Related show

• Artist: Tom Cunningham Orchestra
• Date: Saturday, June 9th 2012
• Time: 8:00pm
• City: Tom Cunningham Orchestra in Fairfax
• Venue: The Sherwood Center
• Address: 3740 Old Lee Hwy
• Venue phone: 703-385-7858
• Country: United States
• Admission: $15
• Notes: Our first time in this lovely room, courtesy of Tom & Debra.
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Related show

• Artist: Tom Cunningham Orchestra
• Date: Wednesday, June 20th 2012
• Time: 7:30pm
• City: Tom Cunningham Orchestra in Alexandria, VA 22310
• Venue: Lee District Park Amphitheater
• Address: 6601 Telegraph Rd
• Venue phone: 703 922 9840
• Country: United States
• Admission: FREE
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Notes: Dancing encouraged!
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Related show

• Artist: Tom Cunningham Orchestra
• Date: Saturday, May 12th 2012
• Time: 8:00pm
• City: Tom Cunningham Orchestra in Glen Echo
• Venue: Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park
• Address: 7300 MacArthur Boulevard Glen Echo, MD 20812
• Venue phone: (301) 634-2222
• Country: United States
• Admission: adults $15, 6-13 $8, under 5 fre
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Notes: A late addition to our Saturday Night Swing at the Spanish Ballroom series!
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Related show

• Artist: Tom Cunningham Orchestra
• Date: Tuesday, March 6th 2012
• Time: 9:00pm
• City: Tom Cunningham Orchestra in Alexandria, VA 22314
• Venue: The Carlyle Club
• Address: 411 John Carlyle Street
• Venue phone: 703 549 8957
• Country: United States
• Admission: walk-ins $10
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Notes: A swingin’ kick-off to GottaSwing’s new Tuesday night venue. The whole bamn dand will be wailing till 11 o’dot!
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Related show

• Artist: Tom Cunningham Orchestra
• Date: Saturday, April 21st 2012
• Time: 9:00pm
• City: Tom Cunningham Orchestra in Glen Echo
• Venue: Spanish Ballroom at Glen Echo Park
• Address: 7300 MacArthur Boulevard Glen Echo, MD 20812
• Venue phone: (301) 634-2222
• Country: United States
• Age restrictions: All Ages
• Notes: The TCO will be sharing the stage with Seattle’s Glenn Crytzer band for the DC Lindy Exchange. Should be a cool evening!
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

A few thoughts about why we’re so high on Count Basie that we’re devoting an evening to his music on August 27th. First, in the words of the Count himself, we expect it to be a “hot sock dance.” That’s what happens to your socks when you wear through both your soles, and Basie’s music will do that if anything can. Second, we enjoy the history, contrasting the sounds of the band that arrived on the national scene fresh out of “the Styx” with the polished ensemble that backed Sinatra at the Sands in Vegas.

Born August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, New Jersey, Bill Basie picked up his nickname “Count” in Kansas City in the days when KC was a Depression-proof cow-town with wall-to-wall music. Discovered via a tiny radio station’s live remote broadcasts, he brought the band to New York in 1936. After that, he “never had a bad night” until the end of the Swing Era in 1949, when he briefly led an octet. Re-forming (the “New Testament” band) in 1951, Basie was pretty much on the road until his 1984 passing.

Why do musicians hold Basie in such high regard? In a word – Swingin’est! His poll-winning rhythm section of the late 1930s was known as the “All-American Rhythm Section” – Drummer Jo Jones moved the foundational sound from drums to the cymbals, creating a smoother feel. Bassist Walter Page pioneered the Walking Bass, a kind of 4/4 bass line that always feels like it’s leading you somewhere. Guitarist Freddie Green is to this day the model for rhythm guitarists worldwide. And Basie pared down his piano-playing so he could time his notes to uncannily tickle your insides. Collectively, these four could move dancers’ feet and musicians’ spirits like no others.

But there’s more. The pressure cooker that was Kansas City produced Swingin’ ensembles and inspired soloists; Basie was tops in both. His roster is a Jazz Who’s Who: Singers Jimmy Rushing, Billie Holiday, Helen Humes and Joe Williams, trombonists Eddie Durham, Dickie Wells, Vic Dickenson, and Al Grey, trumpeters Hot Lips Page, Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, and Thad Jones, reed men Earle Warren, Jack Washington, Buddy DeFranco, Marshall Royal - and all those great tenors - Herschel Evans, Buddy Tate, Don Byas, Illinois Jacquet, Paul Gonsalves, Wardell Gray, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Lockjaw Davis, Jimmy Forrest, and the tenor sax voice that turned the rudder of jazz history – Lester Young, Prez. This combination of Swingin’ ensemble and hot soloists defined Basie’s Old Testament band.

The New Testament group was known for a more polished product, but with that same compelling Swing feel at its core. Arrangers became the stars as the ensemble settled into its patented groove. Writers like Quincy Jones, Frank Foster, Neal Hefti, and Sammy Nestico set the table for the Basie feast of sound. At Glen Echo we’ll particularly focus on the arrangements of Foster, who passed away last month.

So you won’t want to miss it, and you will want to tell your friends: Basie’s Birthday Bash, Spanish Ballroom, 8-12, Saturday, August 27th, adult admission $15 (cheap). This event is presented in cooperation with Glen Echo Partnership for Arts and Culture Inc., the National Park Service, and Montgomery County. Be there or be square.

Remembering back 35 years to the Spring of 1976 when I started the TCO… what a time it was!  I was 23 years old and in the middle of a massive born-again supernatural encounter with God (or call it a massive psychotic episode, if you prefer).  I was auditing classes at American University and hanging out in the music building.  Sometimes I’d just sit in a practice room listening to Jim Moulder upstairs doing his piano exercises.  Jim’s still a major presence on the DC jazz scene, headlining regularly at the Ice House Café.  Anyway, I’d accumulated a “book” from having led the VMI Commanders dance band for three years, from leading a rehearsal big band during my year at Berklee, and from co-leading the summertime “New Alexandria Jazz Band,” which rehearsed at Trinity Methodist, then later at my alma mater, TC Williams.  But when Doc Boggs told me I could help myself to anything in “those” file cabinets – the old stuff – I took full advantage.  I remember him blanching as I made multiple trips in front of his eyes from his office to the back of Dad’s station wagon.  Now I really had a book, and I knew tons of musicians, mostly from TC and AU.  I wish I could name every guy who was at that very first TCO rehearsal in the AU band room, but I do recall Jim on piano, TC’s Dave Jernigan on guitar (before he became one of DC’s top bass players), Dave Kasler (Air Force Band) or Matt Grossman on bass (they took turns), drummer nonpareil Jim West who was soon to take my room in a Rosslyn group house, housemate Gladwin Priel my Air Force connection, and Ron Oshima on altos, Steve the AU security cop on lead trumpet, Wayne Toyne (AF), Larry Eden (AU), and Jim Robeson (AU) trumpets, plus Royal Burkhardt on lead trombone.  There was a high school kid from Bethesda, Jon Elmer, who played a soulful plunger/blues trombone, and Tom Steele, be-bop bone from Vienna.  An Air Force tenor man who was outa sight and the others just escape me.  That first version of the TCO rehearsed weekly into the summer, moving over to Mrs. Jernigan’s basement after school let out, but it never gigged; I consider it a divine “earnest” on things to come…

I preach to my musicians that the proper relationship between themselves, the music, and dancers should be “triangular,” that is to say they should love the music, love the dancers, and want the dancers to love the music.

Believe me when I tell you, big band musicians are highly motivated by their love for the music. In this band, they give up a night a week to drive to the rehearsal hall and practice the stuff, and hardly a month goes by that they don’t perform at least once at considerably less than an appropriate fee, because of their desire to play great music for people.

Why are we so high on this music? Here are some feelings pretty much shared among our guys:

• There was an explosion of genius in the first half of the 20th Century called Jazz. As composer and critic Virgil Thompson put it, “the most astonishing musical event to take place anywhere since the Reformation.”
• Jazz is our native art form and will stand the test of time to be our cultural identity, just as “classical” music is Europe’s cultural identity.
• The big band is America’s equivalent to the European symphony orchestra, preserving Swing, the most structured and accessible music of our native art form.
• The Swing Era was the absolute pinnacle of American pop culture. When big bands were popular, popular tastes were their most elevated. It was the intersection of popular music and musical art.
• Big band Swing was written to be interactive – to be danced to.
• To create Swing feeling is Jazz’s highest musical virtue. Our standing as musicians is primarily related to how compellingly we get dancers to want to move to our music.

Swing we must.

Tom Cunningham