“Wonderful Thing” (1949) Count Basie with Harry “Sweets” Edison

“Wonderful Thing”

Composed by C.Q. Price and Count Basie; arranged by C.Q. Price.

Recorded by Count Basie and His Orchestra for RCA Victor on July 22, 1949 in New York.

William J. “Count” Basie, piano, directing: Jimmy Nottingham, first trumpet; Emmett Berry, Clark Terry and Harry “Sweets” Edison, trumpets; Ted Donnelly, George Matthews and William “Dicky” Wells, trombones; Earl Warren, first alto saxophone; Charles “C.Q.” Price, alto saxophone; Paul Gonsalves and Bill “Weasel” Parker, tenor saxophones; Ronald “Jack” Washington, baritone saxophone; Freddie Green, guitar; Singleton Palmer, bass; George “Butch” Ballard, drums.

The story – part one: Basie’s challenges – 1948-1949.

Keeping a big band together and working enough to offset weekly expenses had become very difficult by 1949. The year 1948 had been a tough one for bands, as the American Federation of Musicians Union had imposed a second recording ban. (The first one had lasted from August 1, 1942 until mid-November 1944.) The second recording ban lasted almost a year, from New Year’s Eve 1947 to December 14, 1948. That ban was a result of the AFM’s demand that record companies pay a percentage of sales into a union fund to support unemployed musicians. It had a significant impact on the recording industry, recording technology, and the creation of new styles of music.

Some of the effects of the 1948 recording ban included: New record formats. During the second ban, a new longer-playing record (which spun on the turntable at 33 1/3 rpm) was introduced for adults, and a second one (45 rpm) became popular with teens. The decline of big bands and the rise of vocalists and small jazz and other (R and B) combos led to smaller-format groups becoming more prevalent after the war. The first wave of bebop recordings in the marketplace. The first recording ban (1942-1944) meant that the early development of bebop wasn’t well documented on record, but when that first ban was lifted, there was a flood of bebop recordings, many of which were made for small non-mainstream record labels. During the 1948 recording ban, those recordings were being issued.

An additional development that Basie had to deal with as 1946 ended was the non-renewal of his contract to make recordings for Columbia Records. Basie’s great patron, John Hammond, had brought him to Columbia in early 1939. By the end of 1946, Hammond had left Columbia for a number of reasons, and began working for one of the many new record labels to appear in the postwar years, Majestic Records. He and Basie had discussed Basie signing with Majestic, and Hammond believed that he had an agreement with Basie to do that. However, when Hammond traveled to California at the end of 1946 to meet with Basie and get him to sign a Majestic contract, he discovered that Basie had already signed a three-year agreement with RCA-Victor. Hammond was not happy, but he found it difficult to be angry at Bill Basie. Basie’s manager, Milt Ebbins, took the heat for this, and told Hammond that he had advised Basie to sign with Victor because it was an established company. Recently, a number of bandleaders, particularly Duke Ellington, had been the victims of costly chicanery of officials at Musicraft Records, another upstart recording company, that went bankrupt and disappeared almost overnight. (1)

Navigating these treacherous waters successfully enough to keep his big band together, Count Basie and his management team picked up whatever work they could. Although reliable sources of employment from previous years, like ballrooms, were closing, and theaters that presented bands as a part of a package of entertainment were slowly cutting those presentations out, Basie and his musicians soldiered on. Nevertheless, the pickings were getting slimmer. After a gig at the Strand Theater in Manhattan in July of 1948, a cloud of uncertainty descended over Basie and his bandsmen because future work looked spotty. Consequently, salary reductions were imposed, and this caused a number of stalwart Basie sidemen including Jo Jones, Buddy Tate and Ed Lewis to quit. Jimmy Rushing was in and out of the band after that. Basie replaced those who left with younger, top-notch musicians. Clark Terry and Jimmy Nottingham came in on trumpets. Eventually, Wardell Gray came in on tenor saxophone, then Paul Gonsalves. The quality of the music this band made was, if anything, a bit higher than before, largely because the younger musicians were thrilled to be working for Basie.

But as was so often the case during the swing era, the quality of this band’s music did not always mirror their commercial success. Basie and his band struggled through 1949 with gigs being farther and farther apart in terms of both distance and time. After a disastrous series of engagements in the deep South at the end of that year where Basie was not paid by the promoters of several concerts and dances, he transported the band back to Manhattan, and unceremoniously disbanded. He was exhausted and nearly insolvent. A chapter in the history of American music came to an end.

Part two: Territory Bands.

One of the phenomena during the swing era that was very much a part of the ecosystem in which all bands operated was that there were, like in baseball, major league bands and minor league bands, and sometimes minor league bands that were very close in musical ability to major league bands. The minor league bands were very often of the “territory” variety, meaning that they centered their operations in a certain geographic location, like New England, the Midwest, or California. The epitome of a New England territory band was Mal Hallett’s. It always had excellent musicians who made good music together, but never made it into the big-time. A California territory band, led by Stan Kenton, eventually made it into the major leagues.

But what was so interesting was that despite whatever reasons prevented a “B” band from becoming and “A” band, the “B” bands did the same things musically and workwise that the “A” bands did. Therefore, the “B” bands were constantly training musicians, many of whom went on to work successfully in “A” bands. In the segregated world of swing bands, the big-league black bands were those led by Ellington, Calloway, Lunceford and Basie, with those led by Erskine Hawkins and Earl Hines not far behind. Because of the unique talent sets of their leaders, the bands led by Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller were in their own league. But all of these bands needed two things that territory bands could and did supply them on an ongoing basis: new musicians and new music.

Count Basie and his band with Ethel Waters in the 1943 film “Stage Door Canteen.” By the late 1940s, this kind of work had disappeared for the Basie band. Despite the many vicissitudes Basie had to deal with in the postwar years, he always maintained an “A” level band musically.

A good example of how the territory bands supplied a certain musician and his music to the Count Basie band of the late 1940s can be found in the story of Charles Q. Price, known as “C.Q.” to his fellow musicians. C.Q. Price’s name is hardly remembered today, except by the most detail-oriented fans of the Basie band. Nevertheless, he was a reliable saxophone player whose playing was good enough to fit into Basie’s band. More importantly, he was an arranger who could and did not only make arrangements on the current popular tunes the Basie band always had in its book to satisfy audiences, he also wrote original tunes that were satisfying to the musicians in the Basie band as well as the paying customers.

But Price, as talented as he was, did not simply materialize in the Basie band of the late 1940s. His odyssey in the world of swing started in the late 1930s in the Nat Towles band that worked in and around Omaha, Nebraska. Unfortunately, Towles never made any recordings.(2) However, by a quirk of fate, most of his band members, including C.Q. Price, were transported from Omaha to Chicago by Horace Henderson to make a recording date he had lined up for October 23, 1940, even though he no longer had a band. The four recordings made on that date suggest how good the Towles band was.(3) (Above right: Nat Towles in 1944.)

The music:

Basie plays the band on in this delightfully light and swinging performance. The main melody is played through the first sixteen bars of the first chorus by a tenor saxophone, likely Paul Gonsalves, blended with an open trombone, probably Ted Donnelly. Note Basie’s impeccable accompaniment through this sequence. Harry “Sweets” Edison then takes the secondary (bridge) melody, muting his trumpet with a Harmon mute, then continues on through the final eight bars of the first chorus. The sound of Edison’s soulful Harmon-muted trumpet became something of a trademark for him through the 1950s, as he established himself as a valuable and colorful performer in the recording studios of both Hollywood and New York. Edison’s many collaborations with Frank Sinatra on record are now a part of the fabric of Sinatra’s musical legacy through those years.(4) (Below left: Harry “Sweets” Edison creating his unique sound with his Harmon-muted trumpet.)

The second chorus has the ensemble taking the dynamic level up a bit, and playing with impressive unity. The final chorus returns the music to the place it began with the pastel-colored sound of the tenor saxophone and the trombone.(5)

Much has been made over the years about the differences between the “Old Testament” Basie band of the 1930s and 1940s, and the “New Testament” band that Basie organized in the early 1950s, and worked with into the 1980s. Although there were differences, and they were significant, I think a more accurate appraisal would be that the Basie band of the late 1930s evolved into the Basie band of the 1940s, and as this recording clearly demonstrates, the Basie band of the late 1940s was very much evolving into what in the early 1950s became Basie’s “New Testament” band.

The recording presented with this post was digitally remastered by Mike Zirpolo.

Notes and links: 

(1) John Hammond’s tenure with Majestic Records was short-lived, lasting only seven months. After Hammond’s boss at Majestic discovered that he was undergoing psychoanalysis, Hammond believed that this person regarded him as mentally unstable. See: John Hammond On Record (1977) by John Hammond with Irving Townsend, 277.

(2) There is some confusion as to whether Nat Towles made any commercial recordings with his band. I have seen print advertisements stating that he was a Decca recording artist, yet I can find no information about any recordings he may have made for Decca.

(3) Among the other Towles sidemen who would later play for Basie: tenor saxophonist George “Buddy” Tate, and trombonist Henry Coker.

(4) Harry Edison came to the fore in the late 1930s as a member of the technically gifted trio of trumpeters that included Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Shavers and him. Although those two super-technicians took their playing into often complex expressions of their music, Edison took his playing in the opposite direction, simplifying it, and adding a lot of soul. I suspect that his twelve-year tenure as one of Count Basie’s trumpeters had something to do with this.

(5) I debated with myself if what I was hearing was a blend of an alto or tenor saxophone in these passages. I initially said that it was an alto. I have changed that because of a couple of comments posted below by careful listeners. Many thanks for your comments.

Here is a link to Basie’s early 1940s band featuring a famous guest: https://swingandbeyond.com/2020/06/02/920-special-1941-count-basie-with-coleman-hawkins/

Here are some links to recordings made by Basie’s “New Testament” band:

https://swingandbeyond.com/2020/03/11/plymouth-rock-1953-count-basie-and-1971-billy-may-and-the-swing-era-orchestra/

https://swingandbeyond.com/2017/02/04/blues-in-hoss-flat-1958-count-basie/

https://swingandbeyond.com/2023/11/10/flight-of-the-foo-birds-1959-count-basie-with-frank-wess-thad-jones-and-billy-mitchell/

https://swingandbeyond.com/2019/05/10/hay-burner-1968-count-basie-and-sammy-nestico/

Here is a comparison of music from Basie’s “Old Testament” band and from his “New Testament” band:

https://swingandbeyond.com/2020/01/04/blue-and-sentimental-1938-count-basie-with-herschel-evans-and-lester-young-and-1969/