Count Basie: Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Track

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Group

Count Basie Orchestra

CD

Basie's Beatle Bag (Universal/Polygram 2613)

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Musicians:

Count Basie (piano), Al Grey (trombone), Marshall Royal (alto sax), Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis (tenor sax), Freddie Green (guitar), Sonny Payne (drums),

Wallace Davenport, Sonny Cohn, Al Aarons, Phil Guilbeau (trumpets), Grover Mitchell, Henderson Chambers, Bill Hughes (trombones); Bobby Plater (alto saxes), Eric Dixon (tenor sax), Count Basie (organ), Norman Keenan (bass)

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Composed by Lennon/McCartney; arranged by Chico O’Farrill

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Recorded: Los Angeles, May 3, 1966

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Rating: 75/100 (learn more)

Jazz in the 1950s survived Elvis by ignoring him. Miles Davis did not apply his moody Harmon mute to "Heartbreak Hotel." The Modern Jazz Quartet didn't cover "Hound Dog" with one of their elegant rococo arrangements. Yet in the '60s, that lesson was lost. Instead of playing hard to get, jazzmen lusted after the pop charts, with dismal results. Here, as altoist Marshall Royal ladles out more vibrato than Carmen Lombardo on New Year's Eve, the Basie crew shows how clueless jazzmen were to what made mid-'60s rock so appealing: its freshness, irreverence and youthful exuberance. Hey, waiter! Set the fellas in the band up with a round of Geritol on my tab. On second thought, better make those doubles.

Reviewer: Alan Kurtz

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