Swing Shift

by Eric Levin   
Posted December 19, 2007

Count Basie

He didn’t need Mies van der Rohe to tell him less is more. His right hand made the point every time he sat down at the “box,” his term for a piano. And while plinking out those sly, spare, deceptively insistent lines in the treble, his left hand pumped out the gospel of swing. The kid from Red Bank never claimed to be a virtuoso, a composer, or a silver-tongued elocuter like his counterpart in jazz royalty, Duke. But Bill Basie made sure no band swung harder than the wicked-hot ensembles he led for more than 50 years.