While other celebrated jazz orchestra leaders were renowned as composers or soloists, Basie spent over forty years perfecting the art of bandleading, the job of timing shifts of personnel and repertoire to ensure both continuity and change. Although he formed his orchestra in 1936 in Kansas City, he had learned his piano style in Harlem from ragtime pianists like James P. Johnson, and Willie ‘The Lion’ Smith, and, above all, Fats Waller. Basie toured with vaudeville shows, ending up in  Kansas City,  where  he accompanied  silent movies  before joining Walter Page’s Blue Devils in 1927, a band whose

leadership passed to  Benny Moten. Following Moten’s death, the band broke up, but Basie brought together a number of its alumni in a new nine-piece group. The name ‘Count’ was given to him by a radio announcer who thought he deserved to rank with Duke Ellington and Earl Hines. At this point, Basie’s was the top Kansas City band, bringing to perfection the powerful riffing ‘territory’ style, and combining it with his innovatory economical piano-playing. Through John Hammond, Basie came to the notice of Benny Goodman and Decca recorded the band in 1936. These classic sides included ‘One O’Clock Jump’, later to become the band’s theme tune. Featured players with this first version of the Basie Orchestra included vocalist Jimmy Rushing, Lester Young, Freddie Green, and Jo Jones.
   The unity of the rhythm section and the ensemble work of the horns in Basie’s band inspired the swing music of white bands like those of Goodman and Artie Shaw. While those bands enjoyed wide commercial success, the Basie Orchestra toured the circuit of black dance halls and the clubs during the thirties and forties. Among its members were trumpeter Buck Clayton and Billie Holiday. The orchestra continued to record regularly for Columbia and had an R& B chart entry with ‘Open the Door Richard’, a 1947 novelty number featuring the singing of trumpeter Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison. By 1950, financial problems had forced Basie to cut the size of his band to eight.
   With new composer/arrangers Neal Hefti and Johnny Mandel, the big band was relaunched in 1952. During the fifties a succession of major soloists including Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis and Wardell Gray kept the Basie band in the forefront of what was called mainstream jazz. In later years, its innovatory period over, the band no longer nurtured new solo talent. Instead, after 1960, it took part in many studio collaborations with all the leading popular jazz vocalists, from Ella Fitzgerald to Sammy Davis Jr, and Basie found a place in the show business mainstream, playing Las Vegas and at the Royal Variety Performance.
   The one new development in this last phase of his career came in the emphasis on Basie’s own piano-playing. In a series of small-group recordings, he displayed solo skills which he had kept hidden for thirty years as a member of the Orchestra’s rhythm section.