Count Basie Recommendations?

[Teasing the Korean]

3 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

So, sorry to say but the tone of this "4 minutes out of your life" "suggestion" is not something I'd have expected from you. No need to try to "convert" the basically inclined in THIS way. 🤨

My suggestion was not at all intended in the way you've interpreted it.  I was just hoping you would listen to the opening track, especially if you had never encountered the LP or CD. 

[Big Beat Steve]

OK, so let's take this one step further. I did listen to two samples of tunes on YT (investing more than 4 minutes of "my life" ) and it confirmed that i might well pick it up when the occasion arises. However, while it is not bad at all I am not going overboard either. Somehow it differs from the somewhat earlier 60s sounds of the Basie band that I am familiar with in a way I cannot quite put my finger on. To my ears it somehow sounds less "totally unmistakeably Basie". The section sound (i.e. of the full band outside the solos) sounds strangely and overly familiar for and among big bands from roughly those years. Either I've heard these tunes before (in settings where the band was not identified) or the sound and charts have been copied or recycled over and over again elsewhere - but who was first? I hope it was Basie.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Teasing the Korean]

18 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

OK, so let's take this one step further. I did listen to two samples of tunes on YT (investing more than 4 minutes of "my life" ) and it confirmed that i might well pick it up when the occasion arises. However, while it is not bad at all I am not going overboard either. Somehow it differs from the somewhat earlier 60s sounds of the Basie band that I am familiar with in a way I cannot quite put my finger on. To my ears it somehow sounds less "totally unmistakeably Basie". The section sound (i.e. of the full band outside the solos) sounds strangely and overly familiar for and among big bands from roughly those years. Either I've heard these tunes before (in settings where the band was not identified) or the sound and charts have been copied or recycled over and over again elsewhere - but who was first? I hope it was Basie.

Did you check out the title tune?  That is my favorite on the album.  I hear some Mancini in it.

[Big Beat Steve]

I listened to Straight Ahead and The Queen Bee.
Maybe it is those "Mancini" overtones (which i certainly had not recognized as such - which isn't saying much) that did not exactly put me off but made me wonder with a feeling of irritation? Could it be that it is fairly "standard" effects and patterns also heard elsewhere that are being reworked here?

[JSngry]

That'll play the whole album for you.

Nestico brought a freshness of charts that were original compositions, something that the Basie book had not had for a while. But those compositions seldom stuck out as being more than  Column A/Column B type assemblages of standard parts.

But the Basie band didn't care. I read where Grover Mitchell told Nestico to just write his thing and then don't worry, that the band will take care of making it sound like Basie. A perfect summation of how it worked,! 

Ok, here's the play list for , Basic Basie:

 

They're both albums of standards, but the band is just so... coolly killer on both. No "nice"  days being offered or given here! 

[JSngry]

I really like Chico O'Farrill's sax voicing, deep and wide.