80 years ago today: the Benny Goodman-Count Basie Octet

By the autumn of 1940, Benny Goodman had undergone his first back surgery and was already on the mend. He had put his orchestra on hold for the summer, with a few men on retainer, like electric guitar wonder Charlie Christian, who'd taken the opportunity to visit family and friends back in Oklahoma, his first chance since he'd hit the big time the previous summer.

While still a popular bandleader, Goodman had somewhat lost some of his spark after the departure of some key men in his big band, namely Harry James and Gene Krupa, and with his current band on hold, rumours were rife. A big one was a possible merger with Count Basie, himself having some problems with his booking agency. Besides mutual admiration and being signed to the same label, a common thread to both bands was producer John Hammond, who had championed both and in 1942 became Goodman's brother-in-law.

Benny Goodman and Charlie Christian sitting in with the Count Basie Orchestra,
Apollo Theatre, Harlem, October 24, 1940 (source)

Sinatra at the Sands, at 50

Sinatra at The Sands —  all pictures (except record covers) by John Dominis/Getty Images

“It was probably the most exciting engagement I have ever done in my life, since I started performing.”

Frank Sinatra about playing with Basie at the Sands in January 1966

Last December we celebrated the centennial of Frank Sinatra. I won’t go into why he was important as a crucial part of that moment when American popular music equaled top musicianship, not only from the interpreters, but also from the composers and songwriters; let’s just say that if you love music, you should have at least two or three of his albums at home.

Among his very prolific output, one of the most popular — not necessarily the “best”, however you gauge that — is Sinatra at the Sands, recorded in the last week of a month-long stay at the Copa Room in the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, which ended on Thursday, February 1, 1966, fifty years ago, today.

“The Basie orchestra was a like juggernaut. When they came at you, after the downbeat and the orchestra started to play, you knew that you had to be part of that or you got lost […] We did things that were really jumping […] I tried to stay in the realm of what the orchestra was playing. I hang back just a little bit, in a sense.”

Frank Sinatra about playing with Basie at the Sands

Back row: Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Grover Mitchell, Marshal Royal, Bobby Plater.
Front row: Teddy Reig, Al Grey, Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, Freddie Green, Bill Hughes,
Sonny Payne, Eric Dixon, Charlie Fowlkes, Al Aarons, Henderson Chambers, Sonny Cohn, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Leon Thomas.

Frank Wess (1922-2013)

Just a couple years younger than Charlie Parker, and also faring from Kansas City, Frank Wess was one of those excellent musicians poorly served by tags like "mainstream" or "bop". He was a member of the Basie orchestra for a long time. Apparently an unassuming man, it was our loss that he wasn't seen under the spotlight more often. Wess passed away on October 30, aged 91.

Jazz for Playboys (Savoy/Denon SV-0191)

Never mind the official hierarchies of jazz, Wess was one of the first tenor sax players I encountered in jazz (before Coltrane or Coleman Hawkins, for instance). He was also my first flutist, the only one I knew for some time, which may explain why I couldn't understand some of my colleagues' disliking the instrument. Guess I was just lucky.

It was by sheer coincidence that a local shop had bucketloads of Japanese Savoy/Denon CDs at discount price. At a time when I mulled over the purchase of one CD for a very long time, I don't know what made me choose this record without listening to it. Not the cover, obviously. It wasn't the title either (believe me).

The strange case of Freddie Green

Freddie Green (© Burt Goldblatt/CTS Images)

Freddie Green would have been 100 years old on March 31st. As familiar as his name is for Swing fans, his was a strange career, his contribution being easier to spot by its absence rather than its presence. From 1937 onwards he was what kept Basie's rhythm sections together, his metronomic touch and extremely light harmonic contribution probably being the factor that allowed them to relax and swing harder. At a time when the electric guitar was introduced and became the main way to do jazz on a guitar, he kept playing an archtop acoustic. He and electric pioneer Charlie Christian were friends—they recorded together in small groups, live and in the studio—but when Christian gave Green an amplifier as a present, fellow Basie-ites sabotaged any prospective solo work by Green enough times for him to give up the idea.