Search - Count Basie :: Basie In Europe

A TERRIBLE RECORDING

Richard S. Thomas | 02/07/2007

(1 out of 5 stars)

"It pains me seriously to give Basie one star. How did this mess happen. The charts are classic with Freckle Face, Woodside, Basie and Whirly Bird. The side men are the best in the business at the time. Such stars as Sonny Cohn, wonderful Al Grey, Eric Dixon, Freddie Green (the time machine) and, even, the best drummer Basie ever had - Butch Miles - all participated. Finally by the early Seventy's Basie had matured to the point that he was a way of life with great insight into how a band should sound and had reached a level of financial clout to demand the best. So what happened? The sound engineering is awful! One could get better sound quality recording your six year old's class play. Amazingly it is consistantly bad at two different locations in two different countries. Apparently the recording engineer traveled on the bus and should have been jetisoned out the window on the Autobahn. Don't buy the record unless you really need to be infuriated.

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Not the best of basie

Joe Sullivan | Spokane, WA USA | 09/05/2005

(2 out of 5 stars)

"Unlike many of the Count Basie band's other recordings, this album falls short of expectations. The band plays many of the old standards such as "Freckle Face" and "Jumpin' At the Woodside", yet the whole band sounds haphazard and not in top form. Since this was recorded live, I can see why the recording quality was somewhat poor, but the playing of each individual in the band sounds worse that usual, from the annoying vibrato and pitch-bending of the lead trumpet player to the elementary-sounding trumpet solo on "Hittin' Twelve". With most of their recordings, the band is able to keep rock-solid time and is almost always together, but on this recording they are just not on. Their "Things Aren't the Way They Used to Be" is meant to be a improvment on the Ellington original, but it just comes out as a jarbled mess, and the screech trumpet solo at the end is ugly and is nothing on Cat Anderson of the Ellington band. Overall, there are much better album out there if one wants to hear the best of the Count Basie Band."