Atop an Underwood (6 page)

“I want guts in my music!” Count Basie once said publicly. “No screaming brass for me,” he had added, “but I do want plenty of guts in my music.”

And so, without any screaming brass, the Count managed to weld his unit into a terrific gang of soloists and ensemble players. Much to the dismay of most of our present day “swing” bands, they cannot be terrific unless they tear off some deafening brass measures to send the jitterbugs out of the world. Count Basie's swing arrangements are not blaring, but they contain more drive, more power, and more thrill than the loudest gang of corn artists can acquire by blowing their horns apart.

Possibly, excepting Duke Ellington, the Basie band is the most underrated and greatest band in the country today. Unlike the vacuous phraseology of pseudo-swing bands, Basie's stuff means something. As for solo work, there is no greater assortment of soloists to be found on any one band-stand.

Taking these stars apart, we can well realize why the Basie ensemble is the best in the land. Since the old days in Kansas City, these boys have been jamming together, causing a magnificent blend of musicians familiar with each other's peculiarities and ideas, and a subsequent precision of play.

To begin with, the Count has the greatest rhythm section in the history of jazz, and this has helped his other great musicians to improve. The Count himself is an outstanding soloist. He is a thrilling player with tremendous ideas. He ranks at least third among the best pianists of the swing world. The rest of his rhythm section is composed of Jo Jones, Walter Page, and Freddy Green.

Jo Jones is the most finished drummer in existence. It is interesting to note how he keeps the beat going when he takes a solo on his hides, unlike the ordinary drummers who stop all activities when they set sail on their riflings. Freddy Green's steady guitar work has been unparalleled in jazz since the days of the old school guitarists. When Freddy Green starts his rhythm going, in unison with Walter Page's mighty bass-playing and Jo Jones chimes in on the drums, you have the rhythm section that every maestro dreams of.

But that is only half of it. The Count's soloists are all good, especially Lester Young, Dickie Wells, Harry Edison, and Buck Clayton.

Lester Young, who is now rated along with Coleman Hawkins on the hot tenor, is the Count's outstanding soloist. Lester uses a different riff on every chorus, and his enormous store of ideas enables him to take an unlimited number of solos. His phrasing on jump numbers is unequaled, while he is highly proficient when it comes to blues. It would be safe to say that Lester Young is actually popularizing the tenor sax, an instrument which the ordinary jitterbug cares little for, because he would prefer a screeching trumpet a la Clyde Hurley. Young's playing may turn the trend of public interest to the tenor sax, because he is really a master-mind with that horn of his.

Besides Lester Young, Buddy Tate plays the tenor in the first chair. Tate is a stylist, and has an individual style definitely distinct from Young's, which adds a touch of variety to the Basie reeds. Earl Warren and Jack Washington are the other two saxists, each of whom are better than average. Lester Young is also a terrific clarinetist, but he rarely plays it except to mess around someone else's solo in the background. The same for Washington's alto yet to be heard.

Harry Edison, a powerhouse trumpeter, with a choice individuality of ideas, is featured in the brass section. His marvelous control, and the thrilling manner in which he delivers his trumpet solos makes him the equal of Buck Clayton, the other trumpet ace.

Clayton, who has improved a great deal in his long stay with Basie, has beautiful tone and some wonderful ideas. Clayton ranks, in fact, with the greatest trumpeters of all time. Al Killian, who recently joined the band at the Golden Gate Ballroom, has taken Shad Collins' place as lead trumpeter. Collins had been an amazing high note trumpeter. Ed Louis, a good hot player, occupies the other chair.

However, the thing which makes Basie's trumpet section what it is is the definite clash of style, provided by Edison and Clayton.

Dickie Wells, probably ranking alongside of Higginbotham, Keg Johnsen and all the other great slip-horn men, is the man who provides those stirring trombone passages for the Count Basie orchestra. Dickie has a torrid accent on his phrasing, and is purely hot. It was unfortunate that Ben Morton had to leave the Basie band last month, but Wells will carry on. Vic Dickerson replaced Morton. The other trombonist is Dan Minor, the veteran first chair man. Morton had been Basie's straight player and hot man before leaving.

One could pick up a dictionary and cast all the superlatives in existence upon the Basie group, but it still wouldn't suffice. Words cannot explain the meaning of Basie's music, both to the listener, and to the good name of swing. A marvelous drive, borne by the assurance of over-talented musicians, makes this group what it is—the last word in music.

Supplied with an amazing group of soloists, Count Basie's orchestra has all the necessary harmonious technique and life conducive of REAL swing bands—and we do mean Basie.

(This is the first in a series of articles dealing with the nation's leading swing orchestras, written by Jack Kerouac and based on theories and opinions derived from Seymour Wyse, Donald Wolf, and the author himself.)

One night I sat on the curbstone of a street in the city and looked across the road at a little rose-covered cottage which was rickety, like the fence around it, and it looked old, not Colonial, but old. That's where I used to live, I said aloud to myself in a tone of yearning. I tried to sigh like they do in plays, but it was a fake one. I didn't want to sigh, but I tried. The thing I really wanted to do was weep, but I couldn't do that either.

The city was all about me, and the electric lamp above me, and the house was there and my memories flashed through my head and the scene before me supplemented them. I, small and dreamy, dashing about—over that banister, up that old tree of mine, around the yard, through the back fences . . . . . and the shed with the old organ in it, and the sounds I used to hear and now they are dissolved, their scientific sound waves far away.

I saw a man walking toward his destination and I felt bad. He was hurrying, and I was sitting thinking about the past. The dream I used to have . . . . . snow, tinkling icicles, laughter, sunshine, sleighs . . . . . and the nightmares too. And the man was hurrying and I was sitting quietly, staring at my old home.

The old cat, I thought, a bundle of bones now, somewhere. The cat who used to sit right there on the porch, placidly enjoying his digestion.

Later on, I left and I went toward the house before that, where my brother had died. Here, the memories were now vague and childish. I was three and four there, three and four years old.

I remembered the high snow, my sandwich, calling for my mother, weeping, all. Myself . . . . . at the church . . . . . unabashed, they burying my brother. Why do you cry, I ask my mother and sister. Why do you cry? Why?

Now a man comes up the street and walks right into my old house.

Zounds, I say. Zounds! You hurry while I stand here, trying to recapture the past. And here you are, brushing it aside, the past of tomorrow, which is the present of today, you are brushing it aside as you stride along, intent on your cheap present practical and physical desires and comfort. You fool! Wait, don't hurry.

Get out of my old house!

And then on the way home, I think about the fool and the other fools, and myself a fool. Hurrying away the past of tomorrow, like I had hurried away the past of today, in the past.

Fools, I think. Myself a fool. I must take it slow now and look at the present and say to myself: Look, John, hold the present now because someday it will be very precious. Hug it, and hold it.

And just yesterday I was sauntering home thinking about the future. The future! What a fool, I, myself, a fool, hurrying.

I am going to write about nothing. Nothing at all. Did you ever think hard and say, what is nothing? Nothing is really nothing at all to try to figure out.

Look, a comet comes down from nothing crashes into the earth and the earth is scattered to the winds of nothing in little pieces and suppose I survive and you survive and we begin our journey through nothing.

How would you like that? I would like that if I could be conscious of it. It would be a great experience to travel up and down and to the left and the right through nothing at all and just keep traveling around and seeing nothing but distant stars and feeling nothing'neath my feet and just flying about through nothing.

If I could live through it I would enjoy it. But soon I would get hungry and I would want to eat something but there is nothing in the line of something in nothing, so that I would starve to death and then I would be traveling through nothing but then I myself would not know about it so that I would not enjoy it. Because enjoying is a sensation of living, as you know, and to enjoy you must live and all that, etc. And so it amounts to nothing, nothing, nothing. And soon I guess things would get at me and I would soon dissolve, and then absolve into nothing and become part of nothing.

I know some day I will be nothing. (Think hard I say to myself. Think very hard and consider yourself nothing.) I will be nothing someday because I will be part of the dust of the earth which will scatter to the winds of nothing (not the four winds of the earth, but the sextillion winds of nothing) and I will scatter and fly about through nothing and be nothing. Maybe—a million years from now. And I will be nothing. I try to think hard and imagine myself nothing, but I am too much alive to think myself nothing so that despite the fact that I know its inevitability, I feel as if I'll always go on, but I know better.

And when the dust of the earth will scatter to the winds of nothing, then even the particles of dust themselves will begin to dissect themselves and they themselves will emulate the earth's big act of dissolving and dissolve themselves. Then the particles of the dust particles will in turn dissolve, and this process will continue a million billion times over and over again until the particles will become so small that they will not be far from nothing. Then when eternity ends, the process of making all the particles of the earth into nothing will have been completed. And so I say eternity will never end, because that is what it means. So I look at it this way: When I look into the sky and see nothing (space is nothing) I should kneel down and weep with joy at the marvelousness of such perfect nothingness. Can you imagine how many billions of aeons nothing had to go through before it reached its stage of nothingness? I imagine it because I just found out that the earth will never quite completely be nothing.

This summer, I am going to write a play and I don't quite know what it will be right now but I know it will be done at my very best, which I am afraid isn't much. As far as I'm concerned it will be satisfactory to myself at least, and I shall have the pleasure of reading it in future years and think and say: I wrote that when I was 18 and when I wanted to become a playwright because it was the most interesting, fascinating, marvelous, romantic way of making money anybody could invent. So I will write this play.

My mother bought me a looseleaf book with a thick bunch of papers inside which I will be able to extract to type on as I evolve my play, and then put them back when the magic words of man will have been imprinted on them. On the outside of this unimportant looking little black book I will stick a paper on which I will write this: Kerouac's Works, and above that I'll have the name of the play, which I will try to make as vague as possible.

The setting for this play will soon hit me in the face. I am waiting for the moment this summer when I shall be sitting or walking, but all the same breathing, and suddenly I will start with a jump and say: What a setting for a play!

This play of mine will have to be a spontaneous burst of passion which I will develop all of a sudden, then I shall rush to my typewriter and begin to extract pages from the book and begin writing my full-length three act play. When I shall have had finished it, and have had smoked about two packs of cigarettes which I don't inhale but just smoke because they help me write, then I shall read it to myself at night by the lamp and when I finish it I will say: Now I will let my father read it, and my better friends, and finally Pete Gordon of New York City and if he likes it, then I will send it to Mr. Golden or Mr. Harris or someone on Broadway and I will net a quarter million dollars and pull in the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Literature prize for $50,000.

$16.83 I collected today for my salary, selling subscriptions for the newspaper. I was sitting in the car with the check in my pocket and I was riding along with the fellow who takes care of the Sun insurance and a little child between us and I thought: I will write a play about life as life is and I will wait till it hits me in the face before I write it. Then I will rush to my typewriter and write it. So hold on to your seats. It will soon come and I feel terrifically exuberated right just now.