Editing Count Basie (section)

===John Hammond and first recordings===
[[Image:CountBasieEthelWatersStageDoorCanteen.jpg|right|thumb|Basie and band, with vocalist [[Ethel Waters]], from the film ''[[Stage Door Canteen (film)|Stage Door Canteen]]'' (1943)]]

At the end of 1936, Basie and his band, now billed as Count Basie and His Barons of Rhythm, moved from Kansas City to Chicago, where they honed their repertoire at a long engagement at the [[Sunset Cafe|Grand Terrace Cafe]].<ref>Basie (1985), p. 171.</ref> Right from the start, Basie's band was known for its rhythm section. Another Basie innovation was the use of two tenor saxophone players; at the time, most bands had just one. When Young complained of [[Herschel Evans]]' vibrato, Basie placed them on either side of the [[alto]] players, and soon had the tenor players engaged in "duels". Many other bands later adapted the split tenor arrangement.<ref>Stanley Dance, ''The World of Count Basie'', Da Capo, New York, 1980, {{ISBN|0-306-80245-7}}, p. 68.</ref>

In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer [[John H. Hammond|John Hammond]] later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with".<ref>1981 interview cited in "The Lester Young Story" (Properbox 16), pp. 14–15.</ref> Hammond first heard Basie's band on the radio and went to Kansas City to check them out.<ref>Count Basie, 1985, p. 165.</ref> He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released on [[Vocalion Records]] under the band name of Jones-Smith Incorporated; the sides were "Shoe Shine Boy", "Evening", "Boogie Woogie", and "Oh Lady Be Good". After Vocalion became a subsidiary of [[Columbia Records]] in 1938, "Boogie Woogie" was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled ''[[Boogie Woogie (Columbia album C44)|Boogie Woogie]]'' (Columbia album C44).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.discogs.com/Various-Boogie-Woogie/release/1944476 |title=Various – Boogie Woogie |publisher=Discogs |access-date=December 13, 2015}}</ref> When he made the Vocalion recordings, Basie had already signed with [[Decca Records]], but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.<ref>Basie (1985), p. 181.</ref>

By then, Basie's sound was characterized by a "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. His personnel around 1937 included: Lester Young and Herschel Evans (tenor sax), [[Freddie Green]] (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), [[Walter Page]] (bass), [[Earle Warren]] (alto sax), [[Buck Clayton]] and [[Harry Edison]] (trumpet), [[Benny Morton]] and [[Dickie Wells]] (trombone).<ref>Leonard Feather, ''The Encyclopedia of Jazz'', Bonanza Books, 1960, p. 112.</ref> Lester Young, known as "Prez" by the band, came up with nicknames for all the other band members. He called Basie "Holy Man", "Holy Main", and just plain "Holy".<ref>Dance, 1980, p. 104.</ref>

Basie favored [[blues]], and he would showcase some of the most notable blues singers of the era after he went to New York: [[Billie Holiday]], [[Jimmy Rushing]], [[Big Joe Turner]], [[Helen Humes]], and [[Joe Williams (jazz singer)|Joe Williams]]. He also hired arrangers who knew how to maximize the band's abilities, such as [[Eddie Durham]] and [[Jimmy Mundy]].