Basie Beginnings: Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra, 1929-1932. - sound recording reviews

National Review, March 5, 1990 by Ralph De Toledano

Basie Beginnings: Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra, 1929-1932 (BMG RCA-bluebird 9768-2-RB). Count Basie set the jazz world on fire with his solidly rocking band in the Thirties when he hit New York. But he did not spring full-armored out of the head of some A & R man. His musical roots and the men he brought with him were strictly Kansas City, which with McKinney's Cotton Pickers, the Jay McShann band, and Bennie Moten's orchestra had dominated jazz in the central Mississippi basin.

What the Kansas City school contributed to jazz and gave to Basie is all here on this exciting CD in which the Count is featured on piano. It should give pause to those who believe that Fletcher Henderson and Duke Elhngton invented big band" jazz.