The Atomic Mr. Basie

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The Atomic Mr. Basie
Studio album by Count Basie and his Orchestra

Publication
(s)

January 1958

admission

October 21-22, 1957

Label (s) Roulette Records

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

Jazz, swing

Title (number)

11 (original) 16 (re-release)

running time

39:19 (Original) 56:34 (Re-release)

occupation Count Basie (piano), Henry Coker (trombone), Wendell Culley (trumpet), Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (tenor saxophone), Frank Foster (tenor saxophone), Charles Fowlkes (baritone saxophone), Freddie Green (guitar), Al Gray (trombone) . Eddie Jones (double bass), Thad Jones (trumpet), Joe Newman (trumpet), Sonny Payne (drums), Benny Powell (trombone), Marshal Royal (alto saxophone), Frank Wess (saxophone), Joe Williams (vocals, on track 16 ) and Snooky Young (trumpet)

production

Teddy Reig

Studio (s)

Capitol Studios, New York City

Location (s)

???

chronology
Count Basie at Newport

(1957)

The Atomic Mr. Basie Count Basie Presents Eddie Davis Trio + Joe Newman

(1957)

Count Basie (1974)

The Atomic Mr. Basie (originally called Basie , also known as E = MC 2 and reissued as The Complete Atomic Basie in 1994 ) is a music album by Count Basie and his Orchestra from 1958.

album

Recording and publication

The recordings for the studio album The Atomic Mr. Basie with a total of eleven titles took place on October 21 and 22, 1957 in Capitol Studios in New York City , the release as a long-playing record in January 1958 at Roulette Records . The album was re-released on CD under the name The Complete Atomic Basie in 1994 and included five additional bonus tracks.

background

For Count Basie, who had made a career with his first big band since the mid-1930s, hard times had dawned since the mid-1940s. Bebop and earlier rhythm & blues began more and more to replace the swing music played by Basie and so Basie had disbanded his first big band in the early 1950s and played for a time in a small cast in the septet together with Clark Terry , Buddy DeFranco , Charlie Rouse , Wardell Gray , Paul Quinichette , Buddy Rich, and Gus Johnson . “The band had no problems getting engagements, but when the singer Billy Eckstine repeatedly warned the pianist to finally put together a big band again, Basie was persuaded at some point. The new big band was fundamentally different from the previous one. The musicians were younger and played more modern, the arrangements were cleaner, more powerful, more concise. But the old concept of focusing on the solos, always having excellent saxophonists in the band, promoting the moment of competition and, above all, the continuously swinging rhythm section, was retained. The rhythm section now consisted of Basie and Green, the drummer Gus Johnson and the double bass player Eddie Jones . The two saxophone fighters were Frank Wess and Frank Foster , Joe Newman continued to play the trumpet, but also younger musicians like Thad Jones , who, like Foster, contributed many of the arrangements for the band. And with the arrangers Ernie Wilkens , Quincy Jones and Neal Hefti , Basie had just as lucky a hand that guaranteed new hits. ... This second great basie band of the 1950s produced a number of excellent recordings, ”including The Atomic Mr. Basie . For Joachim-Ernst Berendt and Günther Huesmann , the accent “in the more modern Basie orchestras ... is on effortless, springy precision that is gained in the most natural way from swing. Basie's band could swing with a resilience, lightness and collective precision that led jazz critic Whitney Ballet to remark that Basie 'set the pace'. "And Ralf Dombrowski writes:" The Basie Big Band of the 'Atomic Sessions' ... was declared a 'Second Testament' , as opposed to the famous line-up of the late thirties with Lester Young , Harry Edison , Buck Clayton , because she knew how to combine a number of outstanding soloists to create a compact, extremely powerful orchestral sound. Saxophonists like Eddie 'Lockjaw' Davis , trumpeters like Thad Jones and Joe Newman shaped an ensemble sound that was rarely heard in the late 1950s. Then there were the arrangements by Neal Hefti, who had joined Count Basie after his days with Woody Herman around 1950 and had clearly shaped the orchestral sound of the post-war years. His specialty was the balance of dramatic means, which he achieved above all through contrasting dynamics and melodies. ... Hefti mastered these orchestral virtues with ease and the ensemble thanked them for them by recording a complete program in October 1957 with just his compositions. It became known under the title 'E = MC² - The Atomic Basie' and was… soon one of Basie's bestselling albums, so successful that six months later the sequel ' Basie Plays Hefti ' was added. "

Track list

Original album (1958)

  • Count Basie and his Orchestra: The Atomic Mr. Basie (Roulette - ROU 1005)
  1. Kid from Red Bank (Basie, Neal Hefti) - 2:38
  2. Duet - 4:10
  3. After Supper - 3:22
  4. Flight of the Foo Birds - 3:21
  5. Double-O - 2:45
  6. Teddy the Toad - 3:40
  7. Whirlybird - 3:46
  8. Midnite Blue - 4:25
  9. Splanky - 3:35
  10. Fantail - 2:50
  11. Lil 'Darlin - 4:47

* All songs were composed by Neal Hefti , unless otherwise stated.

Re-release with bonus tracks (1994)

  • Count Basie and his Orchestra: The Complete Atomic Basie (Roulette Jazz - 7243 8 28635 2 6)
  1. Kid from Red Bank (Basie, Neal Hefti) - 2:38
  2. Duet - 4:10
  3. After Supper - 3:22
  4. Flight of the Foo Birds - 3:21
  5. Double-O - 2:45
  6. Teddy the Toad - 3:40
  7. Whirlybird - 3:46
  8. Midnite Blue - 4:25
  9. Splanky - 3:35
  10. Fantail - 2:50
  11. Lil 'Darlin - 4:47
  12. Silks and Satins ( Jimmy Mundy ) - 4:05
  13. Sleepwalker's Serenade (Alternative Take) - 3:37
  14. Sleepwalker's Serenade - 3:39
  15. The Late, Late Show (Roy Alfred, Murray Berlin) - 2:52
  16. The Late, Late Show (Vocal Version) (Alfred, Berlin) - 3:02

* All songs were composed by Neal Hefti , unless otherwise stated.

Contributors

Musicians and their instruments

Compositions and arrangements

  • Neal Hefti - compositions unless otherwise noted
  • Neal Hefti - Arrangements (Tracks 1–11)
  • Jimmy Mundy - Arrangements (Tracks 12-14)

Production staff original album (1958)

  • Barry Ulanov - liner notes
  • Arnold Meyers - Photography
  • Teddy Reig - producer

Production staff re-release (1994)

  • Bob Arnold - sound engineer
  • Malcolm Addey - Sound Engineer (Digital Transfer)
  • Barry Ulanov - liner notes
  • Michael Cuscuna - liner notes
  • Teddy Reig - producer
  • Michael Cuscuna - producer re-release

reception

The album won Best Jazz Performance, Group and Best Performance by a Dance Band awards at the first annual Grammy Awards in 1959 . According to Acclaimed Music, The Atomic Mr. Basie was # 6 Most Popular Albums in 1958, # 25 Most Popular Albums of the 1950s, and # 837 Most Popular Albums of All Time, based on an aggregation of hundreds of reviewer lists from around the world.

The album is one of Basie's best known and has received international critical acclaim. This is shown by the ratings at Allmusic (5 out of 5 stars), in The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD , 6th edition 2002 (4 out of 4 stars), in the Virgin Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5 out of 5 stars), in Le Guide du CD (4 out of 4 stars) and in Music Story (5 out of 5 stars).

The music database Allmusic gave the album 5 out of 5 stars and the jazz critic Bruce Eder states: "It surprised Basie's regular audience and many other people as a bold, forward-looking statement in the context of a big band recording."

The Austrian radio station Ö1 comments: “It was pretty daring to add a picture of a huge, glowing mushroom cloud to the cover of the LP. The full-bodied subtitle of the formula: "E = MC² = Count Basie Orchestra + Neal Hefti Arrangements" may have been a reason for Albert Einstein, who died two years earlier, to turn in his grave, but jazz fans of 1957 were allowed to Confidently raise their expectations of Count Basie and his orchestra. And they were not disappointed. The combination of Hefti's compositions and arrangements with the juicy, crisp sound of the Count Basie Orchestra was actually a highly energetic affair. It didn't matter that the heyday of swing and big bands was long over, because Count Basie knew how to enable the musicians of his band to fly solo within the homogeneous orchestral sound that could compete with those of other contemporary jazz musicians. ' The Atomic Mr. Basie ' is a breathtaking music trip without any slack. And by the way, this LP also shows how great mono recordings can sound. "

John Fordham states in his Das Grosse Buch vom Jazz : “Basie's 'new' band of the fifties - more elegant than his earlier ones, but more swinging than ever and with outstanding arrangements. This fantastic record is probably the best Basie recorded after the war. "

The album was included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die , Will Fulford-Jones calls it "Basie's last big record."

And Robert Shore describes the album in Jazzwise Magazine as: “Basie's great career revival album from 1957.” Jazzwise Magazine also included the album on its list “ The 100 Jazz Albums That Shook the World ” and wrote: “For the first time released under the name Basie and illustrated with a 'tasteful' mushroom cloud, it had… an explosive… effect as it was his first album to capture the rich ensemble sound and beat. Some of the tracks sound better than others, but the overall mood is timeless. "

literature

  • Robert Dimery: 1001 albums. Music You Should Hear Before Life Is Over. 4. update New edition, Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-283-01112-3 .
  • John Fordham: The Big Book of Jazz. Christian Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-88472-395-2 .
  • Brian Morton, Richard Cook: The Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in the 1000 Best Albums. Penguin Books Ltd., Kindle version, 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-195900-9 .
  • Peter Niklas Wilson (ed.): Jazz classics. Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-030030-4 .
  • Joachim-Ernst Behrend, Günther Huesmann: The jazz book. 7th edition. S. Fischer Verlag. Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-15964-2 .
  • Ralf Dombrowski : Basis-Diskothek Jazz (= Reclams Universal Library. No. 18372). Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-018372-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d The Atomic Mr. Basie. discogs.com, accessed July 13, 2017 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e The Complete Atomic Basie. discogs.com, accessed July 13, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b Peter Niklas Wilson (Ed.): Jazz classics . Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-030030-4 , p. 98 f .
  4. ↑ Joachim-Ernst Behrend, Günther Huesmann: Das Jazzbuch . 7th edition. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-15964-2 , p. 756 .
  5. ^ Ralf Dombrowski: Basis-Diskothek Jazz. Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, pp. 20f.
  6. ↑ The Atomic Mr. Basie. grammy.com, accessed July 13, 2017 .
  7. ↑ Count Basie . Archived from the original on August 5, 2017. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 13, 2017. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.acclaimedmusic.net
  8. ↑ The Atomic Mr. Basie. (No longer available online.) Acclaimedmusic.net, archived from the original on August 10, 2017 ; Retrieved July 12, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.acclaimedmusic.net
  9. ↑ The Atomic Mr. Basie. allmusic.com, accessed on July 13, 2017 : "It took Basie's core audience and a lot of other people by surprise, as a bold, forward-looking statement within the context of a big-band recording"
  10. ↑ The Atomic Mr. Basie. oe1.orf.at, accessed on July 12, 2017 .
  11. ↑ John Fordham: The Big Book of Jazz . Christian Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-88472-395-2 , p. 181 .
  12. ^ Robert Dimery: 1001 albums. Music You Should Hear Before Life Is Over . 4th edition. Zurich 2009, ISBN 978-3-283-01112-3 .
  13. ↑ The Atomic Mr. Basie. jazzwisemagazine.com, accessed on July 12, 2017 : "Basie's great career-reviving 1957 album"
  14. ↑ The Atomic Mr. Basie. jazzwisemagazine.com, accessed on July 13, 2017 (English): “First issued simply as Basie and illustrated with“ a tasteful ”mushroom cloud it… had an explosive… impact as it was his first album to capture the rich ensemble sound as well as the beat. Some of the charts wear better than others, but the overall feel is timeless. "