On this day in 1904, William James Basie was born in Red Bank, New Jersey. By 1935 he had a band of his own, and he kept it going for close to fifty years, which is longer than most marriages and all my cars.

Here is the thing people miss. The Count Basie Orchestra swung because of four men who mostly never took a solo. Freddie Green played rhythm guitar with no amplifier at all, four beats to the bar, a sound you feel in your chest more than you hear. Walter Page walked the bass like a man who knew exactly where he was going and had all night to get there. Jo Jones lifted the time off the bass drum and put it up on the hi-hat, and drummers have been chasing that hiss ever since. And Basie, at the piano, played almost nothing. A note here. Two notes and a little space. He ran a sixteen-piece band from the keys with the fewest notes in the room, because he trusted the three fellows behind him completely.

I spent years tuning pianos, and I can tell you the hardest thing in music is leaving something out. The photograph below is the whole idea in one frame: the piano man smiling upward, the bass player half hidden behind the lid, doing the actual work. As it should be. I say that as a former bass player, and with love.