Count Basie: High Voltage (remastered) (180g)

Label: MPS, 1970

When Count Basie took his 17 big band musicians into the recording sessions for High Voltage in January 1970, he ushered in the orchestra's last full decade under his leadership. An orchestra that had left glorious traces in jazz history in the sixties through recordings with Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, for example. The seventies would also see great recordings with star vocalists, but also the continuation of a purely instrumental collaboration that had already begun in 1965. At that time Basie had engaged the Cuban composer and arranger Chico O'Farrill, who let his movement art shine in crossover discs like Basie Meets Bond or Basie's Beatles Bag

Here O'Farrill proves his congeniality with Basie's sound body now in a standard repertoire. The leader has chosen for this exclusively pieces that he had never recorded in over thirty years of big band history, and the band thus spans an impressive arc from the pre-Swing era to the 1950s. Fred Fisher's Chicago is given tremendous drive by new percussion man Harold Jones. From the Rodgers & Hart repertoire come Have You Met Miss Jones, with its beguilingly dense horn section in the lower registers and almost dreamy piano, and The Lady Is A Tramp, spiced by Eric Dixon's agile flute

Eddie Lockjaw Davis' tenor commands Bewitched with smoky finesse, while guest trumpeter Joe Newman is wink-wink subdued on Day In Day Out. Basie himself, of course, also stands out: for example, in the Fats Waller-like intro to I'm Getting Sentimental Over You or with the playful suggestion notes of If I Were A Bell. Finally, Get Me To The Church In Time is a reminiscence of the band's Las Vegas shows with Sinatra and a masterstroke of dialogue between the various horn sections

Reviews
"The soloists, jazz players of the old Schrot und Korn, shine in rows, the sound turned out as luxurious as the band." (Good Times, February/March 2017)

LP
Track 1: ChicagoChicago
Track 2: Have You Met Miss JonesHave You Met Miss Jones
Track 3: The Lady Is A TrampThe Lady Is A Tramp
Track 4: I'm Getting Sentimental Over YouI'm Getting Sentimental Over You
Track 5: BewitchedBewitched
Track 6: Day In Day OutDay In Day Out
Track 7: Get Me To The Church On TimeGet Me To The Church On Time
Track 8: When Sonny Gets BlueWhen Sonny Gets Blue
Track 9: On The Sunny Side Of The StreetOn The Sunny Side Of The Street
Track 10: TogetherTogether
Track 11: If I Were A BellIf I Were A Bell
Track 12: I Didn't Know What Time It WasI Didn't Know What Time It Was