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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A tribute to jazz royalty

America, the classless society, has its own form of nobility – the jazz nobility.

Count Basie and Duke Ellington will be celebrated by the Spokane Jazz Orchestra on Saturday in “Royal Jazz – A Tribute to Count Basie and Duke Ellington” at The Met.

This kind of show is easy for a musical director to program – the music is hard to surpass – but also frustratingly difficult.

Dan Keberle, the SJO’s music director, said the Duke and the Count had “literally hundreds of hit songs,” not to mention scores of pieces that were influential in the development of jazz.

“This has caused me quite a bit of worry and anxiety,” Keberle said in a news release. “How can anyone ever choose just seven or eight songs from such a grand repertoire?”

He settled on a program that spans many decades of their music, including:

•Ellington: “Caravan,” “Perdido,” “The Mooche,” “Cottontail,” “Take the A Train” and “Harlem Airshaft.”

•Basie: “April in Paris,” “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You,” “In a Mellotone,” “Li’l Darlin’ ” and “Corner Pocket.”

The Count and the Duke are linked in the public mind, but they took far different routes to their places in the jazz aristocracy.

Ellington emerged from the Washington, D.C., music scene, where he was in a band called the Washingtonians. By 1925, he had taken over leadership of the band. It was booked into the Cotton Club in Harlem in 1927 as a replacement act; soon it was known as the Cotton Club Orchestra and was becoming one of the best-known jazz ensembles in the United States.

By 1931 it was called Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra. A trip to Europe in 1933 cemented the group’s fame.

It was at the pinnacle of jazz for the next four decades, until Ellington’s death.

Basie, originally from New Jersey, found himself stranded in Kansas City after a vaudeville circuit folded (he was traveling with it as an accompanist). He joined a few bands in the burgeoning Kansas City music scene, eventually hooking up with Bennie Moten.

When Moten died in 1935, Basie took the core of the group to form his own Count Basie Orchestra. They were discovered by John Hammond and brought to Chicago and then New York.

By 1937 they were headlining in New York. Basie’s bands, in many configurations, were a top jazz draw until his death in 1984.

Saturday’s concert will not feature a “name” guest artist, but it certainly will feature a noteworthy special guest.

Oliver Walters, the winner of this year’s SJO High School Jazz Solo Competition, will perform the tune “Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise.” Walters is a senior at Central Valley High School.