Breakfast Dance And Barbecue - Count Basie & Joe Williams

5 O'Clock In The  Morning

Breakfast Dance And Barbecue
Count Basie and His Orchestra featuring Joe Williams
Produced by Teddy Reig
Engineered by Bill Scripps & Tory Brainard
Liner Notes by Bud Katzel
Roulette Birdland R 52028

Personnel:
Piano: Count Basie
Vocalist: Joe Willams
Guitar: Freddy Green
Drums: Sonny Payne
Bass: Eddie Jones, Jr.
Trumpets: Harry 'Sweets' Edison, Thad Jones, Joe Newman, Wendell Cully and Snooky Young
Trombones: Henry Coker, Ben Powell and Al Grey
Saxophones: Marshall Royal, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Willie Mitchell and Charile Fowlkes

From the back cover: It was 2 a.m., in the grand ballroom of the luxurious American Hotel in Miami. There were 2,500 members of the radio and television fraternity known as disc-jockeys, some 500 members of the recording industry and assorted guests present. Suddenly, with unbelievable dispatch, a dance floor was cleared, the spareribs were dished out, the bottles opened, the glasses filled and their contents emptied and Count Basie and his orchestra opened up...

It was a night to remember, it was a morning that those who were present will never forget. It was a bash to end all bashes. It was a breakfast dance and barbecue feted by Roulette Records in honor of America's disc-jockeys at their second annual convention. It was all these things and one thing more; it was the morning Count Basie and the greatest big band jazz aggregation ever assembled cast a hypnotic spell over 3,000 or more stunned guests.

This album is the on-the-spot recorded documentation of that history making morning of May 31st 1959. Now you can hear the mesmerizing sounds that Basie and his men weaved that kept the guests enthralled for some five hours. Now you can listen to that morning when Thad Jones on trumpet gave out with "Counter Block" and Snooky Young's trumpet held the crowd spellbound with "Let's Have A Taste." Here is that moment of glory when Harry 'Sweets' Edison who played trumpet with Basie for seventeen years, was reunited once again with the Count to relieve every note of the maestro's jazz classic "One O'Clock Jump."

Listen too, if you will, to that time on the 31st when darkness had fled the Miami sky and the sun began to rise and the Basie touch was put to Duke Ellington's "In A Mellow Tone"; also the shining minutes of early morning when the master of the blues, Joe Williams, held sway over the crowds wailing "Hallelujah, I Love Her So." It was now 5:00 a.m. and the ham and eggs and hot coffee were served and still the Basie Band played on and still the unyielding crowd, refusing to be denied, called for more...

In the many years since he came up from Kansas City, "the kids from Red Bank" has been the object of much glorification. Time and time again tribute has been paid to this man and deservedly so. Truly, in all this time no greater honor was bestowed upon him and his band than on the morning of May 31st. The crowd that had gathered that night had, prior to Basie's appearance, been treated to more than five hours of entertainment. They had sat a long time and were getting noisy and restless. Any audience sitting that length of time would have had enough for one night and it would not have been at all surprising if en masse they would have exited. It just didn't happen. When the Count and his band began to play, it seemed as though the crowd had suddenly been revived. The full-force of the band's sound acted like a shot of adrenaline and that same crowd not only sat through another five hours, but they got up and dance! This is a once-in-a-lifetime tribute. It came not from the critics or the jazz buff or supposed hipsters in the know. This was a tribute from the people, the people who stayed on and on and on into the wee hours of the morning.

Basie and his boy have been given a night off from their engagement at the Birdland nightclub in New York City to make this one-night appearance. It was now 7:00 a.m. and it was only because the band had to catch a plane back to Birdland to finish out their gig that inevitably brought the proceedings to an end. As the musicians filed off the bandstand and the photographer from Dude Magazine, which had exclusive coverage of the bash, was popping his last bulbs, everyone seems to sense that this had not been an ordinary affair. The morning of May 31st was a time they would talk about again and again.

Fortunately, we can do more than talk about it, we can hear it all in this set. All of the excitement, all of the crowds' enthusiasm, elation and applause have been etched here. Happily too, all of the resounding sounds that shook the rafters of that ballroom have also been faithfully captured. Where were you on the morning of May 31st, 1959? If you were in Miami in the grand ballroom of the Americana you lived through a momentous time in jazz. If you were unlucky to have been somewhere else, all is not lost for here it is put together for you in an album as unforgettable as that historic morning.

In A Mellow Tone
5 O'Clock In The Morning
Counter Block
Who Me
Let's Have A Taste
Moten Swing
Hallelujah, I Love Her So
One O'Clock Jump