Possibly inspired by Count Basie's renewed activity at Verve Records in the mid-'50s, Columbia raided its vaults to assemble this thematic album, consisting of a dozen blues cuts dating between 1939 and 1950. The mix of late-'30s/early-'40s big-band swing and 1950-era small group sides makes this a fascinating document of two phases of Basie's career. The album opens with a bang, with "Tootie," a fast and lean small group track that offers hot solo spots by Basie at the piano, Buddy De Franco on clarinet, tenor man Charlie Rouse, and drummer Gus Johnson. The album then jumps back 11 years to the band's cover of Leroy Carr's "How Long Blues," featuring a great vocal by Jimmy Rushing and a nice trade-off of riffs between the trumpets (featuring Harry "Sweets" Edison and Buck Clayton) and the trombones. "Way Back Blues," "Bugle Blues," and "Royal Garden Blues" are cuts originally credited to the "All-American Rhythm Section" in 1942, prominently featuring Basie in a smaller group setting. Rushing reappears on the rollicking "Blues (I Still Think of Her)," from 1941, which owes a little bit of its structure to "One O'Clock Jump"; "Harvard Blues," a slow, swinging blues that offers a beautiful extended opening baritone sax solo by Jack Washington; the group's swing rendition of Casey Bill Weldon's "I'm Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town"; "Take Me Back Baby," which offers the trumpets and tenor saxes a chance to shine; and the mournful "Nobody Knows," the latter dating from 1939 and featuring Basie on the organ. The producers save the most interesting cut, "Bluebeard Blues," for last -- recorded in 1950, it shows Basie in some of the most involved playing of this period, and the group (including Buddy Rich at the drums) pushing their considerable inventiveness.
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