Not all discs are pictured; all these are V+ at worst or I'd have pitched them. see below
1. DECCA 27816 Louis Armstrong V++ / V++ 2. RCA 20-2771 Count Basie E- / E- 3. RCA 20-2435 Count Basie V++ / V++ 4. OKEH 6545 Frankie Masters E- / E- 5. BLUEBIRD 10750 Art Kassel E- / E- 6. BLUEBIRD 10903 Benny Goodman V++ / E- 7. RCA not for sale Promo COUNT BASIE DJ812 V++ / V++ needs cleanin 8. RCA 20-1891 Louis Armstrong E- / E- 9. DECCA 46001 Milton Brown V++ / V+ 10. STINSON 999-2 Jazz at the Philharmonic V++ / V++ 11. DECCA 46203 Melvin Shiner E- / E- 12. RCA 20-1794 Erskine Hawkins E- / E- 13. RCA 20-3068 Erskine Hawkins V+ / V+
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WIKIPEDIA:

Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world (see below). In more modern usage, the playback device is often called a "turntable", "record player", or "", although each of these terms denote categorically distinct items. When used in conjunction with a as part of a setup, turntables are often colloquially called "decks". In later electric phonographs (more often known since the 1940s as record players or turntables), the motions of the stylus are converted into an by a , then converted back into sound by a .

Close up of the mechanism of an Edison Amberola, circa 1915

The term phonograph ("sound writing") was derived from the words φωνή (phonē, 'sound' or 'voice') and γραφή (graphē, 'writing'). The similar related terms gramophone (from the Greek γράμμα gramma 'letter' and φωνή phōnē 'voice') and graphophone have similar root meanings.

In , "gramophone" may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using , which were introduced and popularized in the UK by the . Originally, "gramophone" was a proprietary of that company and any use of the name by competing makers of disc records was vigorously prosecuted in the courts, but in 1910 an English court decision decreed that it had become a generic term;

United States Early phonograph at Deaf Smith County Historical Museum in ,

In , "phonograph", properly specific to machines made by Edison, was sometimes used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others. But it was then considered strictly incorrect to apply it to 's upstart Gramophone, a very different machine which played nonrecordable discs (although Edison's original Phonograph patent included the use of discs.)

Australia Wood engraving published in , depicting a public demonstration of new technology at the Royal Society of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia) on 8 August 1878.

In , "record player" was the term; "turntable" was a more technical term; "gramophone" was restricted to the old mechanical (i.e., wind-up) players; and "phonograph" was used as in . The "phonograph" was first demonstrated in Australia on 14 June 1878 to a meeting of the by the Society's Honorary Secretary, who published "The Sounds of the Consonants, as Indicated by the Phonograph" in the Society's journal in November that year. On 8 August 1878 the phonograph was publicly demonstrated at the Society's annual conversazione, along with a range of other new inventions, including the .

Early history Dictionary illustration of a . This version uses a barrel made of . Phonautograph Main article:

The phonautograph was invented on March 25, 1857 by Frenchman Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, an editor and typographer of manuscripts at a scientific publishing house in Paris. One day while editing Professor Longet's Traité de Physiologie, he happened upon that customer’s engraved illustration of the anatomy of the human ear, and conceived of "the imprudent idea of photographing the word." In 1853 or 1854 (Scott cited both years) he began working on "le problème de la parole s'écrivant elle-même" ("the problem of speech writing itself"), aiming to build a device that could replicate the function of the human ear.

Scott coated a plate of glass with a thin layer of . He then took an acoustic trumpet, and at its tapered end affixed a thin membrane that served as the analog to the . At the center of that membrane, he attached a rigid boar's bristle approximately a centimeter long, placed so that it just grazed the lampblack. As the glass plate was slid horizontally in a well formed groove at a speed of one meter per second, a person would speak into the trumpet, causing the membrane to vibrate and the stylus to trace figures that were scratched into the lampblack. On March 25, 1857, Scott received the French patent #17,897/31,470 for his device, which he called a phonautograph. The earliest known surviving recorded sound of a human voice was conducted on April 9, 1860 when Scott recorded someone singing the song "" ("By the Light of the Moon") on the device. However, the device was not designed to play back sounds, as Scott intended for people to read back the tracings, which he called phonautograms. This was not the first time someone had used a device to create direct tracings of the vibrations of sound-producing objects, as had been used in this way by English physicist in 1807. By late 1857, with support from the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale, Scott’s phonautograph was recording sounds with sufficient precision to be adopted by the scientific community, paving the way for the nascent science of acoustics.

The device’s true significance in the history of recorded sound was not fully realized prior to March 2008, when it was discovered and resurrected in a Paris patent office by First Sounds, an informal collaborative of American audio historians, recording engineers, and sound archivists founded to make the earliest sound recordings available to the public. The phonautograms were then digitally converted by scientists at the in California, who were able to play back the recorded sounds, something Scott had never conceived of. Prior to this point, the earliest known record of a human voice was thought to be an 1877 phonograph recording by . The phonautograph would play a role in the development of the , whose inventor, Emile Berliner, worked with the phonautograph in the course of developing his own device.

Paleophone

, a French poet and amateur scientist, is the first person known to have made the conceptual leap from recording sound as a traced line to the theoretical possibility of reproducing the sound from the tracing and then to devising a definite method for accomplishing the reproduction. On April 30, 1877, he deposited a sealed envelope containing a summary of his ideas with the , a standard procedure used by scientists and inventors to establish of unpublished ideas in the event of any later dispute.

An account of his invention was published on October 10, 1877, by which date Cros had devised a more direct procedure: the recording stylus could scribe its tracing through a thin coating of acid-resistant material on a metal surface and the surface could then be etched in an acid bath, producing the desired groove without the complication of an intermediate photographic procedure. The author of this article called the device a phonographe, but Cros himself favored the word paleophone, sometimes rendered in French as voix du passé ('voice of the past').[]

Cros was a poet of meager means, not in a position to pay a machinist to build a working model, and largely content to bequeath his ideas to the free of charge and let others reduce them to practice, but after the earliest reports of Edison's presumably independent invention crossed the Atlantic he had his sealed letter of April 30 opened and read at the December 3, 1877 meeting of the French Academy of Sciences, claiming due scientific credit for priority of conception.

Throughout the first decade (1890–1900) of commercial production of the earliest crude disc records, the direct acid-etch method first invented by Cros was used to create the metal master discs, but Cros was not around to claim any credit or to witness the humble beginnings of the eventually rich phonographic library he had foreseen. He had died in 1888 at the age of 45.

The early phonographs for Edison's phonograph, May 18, 1880

conceived the principle of recording and reproducing sound between May and July 1877 as a byproduct of his efforts to "play back" recorded messages and to automate speech sounds for transmission by . His first experiments were with waxed paper. He announced his invention of the first phonograph, a device for recording and replaying sound, on November 21, 1877 (early reports appear in and several newspapers in the beginning of November, and an even earlier announcement of Edison working on a 'talking-machine' can be found in the on May 9), and he demonstrated the device for the first time on November 29 (it was on February 19, 1878, as US Patent 200,521). "In December, 1877, a young man came into the office of the Scientific American, and placed before the editors a small, simple machine about which very few preliminary remarks were offered. The visitor without any ceremony whatever turned the crank, and to the astonishment of all present the machine said: 'Good morning. How do you do? How do you like the phonograph?' The machine thus spoke for itself, and made known the fact that it was the phonograph..."

The music critic attended an early demonstration (1881–2) of a similar machine. On the early phonograph's reproductive capabilities he writes "It sounded to my ear like someone singing about half a mile away, or talking at the other end of a big hall; but the effect was rather pleasant, save for a peculiar nasal quality wholly due to the mechanism, though there was little of the scratching which later was a prominent feature of the flat disc. Recording for that primitive machine was a comparatively simple matter. I had to keep my mouth about six inches away from the horn and remember not to make my voice too loud if I wanted anything approximating to a clear reproduction; that was all. When it was played over to me and I heard my own voice for the first time, one or two friends who were present said that it sounded rather like mine; others declared that they would never have recognised it. I daresay both opinions were correct."

newspaper from Melbourne, Australia, reported on an 1878 demonstration at the , writing "There was a large attendance of ladies and gentlemen, who appeared greatly interested in the various scientific instruments exhibited. Among these the most interesting, perhaps, was the trial made by Mr. Sutherland with the phonograph, which was most amusing. Several trials were made, and were all more or less successful. "Rule Britannia" was distinctly repeated, but great laughter was caused by the repetition of the convivial song of "He's a jolly good fellow," which sounded as if it was being sung by an old man of 80 with a very cracked voice."

Early machines Phonograph cabinet built with , 1912. The clockwork portion of the phonograph is concealed in the base beneath the statue; the amplifying horn is the shell behind the human figure.

Edison's early phonographs recorded onto a thin sheet of metal, normally , which was temporarily wrapped around a grooved mounted on a correspondingly supported by plain and threaded . While the cylinder was rotated and slowly progressed along its , the airborne vibrated a connected to a that indented the foil into the cylinder's groove, thereby recording the vibrations as "hill-and-dale" variations of the depth of the indentation.

Introduction of the disc record 2:24 This 1906 recording (with the character being voiced by ) enticed store customers with the wonders of the invention.
2 minutes, 23 seconds. Problems playing this file? See .

By 1890, record manufacturers had begun using a rudimentary duplication process to mass-produce their product. While the live performers recorded the master phonograph, up to ten tubes led to blank cylinders in other phonographs. Until this development, each record had to be custom-made. Before long, a more advanced -based process made it possible to simultaneously produce 90–150 copies of each record. However, as demand for certain records grew, popular artists still needed to re-record and re-re-record their songs. Reportedly, the medium's first major African-American star was obliged to perform his "The Laughing Song" (or the separate "The Whistling Coon") literally thousands of times in a studio during his recording career. Sometimes he would sing "The Laughing Song" more than fifty times in a day, at twenty cents per rendition. (The average price of a single cylinder in the mid-1890s was about fifty cents.)[]

Oldest surviving recordings

's cylinder recording for an experimental talking clock is often identified as the oldest surviving playable sound recording, although the evidence advanced for its early date is controversial. Wax recordings of 's choral music made on June 29, 1888, at in London were thought to be the oldest-known surviving musical recordings, until the recent playback by a group of American historians of a recording of made on April 9, 1860.

The 1860 phonautogram had not until then been played, as it was only a transcription of sound waves into graphic form on paper for visual study. Recently developed optical scanning and image processing techniques have given new life to early recordings by making it possible to play unusually delicate or physically unplayable media without physical contact.

A recording made on a sheet of tinfoil at an 1878 demonstration of Edison's phonograph in St. Louis, Missouri has been played back by optical scanning and digital analysis. A few other early tinfoil recordings are known to survive, including a slightly earlier one which is believed to preserve the voice of U.S. President , but as of May 2014 they have not yet been scanned.[] These antique tinfoil recordings, which have typically been stored folded, are too fragile to be played back with a stylus without seriously damaging them. Edison's 1877 tinfoil recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb, not preserved, has been called the first instance of .

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the phonograph, Edison recounted reciting Mary Had a Little Lamb to test his first machine. The 1927 event was filmed by an early camera, and an audio clip from that film's soundtrack is sometimes mistakenly presented as the original 1877 recording. Wax cylinder recordings made by 19th century media legends such as and Shakespearean actor are amongst the earliest verified recordings by the famous that have survived to the present.

Improvements at the Volta Laboratory Main article:

and his two associates took Edison's phonograph and modified it considerably to make it reproduce sound from wax instead of tinfoil. They began their work at Bell's in Washington, D. C., in 1879, and continued until they were granted basic patents in 1886 for recording in wax.

Although Edison had in 1877, the fame bestowed on him for this invention was not due to its efficiency. Recording with his tinfoil phonograph was too difficult to be practical, as the tinfoil tore easily, and even when the was properly adjusted, its reproduction of sound was distorted, and good for only a few playbacks; nevertheless Edison had discovered the idea of . However immediately after his discovery he did not improve it, allegedly because of an agreement to spend the next five years developing the system.

Volta's early challenge

Meanwhile, Bell, a and experimenter at heart, was looking for new worlds to conquer after having patented the . According to , it was through that Bell took up the phonograph challenge. Bell had married in 1879 while Hubbard was president of the Edison Speaking Phonograph Co., and his organization, which had purchased the Edison patent, was financially troubled because people did not want to buy a machine which seldom worked well and proved difficult for the average person to operate.

Volta Graphophone See also: A 'G' (Graham Bell) model Graphophone being played back by a typist after its cylinder had recorded dictation.

The sound vibrations had been indented in the wax which had been applied to the Edison phonograph. The following was the text of one of their recordings: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. I am a Graphophone and my mother was a phonograph." Most of the disc machines designed at the Volta Lab had their disc mounted on vertical turntables. The explanation is that in the early experiments, the turntable, with disc, was mounted on the shop lathe, along with the recording and reproducing heads. Later, when the complete models were built, most of them featured vertical turntables.

One interesting exception was a horizontal seven inch turntable. The machine, although made in 1886, was a duplicate of one made earlier but taken to Europe by . Tainter was granted on July 10, 1888. The playing arm is rigid, except for a pivoted vertical motion of 90 degrees to allow removal of the record or a return to starting position. While recording or playing, the record not only rotated, but moved laterally under the stylus, which thus described a spiral, recording 150 grooves to the inch.

The basic distinction between the Edison's first phonograph patent and the Bell and Tainter patent of 1886 was the method of recording. Edison's method was to indent the sound waves on a piece of tin foil, while Bell and Tainter's invention called for cutting, or "engraving", the sound waves into a wax record with a sharp recording stylus.

Graphophone commercialization A later-model Columbia Graphophone of 1901 3:52 Edison-Phonograph playing: Iola by the Edison Military Band (video, 3 min 51 s)

In 1885, when the Volta Associates were sure that they had a number of practical inventions, they filed applications and began to seek out investors. The of Alexandria, Virginia, was created on January 6, 1886, and incorporated on February 3, 1886. It was formed to control the patents and to handle the commercial development of their sound recording and reproduction inventions, one of which became the first .

After the Volta Associates gave several demonstrations in the City of Washington, businessmen from created the on March 28, 1887, in order to produce and sell the machines for the budding phonograph marketplace. The Volta Graphophone Company then merged with American Graphophone, which itself later evolved into .

A coin-operated version of the Graphophone, , was developed by Tainter in 1893 to compete with nickel-in-the-slot entertainment phonograph demonstrated in 1889 by Louis T. Glass, manager of the Pacific Phonograph Company.

The work of the Volta Associates laid the foundation for the successful use of in business, because their wax recording process was practical and their machines were durable. But it would take several more years and the renewed efforts of Edison and the further improvements of and many others, before the became a major factor in .

Disc vs. cylinder as a recording medium

Discs (that aren't re-recordable) are not inherently better than cylinders at providing audio fidelity. Rather, the advantages of the format are seen in the manufacturing process: discs can be stamped, and the matrixes to stamp disc can be shipped to other printing plants for a global distribution of recordings; cylinders could not be stamped until 1901–1902, when the gold moulding process was introduced by Edison.

Erskine Ramsay Hawkins (July 26, 1914 – November 11, 1993) was an American trumpeter and leader from , dubbed "The 20th Century Gabriel". He is best remembered for composing the standard "" (1939) with saxophonist and arranger . The song became a hit during , rising to No. 7 nationally (version by the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra) and to No. 1 nationally (version by the Orchestra). Vocalists who were featured with Erskine's orchestra include Ida James, Delores Brown, and . Hawkins was named after Alabama industrialist .

Early years

Erskine Hawkins was named by his parents after Alabama industrialist Erskine Ramsay who was rewarding parents with savings accounts for them for doing so. Hawkins attended Councill Elementary School and Industrial High School (now known as ) in . At Industrial High School, he played in the band directed by Fess Whatley, a teacher who taught many African-American musicians, many of whom worked with such musicians as , , and (of the NBC Orchestra).

Headliner years

During 1936 through 1938, Hawkins recorded for as "Erskine Hawkins and his 'Bama State Collegians". In 1938, he signed with and began recording on their Bluebird label as, simply, "Erskine Hawkins and His Orchestra".

In the late 1930s, Hawkins and his Orchestra were one of the house bands at the . They alternated with the band, and often used "" as their sign-off song before the next band would take the stage, so that the dancing would continue uninterrupted. Hawkins also engaged in "battles of the bands" with such bandleaders as , , and .

In 1943, a Hawkins concert caused trouble in Little Rock, Arkansas: "3,000 Negroes jammed into the Exhibition Hall to dance to the music of Hawkins and his crew became unruly and began to push white police all over the floor. Police brandished their guns and blackjacks and attempted to quiet the crowd--but only after Hawkins and his boys broke into the national anthem did the dancers settle down." A city "ban on dances for Negroes" followed the event, meaning that "bookers of Negro orchestras for dances here may just as well take up another profession."

In the mid 1940s, he was transferred to the main RCA Victor label, recording many of his greatest hits for both labels during this decade. He remained with them until 1950 when he switched over to . He continued to record for many years.

Later years Erskine Hawkins

Hawkins was trumpeter and band leader in the lobby bar and show nightclub at The in from 1967 to 1993 with his last performing group Joe Vitale (piano), Dudly Watson (bass), Sonny Rossi (vocals and clarinet), and George Leary (drums). Hawkins died at his home in , in November 1993, at the age of 79. He is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, alongside his sister, in Birmingham, Alabama.

Personal life

Flo Hawkins, who appeared in the 1946 film , was his wife. They eventually became estranged and she worked in .

Induction into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame In 1978, Erskine Hawkins became one of the first five artists inducted into the . In 1989, he was inducted into the . Hawkins was a contemporary of another Birmingham jazz musician, .

Benjamin David Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American and bandleader known as the "King of Swing".

From 1936 until the mid-1940s, Goodman led one of the most popular in the United States. His in New York City on January 16, 1938, is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."

Goodman's bands started the careers of many jazz musicians. During an era of racial segregation, he led one of the first integrated jazz groups, his trio and quartet. He performed nearly to the end of his life while exploring an interest in .

Early years

"Playing music was a great escape for me from the poverty."

Goodman, in a 1975 interview

Goodman was the ninth of twelve children born to poor Jewish emigrants from the . His father, David Goodman (1873–1926), came to the United States in 1892 from in and became a tailor. His mother, Dora Grisinsky, (1873–1964), came from . They met in , and moved to Chicago before Goodman's birth. With little income and a large family, they moved to the neighborhood, an overcrowded slum near railroad yards and factories that was populated by German, Irish, Italian, Polish, Scandinavian, and Jewish immigrants.

Money was a constant problem. On Sundays, his father took the children to free band concerts in , which was the first time Goodman experienced live professional performances. To give his children some skills and an appreciation for music, his father enrolled ten-year-old Goodman and two of his brothers in music lessons, from 1919, at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue. Benny also received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinetist and Chicago Symphony member, Franz Schoepp. During the next year Goodman joined the boys club band at , where he received lessons from director James Sylvester. By joining the band, he was entitled to spend two weeks at a summer camp near Chicago. It was the only time he could get away from his bleak neighborhood. At 13, he got his first union card. He performed on Lake Michigan excursion boats, and in 1923 played at Guyon's Paradise, a local dance hall.

In the summer of 1923, he met . He attended the Lewis Institute () in 1924 as a high-school sophomore and played clarinet in a dance hall band. When he was 17, his father was killed by a passing car after stepping off a streetcar. His father's death was "the saddest thing that ever happened in our family", Goodman said.: 42 

Career Early career

His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists who worked in Chicago, such as , , and . He learned quickly, becoming a strong player at an early age, and was soon playing in bands. He made his professional debut in 1921 at the Central Park Theater on the West Side of Chicago. He entered in Chicago in 1922. At fourteen he became a member of the musicians' union and worked in a band featuring . Two years later he joined the Orchestra and made his first recordings in 1926.

From sideman to bandleader Goodman moved to New York City and became a session musician for radio, Broadway musicals, and in studios. In addition to clarinet, he sometimes played alto saxophone and baritone saxophone. His first recording pressed to disc (Victor 20394) occurred on December 9, 1926, in Chicago. The session resulted in the song "When I First Met Mary", which also included Glenn Miller, Harry Goodman, and Ben Pollack. In a recording session on March 21, 1928, he played alongside , , and in the All-Star Orchestra directed by . He played with the bands of ,

William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the , and in 1936 took them to for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists and , the guitarist , trumpeters and , plunger trombonist , and singers , , , and .

Biography Early life and education

William Basie was born to Lillian and Harvey Lee Basie in . His father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his father became a groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area. Both of his parents had some type of musical background. His father played the , and his mother played the piano; in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living. She paid 25 cents a lesson for Count Basie's piano instruction.

The best student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life, inspired by touring carnivals which came to town. He finished junior high school but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the .

Though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the obvious talents of , who also lived in Red Bank and became 's drummer in 1919, Basie switched to piano exclusively at age 15. Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardson's "Kings of Syncopation". When not playing a gig, he hung out at the local pool hall with other musicians, where he picked up on upcoming play dates and gossip. He got some jobs in at the , and played at the Hong Kong Inn until a better player took his place.

Early career

Around 1920, Basie went to , a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the . Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, 's early band. Soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were "making the scene," including and .

Basie toured in several acts between 1925 and 1927, including Katie Krippen and Her Kiddies (featuring singer ) as part of the Hippity Hop show; on the , the , and the (T.O.B.A.) circuits; and as a soloist and accompanist to singer as well as Crippen. His touring took him to , , , and Chicago. Throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including . Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.

Back in Harlem in 1925, Basie gained his first steady job at Leroy's, a place known for its piano players and its "". The place catered to "uptown celebrities", and typically the band winged every number without sheet music using "head arrangements". He met , who was playing organ at the accompanying silent movies, and Waller taught him how to play that instrument. (Basie later played organ at the Eblon Theater in Kansas City). As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie "the Lion" Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at "house-rent parties", introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.

In 1928, Basie was in and heard and his Famous , one of the first , which featured on vocals. A few months later, he was invited to join the band, which played mostly in Texas and . It was at this time that he began to be known as "Count" Basie (see ).

Kansas City years

The following year, in 1929, Basie became the pianist with the band based in Kansas City, inspired by Moten's ambition to raise his band to match the level of those led by Duke Ellington or . Where the were "snappier" and more "bluesy", the Moten band was more refined and respected, playing in the "" style. In addition to playing piano, Basie was co-arranger with , who notated the music. Their "", which Basie claimed credit for, was an invaluable contribution to the development of swing music, and at one performance at the in Philadelphia in December 1932, the theatre opened its door to allow anybody in who wanted to hear the band perform. During a stay in Chicago, Basie recorded with the band. He occasionally played four-hand piano and dual pianos with Moten, who also conducted. The band improved with several personnel changes, including the addition of tenor saxophonist .

When the band voted Moten out, Basie took over for several months, calling the group Count Basie and his Cherry Blossoms. When his own band folded, he rejoined Moten with a newly re-organized band. A year later, Basie joined Bennie Moten's band, and played with them until Moten died in 1935 from a failed tonsillectomy. The band tried to stay together but failed. Basie then formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm, with many former Moten members including Walter Page (bass), Freddie Green (guitar), (drums), Lester Young (tenor saxophone) and Jimmy Rushing (vocals).

The Barons of Rhythm were regulars at the Reno Club and often performed for a live radio broadcast. During a broadcast the announcer wanted to give Basie's name some style, so he called him "Count". It positioned him with , as well as Duke Ellington.

Basie's new band played at the Reno Club and sometimes were broadcast on local radio. Late one night with time to fill, the band started improvising. Basie liked the results and named the piece "". According to Basie, "we hit it with the and went into the , and the riffs just stuck. We set the thing up front in D-flat, and then we just went on playing in F." It became his signature tune.

John Hammond and first recordings Basie and band, with vocalist , from the film (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 Grand Terrace Ballroom. 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 ' vibrato, Basie placed them on either side of the players, and soon had the tenor players engaged in "duels". Many other bands later adapted the split tenor arrangement.

In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with". Hammond first heard Basie's band on the radio and went to Kansas City to check them out. He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released on 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 in 1938, "Boogie Woogie" was released in 1941 as part of a four-record compilation album entitled (Columbia album C44). When he made the Vocalion recordings, Basie had already signed with , but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.

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), (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), (bass), (alto sax), and (trumpet), and (trombone). 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".

Basie favored , and he would showcase some of the most notable blues singers of the era after he went to New York: , , , , and . He also hired arrangers who knew how to maximize the band's abilities, such as and .

New York City and the swing years

When Basie took his orchestra to New York in 1937, they made the Woodside Hotel in Harlem their base (they often rehearsed in its basement). Soon, they were booked at the for the Christmas show. Basie recalled a review, which said something like, "We caught the great Count Basie band which is supposed to be so hot he was going to come in here and set the Roseland on fire. Well, the Roseland is still standing". Compared to the reigning band of , Basie's band lacked polish and presentation.

The producer John Hammond continued to advise and encourage the band, and they soon came up with some adjustments, including softer playing, more solos, and more standards. They paced themselves to save their hottest numbers for later in the show, to give the audience a chance to warm up. His first official recordings for followed, under contract to agent MCA, including "" and "".

Hammond introduced Basie to , whom he invited to sing with the band. (Holiday did not record with Basie, as she had her own record contract and preferred working with small combos). The band's first appearance at the Apollo Theater followed, with the vocalists Holiday and getting the most attention. Durham returned to help with arranging and composing, but for the most part, the orchestra worked out its numbers in rehearsal, with Basie guiding the proceedings. There were often no musical notations made. Once the musicians found what they liked, they usually were able to repeat it using their "head arrangements" and collective memory.

Next, Basie played at the , which was noted more for , while the Roseland was a place for and . In early 1938, the was the meeting ground for a "battle of the bands" with 's group. Basie had Holiday, and Webb countered with the singer . As magazine proclaimed, "Basie's Brilliant Band Conquers Chick's"; the article described the evening:

Throughout the fight, which never let down in its intensity during the whole fray, Chick took the aggressive, with the Count playing along easily and, on the whole, more musically scientifically. Undismayed by Chick's forceful drum beating, which sent the audience into shouts of encouragement and appreciation and casual beads of perspiration to drop from Chick's brow onto the brass cymbals, the Count maintained an attitude of poise and self-assurance. He constantly parried Chick's thundering haymakers with tantalizing runs and arpeggios which teased more and more force from his adversary.

The publicity over the big band battle, before and after, gave the Basie band a boost and wider recognition. Soon after, recorded their signature "" with his band.

A few months later, Holiday left for 's band. Hammond introduced , whom Basie hired; she stayed with Basie for four years. When left for 's orchestra, he was replaced by . Basie's 14-man band began playing at the , a mid-town nightspot with a network feed and , which Hammond was said to have bought the club in return for their booking Basie steadily throughout the summer of 1938. Their fame took a huge leap. Adding to their play book, Basie received arrangements from (who had also worked with Benny Goodman and ), particularly for "Cherokee", "Easy Does It", and "Super Chief". In 1939, Basie and his band made a major cross-country tour, including their first dates. A few months later, Basie quit MCA and signed with the Agency, who got them better fees.

On February 19, 1940, Count Basie and his Orchestra opened a four-week engagement at in Boston, and they broadcast over the radio on February 20. On the West