Booty’s Blues – 1979
Count Basie’s Kansas City 5
A Joyful Jam Session With Roy Eldridge And Zoot Sims
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In the 1970s, producer Norman Granz returned to the record business, founding and running the Pablo label.
Granz always loved jam sessions and he signed up many all-stars for his label, including Count Basie, trumpeter Roy Eldridge and tenor-saxophonist Zoot Sims.
This 1979 telecast features Basie, Eldridge, Sims and, from Basie’s big band, bassist Cleveland Eaton and drummer Duffy Jackson.
The quintet, which Basie spontaneously named his Kansas City 5 (the same name of his small group from the late 1930s) plays the type of medium-tempo blues (“Booty’s Blues”) on which the pianist always excelled.
Basie (who puts the spotlight briefly on bassist Eaton), Sims and Eldridge all take solos, Jackson shows what swinging drumming looks and sounds like, and the two horns (with the exciting trumpeter leading the way) jam joyfully during the closing ensembles.
-Scott Yanow
Ella Fitzgerald