Basie Rocks! A great idea? One best left on the cutting-room floor? Or perhaps a little of both? There are reasonable arguments to be made on all sides of the equation. On the one hand, this is the ...

In 1935, pianist William "Count" Basie (born August 21, 1904), a fixture on the Kansas City jazz scene since the late 1920s, organized his own rocking, riffing, blues-based big band. The following ...

From 1935 to his death in 1984, pianist and bandleader Count Basie led one of the most important jazz institutions of the 20th century, in the process forging a distinctive sound that changed the jazz ...