A Personal View of Count Basie

Count Basie at the piano accompanying vocalist Ethel Waters with his band in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

A little over a week ago KQED broadcast a repeat screening of Jeremy Marre’s 2018 documentary Count Basie: Through his own eyes, which was first broadcast on December 1, 2019. The film is a rather unique achievement, since, during his lifetime, Basie did his best to keep his “public persona” to himself. As far as he was concerned, his public should only care about the music he made; and the rest of his time he kept to himself.

That privacy was understandable, since his only child, Diane, was born with cerebral palsy. In spite of influences to turn her over for care from an institution, Basie and his wife Vivian were determined to keep her at home. They all defied physicians’ expectations in getting her to learn how to walk, after which she also learned to swim. She also outlived both of her parents.

Basie was also private about his politics. He was a strong supporter of Martin Luther King and participated in the March on Washington. However, he kept his profile low, never trying to seize the spotlight from King or the reason for the march. Marre’s film includes interviews with musicians that played for Basie, and there are plenty of anecdotes of the trials that a colored band had to endure with a concert tour that took them through southern states.

As a result, the public side of Basie was all about the music. He was more interested in maintaining good work relations with everyone in his band, rather than cultivating the sort of public persona that one encountered in, for example, Duke Ellington. Ultimately, Basie’s largest audiences were probably those that traveled to Las Vegas to listen to Frank Sinatra sing. Basie had no trouble letting Sinatra take the spotlight, but Basie was still the one with the last word on arrangements.

That said, there is no shortage of music and footage of the Basie band in Marre’s film. However, the music is there to supplement our appreciation of not only Basie the family man and Basie the leader of a band but also Basie the father in a colored family that, in the interest of his profession, would suppress his personal feelings about racism in the interest of providing gainful employment for all of his players (as well as himself).