment
for me the thing that explains everything about
his later style is that he didn't want to be
a pianist he wanted to be a drummer he was obsessed
with the drums And I think if you really listen
to Basie's mature piano style, those short percussive
jabs he makes, the way he uses space, it's the
playing of a frustrated drummer. That's a great
way to put it. He isn't playing these long flowing
melody lines. He's playing rhythm on a melodic
instrument. But he got chased off the kit, so
to speak. And not just by anyone. No, not at
all. By Sonny Greer, who was also a Red Bank
local. And Greer was, well, he was a prodigy.
He had the flash, the speed, the independence
of limbs. He was the real deal. And Basie just
sees this. Basie recounts hearing Greer play
and basically having a crisis of confidence.
A complete, I can't do that. moment. So at age
15, he just retreated to the piano. It is one
of the great what ifs of jazz history, isn't
it? If Sonny Greer is just 10 percent less talented.
Right. Basie stays on drums, maybe becomes a
solid local timekeeper. And we never get the
Count Basie Orchestra. And frankly, Duke Ellington
loses his legendary drummer because Greer went
on to be Duke's anchor for decades. Wow. It's
a total sliding doors moment. But that retreat
to the piano wasn't a retreat into virtuosity.
That's the key. He didn't try to become Liszt
or Art Tatum. He took that drummer's mindset,
the idea that your job is to drive the band,
not to drown it out, and he applied it directly
to the 88 keys. And he honed that mindset in
a very specific and I'd say grueling environment.
Oh, absolutely. The vaudeville circuit, the TOBA
circuit, the Theater Owners Booking Association.
The tough on black artists circuit, as it was
known. Exactly. I think people romanticize this
era, but reading the accounts, this was a grind.
But more importantly, it was a very specific
type of musical training. This is so crucial.
He wasn't playing concertos. No, he was accompanying
silent movies and comedians. I'll think about
that for a second. When you are the pianist for
a silent movie. You are reacting constantly.
You are watching the screen. If a character slips
on a banana peel, you hit a chord. You're training
your eye -ear coordination second by second.
Musical punchline. Exactly. But accompanying
the vaudeville acts, the singers like Gunzel
White or the comedians, that is where he truly
learned the art of the fill. Right. Because if
you play over the punchline. You get fired. Yeah.
Simple as that. If the comedian is setting up
a joke, you have to be completely invisible.
If the singer is taking a breath between phrases,
that is your window. That's your one or two seconds
to play a little run, a little flourish. If you
play while they're singing. You're stepping on
the product. So for years, Basie's being trained
to listen first, play second. He learned that
silence is actually a powerful part of the arrangement.
Which is the complete antithesis of the jazz
soloist ego that develops later with Bebop, right?
Where the goal is to cram as many notes as physically
possible into the bar. Completely. Basie is coming
from a service mindset. He's there to serve the
act. He's a supporting character. And that service
mindset eventually lands him in the Midwest.
He gets stranded in Kansas City on a tour that
falls apart. And this is where the chemistry
set really starts to bubble. Yes. You have a
guy trained in the Harlem stride tradition because
he did spend time in New York learning from Fats
Waller, learning that heavy left hand organ technique.
Right. That oompa sound. But now he's dropped
into the middle of the Kansas City blues scene.
It's a totally different flavor. I want to focus
on the Kansas City sound for a second because
it really is distinct from what was happening
in New York or New Orleans. It just feels, I
don't know, looser. It is significantly looser,
and there's a reason for that. New York jazz
in the late 20s and early 30s, you know, think
Fletcher Henderson's band, was becoming very
arranged, very sophisticated. It was about reading
music on a chart. Polished. Very polished. Kansas
City, on the other hand, was a wide open town.
It was run by the Pendergast political machine,
which meant prohibition didn't really exist there.
The clubs were open 24 hours a day. Wow. So the
musicians were playing these marathon eight,
10 -hour gigs. You physically cannot play complex
written arrangements for 10 hours straight. You
need something more sustainable. This brings
us to the head arrangement. I was reading about
this process, and honestly, as a musician, it
sounds terrifying. It is. You have a 10 -piece,
later a 16 -piece band. There is no sheet music.
Yeah. And they're just winging it. How does that
not turn into a complete train wreck every night?
It works because of one simple, powerful concept.
The riff. Okay. A riff is just a short, rhythmic,
melodic phrase, maybe two bars long. Super catchy.
In a head arrangement, the saxophone section
might start playing a riff they just made up.
On the spot. Completely on the spot. The trumpets
hear it and they invent a counter riff, something
that fits in the gaps of the saxophone line.
Then the trombones come in and add a bottom layer,
another riff. It's collective real time composition.
So it's modular. It's like building with musical
Legos. It is entirely modular. And because they
had to memorize it instantly, the music had to
be simple. It had to be blues based. It had to
be catchy. It relied on rhythm and repetition
rather than, say, harmonic complexity. That's
why the Kansas City. And the ultimate example
of this whole process has to be One O 'Clock
Jump. The story of how that song was born is
just incredible. It's the perfect illustration.
They were doing a late night radio broadcast
from the Reno Club in Kansas City. And this is
also, by the way, where he gets the nickname
Count. Oh, right. The announcer. The radio announcer
wanted to give him some style to compete with
Duke Ellington and Earl Fatha Hines. So on the
air, he just dubs him Count Basie and it's stuck.
So he's the new count. They're live on the radio
and they're running out of material. They're
running out of time to fill. So Basie just turns
to the band and says something like, we're going
to hit the rhythm and then you guys come in.
And he starts playing a simple blues pattern
in the key of D flat. Okay, now D flat is a great
key for a pianist. It fits under the fingers
nicely. But for horn players. It's a miserable
key for horn players. It's a nightmare. Lots
of flats to navigate mentally, especially when
you're improvising. But they do it. They do it.
They lock in instantly. But then the real magic
happens. Midway through the song, Basie modulates.
He just changes the key up to F. Live on the
radio. Live on the radio. Now think about the
panic that should induce. You have 12 guys making
up riffs, and suddenly the entire harmonic floor
shifts underneath them. They have to transpose
everything they were doing up a fourth. And they
nailed it. They didn't just nail it. That key
change became the signature hook of the song.
It's proof that these guys weren't just jamming
randomly. They had ears like radar. They were
listening. They were listening to Basie so intently
that wherever he went, they followed immediately.
That is that leadership through listening we
talked about earlier. Okay, so we have the riffs.
We have the on -the -fly improvisation. But a
riff is just a melody unless it has a powerful
engine behind it. And this is where we really
need to get technical. Yes. The All -American
Rhythm Section. Basie on piano, Walter Page on
bass, Joe Jones on drums, and Freddie Green on
guitar. The holy quartet of swing. You cannot
overstate their importance. I want to talk about
Freddie Green first. Yeah. Because to a modern
listener, or maybe a rock fan, Freddie Green
makes absolutely no sense. He's an enigma. He
played an unamplified acoustic guitar in a band
with 13 blasting horns. He almost never took
a solo in a 50 -year career. Why on earth is
he considered a legend? Because of the physics
of the chug. That's the only way I can describe
it. You have to understand the acoustic environment
in the 1930s. There are no monitors. The microphones
are terrible. The band needs a pulse. It can
feel in its bones. Right. So you have Walter
Page on the bass playing the big foundational
low notes on beats one and three. You have Joe
Jones on the hi -hats giving you that high frequency
sizzle. Freddie Green occupied the mid -range.
Acoustic notch in the sound. Exactly that. He
played these big high action arch top guitars.
and he struck the strings with incredible force.
But, and this is the secret, he damped them almost
instantly with his left hand. So instead of a
ringing crane chord that would just muddy everything
up, you got a short, sharp, percussive chunk.
Four chunks to a bar. Chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk,
chunk. It was a drum that just happened to play
pitch. And he was religious about not soloing.
There are stories that if he ever played a single
note line, Basie would just stop the band and
glare at him. Or he'd just stop playing himself.
He'd lift his hands off the keys and just wait.
The message was crystal clear. If you stop the
heartbeat to show off, the patient dies. Freddie
Green's discipline creates that relentless forward
momentum. That's what musicians mean when they
say a band is truly swinging. It's that unbreakable
quarter note pulse. It's like the driveshaft
of the car. Perfect analogy. And then you have
Joe Jones on drums, who completely changes the
game. He stops pounding the bass drum on every
single beat. This was the revolution. Before
Joe Jones, drummers played like marching bands.
It was boom, boom, boom, boom on the bass drum.
It was heavy. It was plodding. Sure. Joe Jones
moves the primary timekeeping function from the
bass drum up to the hi -hat cymbals, that shimmering
sound that we now take for granted. That was
him. And what did that do for the sound? It did
two things. First, it opened up the entire bottom
end of the audio spectrum so you could actually
hear the bass player, Walter Page, walking his
bass lines. And second, it made the rhythm feel
like it was floating. It became aerodynamic.
It allowed the band to jump, not just stomp.
And Basie is sitting on top of all of this. He
isn't playing that heavy Harlem stride anymore.
He's not playing constant rhythm. He doesn't
need to. Freddie Green and Walter Page have the
rhythm completely covered. Basie is now free
to do something totally new for a pianist. Comping.
Just playing chords. Not even full chords sometimes.
He plays accents. He plays conversation. He'll
poke a soloist with a little phrase. He'll drop
in a dissonant chord just to wake everyone up.
He became the conductor from the keyboard. So
you have this absolutely airtight rhythm section.
And then you have the horns. And Basie, being
the brilliant manager that he was, decides to
manufacture some drama up front. Oh, yeah. The
duel of the tenors. Yeah. Lester Young versus
Herschel Evans. This wasn't just a musical difference.
This was a fundamental personality clash that
Basie exploited for maximum theatrical effect.
Herschel Evans was the hawk. He was from the
Coleman Hawkins school of tenor sax. Meaning?
Meaning a huge, muscular, heavy tone with a wide,
aggressive vibrato. It was a masculine, emotional
Texas sound. He would growl through the horn.
And Lester Young? Lester Young was from another
planet entirely. They called him Prez, as in
the president. He held the saxophone at a weird
sideways angle, almost like a flute. His tone
was light, airy, with almost zero vibrato. It
was cerebral. It was cool. And they did not get
along. Evans hated Young's playing. He thought
it was weak and effeminate. Young thought Evans'
style was corny and old -fashioned. And Basie,
instead of trying to make peace, puts him on
opposite sides of the stage. It was brilliant
theater. He would point to Evans, who would play
a blistering passionate chorus and whip the crowd
into a frenzy with that raw power. Then everything
would calm down and he'd nod to Lester Young,
who would just float in with this cool, detached,
elegant melody. It taught the audience that jazz
could be two things at once. It could be hot
and it could be cool. It could be physical and
it could be intellectual. And it forced the band
to be able to pivot instantly between those two
completely different energies. So this lineup,
the Old Testament band, eventually gets discovered
by the famous producer John Hammond. Right. He
hears them on a shortwave radio broadcast in
his car in Chicago, and he literally drives to
Kansas City to find them. He finds them. They
record the famous Jones Smith Incorporated sessions
because Basie was under contract to someone else.
A session that Hammond later called the only
completely perfect recording session I've ever
had anything to do with. You get tracks like
Shoeshine Boy and Lady Be Good from that. Pure
lightning in a bottle. So they have the record,
they have the hype, and they head to New York
City. But this is where the story hits a... Pretty
big snag. They arrive at the Roseland Ballroom
in 1937, and they essentially flop. They flopped
because of context. The New York audience at
a place like the Roseland was used to the polish
of Fletcher Henderson or Duke Ellington. They
were used to sophisticated arrangements, smooth
transitions, written charts. And Basie's band
comes in. And they're playing these raw riff
-based head arrangements. They are relying on
pure energy and bluesy improvisation. And to
the sophisticated New York ear, it sounded like
noise. It sounded like a backwoods band. There's
that one review. that said the band was supposed
to set the place on fire, but the Roseland is
still standing. Ouch. Yeah. It was a brutal wake
-up call. It was the moment they realized that
pure Kansas City energy wasn't enough to conquer
the East Coast. They had to refine the presentation.
So they had to learn to read music better, clean
up the intros and the outros. Exactly. They had
to professionalize the raw energy without killing
it. But they clearly didn't lose the fire. Because
a year later, 1938, they walk into the Savoy
Ballroom in Harlem to face off against Chick
Webb's band. And for our listeners, the battle
of the bands at the Savoy wasn't just a figure
of speech. This was a gladiator match. It was
absolutely a combat sport. The audience, which
could be thousands of the best dancers in the
world, literally voted with their feet. If they
danced to your band, you won. If they sat down,
you lost. And Chick Webb was the undisputed king
of the Savoy. He was a small man, a hunchback
due to spinal tuberculosis, but he was a drummer
of terrifying power and aggression. He was famous
for literally physically exhausting other bands.
He would just play faster and louder until the
other guys couldn't keep up and just packed it
in. So Chick Webb comes out swinging. He's sweating.
He's beating the drums furiously. He's driving
his band like a madman. How does Basie respond
to that? And this is the absolute genius of Basie's
temperament. He didn't try to out -muscle Chick
Webb. You can't out -muscle Chick Webb at the
Savoy. It's a fool's errand. So what did he do?
He played the rope -a -dope. He kept the tempos
medium, even a little relaxed. He let that all
-American rhythm section lock into that deep,
cutting butter groove we talked about. He smiled.
He just sat there, poised, and played those little
splank chords. He contrasted Webb's raw aggression
with... Absolute unshakable cool. And it worked.
The dancers realized that while Chick Webb was
incredibly impressive to watch, the Basie band
was just better to dance to. The swing was deeper,
more hypnotic. So who won? While Webb was the
aggressor, the press, specifically Metronome
magazine, declared Basie's band the conqueror.
They praised the musical science behind their
swing. That moment solidified his status, didn't
it? That was the moment he went from being a
regional Kansas City hero to a national superstar.
That victory at the Savoy proved that you didn't
need to be the loudest or the fastest to be the
best. You just had to swing the hardest. So Basie
wins the battle. He becomes a huge star through
the late 30s and early 40s. But then the world
changes. The war, the musicians' union strike,
changing tastes. And eventually, the economics
of the big band just completely collapse. You
can't afford to put 18 guys on a bus anymore.
Basie actually has to disband the orchestra in
1950. That must have felt like the end of an
era. It was a very dark time for him and many
others. The swing era was definitively over.
Bebop was the new cool thing. And it was music
for listening, for chin stroking, not for dancing.
Small combos were cheaper. Basie found himself
touring with a sextet, an octet, playing small
clubs. For a lot of band leaders, this was the
retirement phase. But Basie decides to double
down. In 1952, he reforms the full 16 -piece
orchestra. This is the beginning of the New Testament
band. And I want to argue that this is actually
the more impressive musical achievement. I agree
with you completely. The Old Testament band was
about lightning in a bottle. This is a collection
of brilliant, one -of -a -kind soloists like
Lester Young. The New Testament band was about
the ensemble. That's it, exactly. The New Testament
band was a composer's band. He couldn't afford
to have a band full of superstar soloists anymore,
so he made the band itself the superstar. He
hired brilliant young arrangers like Neil Hefti
and later Quincy Jones. And the precision of
this new group was, it was terrifying. This is
the Atomic Basie era, and the title of that album,
The Atomic Mr. Basie, is perfect. The key to
their sound was dynamic range. Explain that.
They perfected what became known as the bassy
crescendo. They would start a phrase at a whisper.
I mean, so quiet you could literally hear the
saxophone player's keys clicking. Wow. And then,
in the space of a single beat, they would explode
into a triple full paywall of sound that would
knock you out of your seat. And just as quickly,
they would drop back down to a whisper. It's
the musical equivalent of a jump scare, but groovy.
It is shock and awe. It's all about control.
And the absolute masterpiece of this era, the
ultimate... test of that control is their recording
of neil hefty's little darling i was listening
to little darling this morning in preparation
it is painfully slow it is tantalizingly slow
and from a musician's perspective playing fast
is easy Playing that slow and keeping it perfectly
together with 16 other people, that is the hardest
thing you can possibly do. Why? Because there's
nowhere to hide. The horn players have to control
their breath so there's not the slightest waver
in the note. The drummer has to wait until the
absolute last possible millisecond to hit the
beat, creating this incredible tension. The whole
thing could fall apart at any second. And Basie
introduces it on the piano with that famous halting.
Sparse intro. That intro sets the rules for the
whole performance. He is telling the audience,
we are in no rush. You're on our time now. It's
the ultimate power move. In an era where rock
and roll is starting to speed everything up,
Basie slows everything way down. You mentioned
rock and roll. The 1950s is when Sinatra, Elvis,
Chuck Berry. They're taking over the culture.
Basie survives by pivoting his business model
again. He becomes the premier backing band for
the great vocalists. He hitched his star to the
singers. He realized that if he couldn't be the
pop star on the jukebox, he would back the pop
stars. The collaboration with Frank Sinatra,
specifically the 1966 album Sinatra at the Sands,
is probably the definitive live album of that
century. I love that album. Sinatra needed Basie.
Sinatra had all the swagger in the world, but
Basie provided the raw power, the engine. You
can just hear Sinatra feeding off the energy
of that rhythm section. And he brought in the
singer Joe Williams, which was a huge move. Joe
Williams was absolutely critical. He was a classic
blues shouter, but with this smooth. velvety
voice, so you have Hicks like, every day I have
the blues, that allowed Basie to reconnect with
his core black audience who loved the blues.
While the polished, sophisticated arrangements
kept the white collegiate audience happy, it
was a perfect crossover strategy that kept the
band working and relevant. I want to weave in
a little of his personal life here, because I
think it speaks to the stability he found in
the 50s and 60s. He was making real money again.
He moved his family out to Queens. To Addisley
Park in St. Albans, yes. And this is a really
significant part of Black American history. In
1946, Basie and his wife Catherine moved into
this neighborhood, which had been a restricted
whites -only development. But Basie, along with
folks like Fats Waller and later Jackie Robinson
and James Brown, they integrated it. It became
this incredible, beautiful enclave of Black excellence
and success. It grounds him, doesn't it? The
image we have. of the wild partying jazz musician
just doesn't fit him. No, he was a husband. He
was a father to his daughter, Diane, who had
cerebral palsy and he was devoted to her. He
would come home from these world tours, go to
his house in Queens, put on his slippers and
just watch TV. He called himself a non -playing
pianist when he was at home. Right. He loved
Westerns. He loved comic books. And then in the
60s, he adopted that trademark yachting cap.
The yachting cap. It became his crown, didn't
it? It absolutely did. As he aged, he took on
this elder. statesman persona, the cap, maybe
a cigar, the slow, deliberate walk to the piano.
He became a living symbol of jazz survival. Which
is probably why he has that amazing cameo in
the movie Blazing Saddles. Playing April in Paris
in the middle of the desert while the posse rides
by. It's legendary. It showed he was in on the
joke, you know? He knew he'd become this living
monument. He had a great sense of humor. But
let's circle back to the music one last time.
We talked about the precision of the New Testament
band. But Basie's own playing changed too. It
got even more minimal. He stripped it down even
further. We need to talk about the splank. The
splank. The splank. It's an onomatopoeia for
his signature piano voicing. It's usually a high
dissonant three or four note chord played with
a very sharp attack. Splank. And he would use
it so staringly. In the 50s and 60s, Basie would
sometimes go 32 bars without playing a single
note. He would just sit there smiling, letting
the bass and drums and Freddie Green run the
show. Then, at the most pivotal moment of a soloist's
phrase, he would just drop one splank. But isn't
that, well, let me play devil's advocate here
for a second. Is that genius or is that just
being lazy? Or maybe just old? It is the absolute
opposite of lazy. It requires immense mental
discipline and focus. A lazy player noodles.
A lazy player fills every empty space because
they're insecure. Silence makes them nervous.
OK. Basie was editing in real time. He was listening
to the chaotic conversation of 16 instruments
and saying, I will only speak when my comment
clarifies the entire sentence. That one chord
would reset the band. It would outline the harmony
for the soloist and it would kick the rhythm
section in the pants all at the same time. It's
the editor in chief approach to piano playing.
Exactly. He wasn't the writer anymore. He was
the editor. And in a world of increased noise,
the editor is often the most. You know, that
brings us right back to the core insight of this
whole deep dive. We called it leadership through
listening. When I look at Basie's career, 50
years of managing difficult personalities, changing
musical trends, financial pressures, he never
seemed to panic. He never screamed at anyone.
There's a famous story that if a musician in
the band was playing badly or stepping out of
line, Basie wouldn't fire them. He wouldn't yell
at them after the show. What would he do? He
would just play a little repetitive, annoying
musical figure on the piano during their solo
that mimicked their mistake. He would gently
mock them musically in front of everyone. The
musician would get the message immediately. That
is quietly devastating. It is. But it was effective,
and it kept the vibe loose. He treated his musicians
like adults. He gave them space look at how he
treated Freddie Green. He let Freddie Green be
the boss of the rhythm. He let the arrangers
be the boss of the notes. Basie was simply the
boss of the vibe. He managed the culture of the
band. That's it. And that culture outlived him.
Basie died in 1984, but the Count Basie Orchestra
is still touring the world today. They're essentially
a classical institution now, like the New York
Philharmonic. And they still value that sound.
And they still play the splank. They still play
one o 'clock jump. Because Basie created a system,
a philosophy, that was bigger than himself. He
built a machine that runs on swing. And as long
as you have a drummer who can work a hi -hat
and guitarist who can play four steady quarter
notes, that machine will run forever. So for
the listener who maybe only knows Basie from
the Sinatra records or maybe Fly Me to the Moon,
where should they start if they want to really
hear what we've been talking about today? I would
say listen to two tracks back to back. First,
listen to Lester Leaps In from the Old Testament
era in 1939. Hear that raw Kansas City small
group energy. Hear the duel between Lester Young
and Basie. Then, immediately after, listen to
Little Darling from the Atomic Mr. Basie album
from 1957. Listen for the dynamic control. Listen
to how impossibly quiet they get. If you can
really hear and appreciate the difference between
those two incredible tracks, you understand the
genius and the evolution of Count Basie. And
listen to the guitar. Make it a project. Try
to pick out Freddie Green's Chunk Chunk in the
background. Yes. Once you hear it, you can never
unhear it in any song. It's the heartbeat of
the last century of popular music. It really
is. So to wrap this up, I think our final thought
has to be about this idea of leadership through
listening. Basie was almost never the loudest
player in his own band. He let the saxophones
duel. He let the drummer drive. He let the trumpets
scream. He just intervened with a single note.
or a single cord to steer the ship. In a world
of loud egos both then and now, Basie proved
that the person doing the least amount of talking
is often the one who is in total control. Power
and subtlety, a great lesson. Thanks for diving
in with us on this one. Keep listening, keep
swinging, and we'll see you on the next one.