Search - Count Basie & His Orchestra :: Let's Jump

Anyone with ears should own this,

Tony Thomas | SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA | 04/19/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The curious thing about this record is that it isn't really a jump record. That is to say a genre called jump blues flooded the gap between R&B and Jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s. As it was dying the Basie Old Testament orchestra did try and few jump blues numbers featuring Jimmy Rushing and others, but this didnt prevent the band's breakup. No this album is from the mid 1940s and is pure hard blowing blusey Kansas City Bill Basie Swing.



This is a real special historic hidden Gem. Some of you may have the great recordings from Jubilee featuring Ernie Bubbles Whitman, Rochester, and alot of the stars doing it up with Jimmie Rushing and Basie on the show(a jazz music and comedy show broadcast by Armed Forces Radio for Black troops in the then segregated armed forces), but these rehearsal recordings are as fine, or finer than anything I have ever heard of the wartime Basie. The recording technique seems superior to their last studio recordings before the recording ban. The big weakness here is that there is absolutely no documentation.



The version of Jumpin at the Woodside here is smoking hot. There's just really Lester's tenor solo rather than the battle of tenors, or the mini battle between tenor and clarinet at the end as on standard versions of Jumpin. However, Lester Young lets loose with a non-stop solo that goes for about four or five choruses that makes up for that and then some. It is really a treat.



Buddy Tate and then Illinois Jacquet shine and roast on Rockabye Basie and Swing shift.



One of my favorite pieces is Basie Boogie. Except when he had his small bands between the two big bands, Basie was shy about his piano playing. However, on this piece he burns and smokes a very solid, swinging dancing boogie woogie with the band only interrupting him for accents.



What is not mentioned because there is no documentation is that during the 1943 engagement in LA or was it 1944, while the band was doing a club date, MP's appeared around 11pm and carried Joe Jones and Lester Young off into the army--what happened there is another story. Both had been trying to stay out of the man's army by hoping the tour would keep the band one city ahead of the draft notice. The ever mobile army got the schedule and came and abducted them like slave catchers of old. They wouldn't even let them do the Jubilee Show, playing for the troops!



Artie Shaw jumped in to fill the void left by Lester for the LA gigs of that tour and Buddy Rich filled in for Joe Jones. Two master cuts featuring Shaw and although the album notes dont mention it-- Rich shine here. Compare the greatness of Lester's two earlier recordings of Lady Be Good--with the smith and jones group in 1936 and in saxophone battle with Chu Berry on one of the last Decca Sides-to the clean, sweet and hard swinging lines Artie throws down here. Shaw's One O'clock jump here shines like Lester's Jumpin at the Woodside. The band plays the whole tune through a few times which is nice, since a lot of air check and live versions of One O Clock Jump just have the tune as theme song and not as a developed piece. Then suddently Artie comes in and blows his brains out. If you hear this, no one thinks that the Benny was the white king of Clarinet let alone swing.



I first played this CD while out of town, travelling through North Carolina. I brought about 6 or 7 other CDs. I had hours of driving. However, once I played this, I couldn't get anything else in the CD player except volume II of the Decca Basie to compare the jumpin at the woodside here with the original version. This is simply too good.



Anyone with ears should own this"