Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra: South, 1926-1929

National Review, March 16, 1992 by Ralph De Toledano

Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra: South (1926-1929) (BMG/Bluebird 3139-2-RB). It was Count Basie, with a large assist from the never fully appreciated Moten band, that brought Kansas City-style big-band jazz to New York and then to the rest of the country. The Count Bessie Orchestra's style and drive was fathered by the Bennie Moten band of the 1920s and 1930s and the sidemen who became famous under the Basie aegis.

In its various configurations, the Moten band, though well known among jazz musicians and aficionados, was never recorded at its best--and the sides in this album do not match some of the other recorded output. But it should be a revelation to those who believe that big-band swing sprang fully helmeted in the person of Benny Goodman from the brain of arranger Fletcher Henderson. Those who heard it in Kansas City told me years ago that it was a powerful and swinging aggregation, but this comes through only to a small degree in these 24 cuts.