Search results for "Walter Page"

Count Basie: Dance of the Gremlins (Rating: 95/100) posted in Music June 10, 08

As evidenced throughout "Dance of the Gremlins," Jo Jones was the undisputed king of maintaining a swinging hi-hat pu...

This track review is included in: THE DOZENS: HISTORIC RHYTHM SECTIONS

            The Rhythm Section, artwork by Suzanne Cerny ...

Bennie Moten: Moten Swing (Rating: 100/100) posted in Music November 10, 07

It is difficult to believe that this recording was made on the cusp of 1933. Basie’s later spare style (complete wit...

Billie Holiday (with Count Basie): They Can't Take That Away From Me (Rating: 96/100) posted in Music February 11, 08

Count Basie featured three singers with his band on this June 30, 1937 live broadcast from Harlem's famous Savoy Bal...

Count Basie (with Lester Young): Song of the Islands (Rating: 100/100) posted in Music August 27, 09

I once asked Stan Getz which Lester Young recordings he most admired, and this was the first track he mentioned. I h...

Lester Young: I Want a Little Girl (Rating: 95/100) posted in Music October 30, 07

Setting aside his tenor sax, Lester Young switches to his beloved but dilapidated metal clarinet. Upon seeing this pi...

Lester Young: Lester Leaps In (1939) (Rating: 98/100) posted in Music November 07, 07

Lester Young was the major influence on a generation of tenor saxophonists who preferred his relatively light, pure t...

Count Basie: One O'Clock Jump (Rating: 100/100) posted in Music November 09, 07

With his customary sparse piano, wily Bill B. sets the stage for this easygoing anthem of the Swing Era. Big-toned te...

Count Basie: Shoe Shine Boy (Rating: 96/100) posted in Music November 12, 07

By convention, Swing Era jazzmen improvised harmonically, grinding through chord progressions as implacably as a trai...

Count Basie: Dickie's Dream (Rating: 96/100) posted in Music November 17, 07

Four days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland to kick off World War II, Count Basie's Kansas City Seven invaded a New Y...

Count Basie (featuring Lester Young): Oh, Lady Be Good (Rating: 96/100) posted in Music December 03, 07

Swing Era rhythm sections specialized in a monotonous thumping not unlike men with flyswatters beating determinedly o...

Billie Holiday & Lester Young: I Can't Get Started (Rating: 98/100) posted in Music December 09, 07

The collaborations between Billie Holiday and Lester Young still speak to us today -- and not just as historical docu...

Count Basie: Stay On It (Rating: 95/100) posted in Music January 18, 08

It says quite a bit when ensembles led by Basie and Dizzy Gillespie give equally convincing performances of a particu...

Billie Holiday: Me, Myself and I (Rating: 100/100) posted in Music January 20, 08

“Me, Myself and I” is one of the great classics of the Billie Holiday-Lester Young collaborations. The song is recor...

This track review is included in: THE DOZENS: TWELVE ESSENTIAL BILLIE HOLIDAY PERFORMANCES

              Billie Holiday, artwork by Michae...

Billie Holiday: A Sailboat in the Moonlight (Rating: 100/100) posted in Music January 20, 08

The electricity evident in “Me, Myself and I” is hot-wired into “Sailboat” -- both recorded at the same session -- as...

This track review is included in: THE DOZENS: TWELVE ESSENTIAL BILLIE HOLIDAY PERFORMANCES

              Billie Holiday, artwork by Michae...

Kansas City Five (featuring Count Basie & Lester Young): Don't Be That Way (Rating: 91/100) posted in Music April 15, 09

John Hammond, that extraordinary jazz entrepreneur, record producer, and scion of the Vanderbilt family organized and...

Count Basie (featuring Lester Young): Oh, Lady Be Good (Rating: 97/100) posted in Music August 16, 09

A sort of dry run for the recently signed, but not-yet-recorded Count Basie Orchestra, the “Jones-Smith” session unle...

This track review is included in: THE DOZENS: LESTER YOUNG AT 100

It’s hard to imagine what it was like. Today, New York City is so entrenched as the jazz scene of record that the...

Kansas City Six: Way Down Yonder In New Orleans (Rating: 93/100) posted in Music August 16, 09

Eddie Durham’s arrangement for this 1922 standard is such a perfect one for the swing era that it should be in every ...

This track review is included in: THE DOZENS: LESTER YOUNG AT 100

It’s hard to imagine what it was like. Today, New York City is so entrenched as the jazz scene of record that the...

Lester Young: Way Down Yonder in New Orleans (Rating: 98/100) posted in Music August 24, 09

Although Lester Young will forever be associated with Kansas City jazz, he came from a Louisiana family and spent muc...

Paul Quinichette: Paul's Bunion (Rating: 86/100) posted in Music August 27, 09

His style was so strongly reminiscent of Lester "Prez" Young's, that Paul Quinichette was inevitably dubbed the "Vice...

Count Basie & His Orchestra: Exactly Like You (Rating: 93/100) posted in Music September 04, 09

“Exactly Like You” has been a jam session staple for years, but when Count Basie recorded it on his second Decca sess...

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