John Williams

The Count Basie Orchestra is a 16 to 18 piece big band, one of the most prominent jazz performing groups of the swing era, founded by Count Basie.... The band survived the late '40s decline in big band popularity and went on to produce notable collaborations with singers such as Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald in the '50s and '60s. The group continues to perform and record even after Basie's death in 1984. Count Basie arrived in Kansas City, Missouri in 1927, playing on the Theater Owners Bookers Association circuit. After playing with the Blue Devils, he joined rival band leader Bennie Moten's band. Upon Moten's death, Basie left the group to start his own band, taking many of his colleagues from the Moten band with him. This nine-piece group consisted of Joe Keyes and Oran 'Hot Lips' Page on trumpet, Buster Smith and Jack Washington on alto saxophone, Lester Young on tenor saxophone, Dan Minor on trombone, and a rhythm section made up of Jo Jones on drums, Walter Page on bass and Basie himself on piano.
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Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was... born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th century American popular music. Its West African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation, and the swung note. As the music has developed and spread around the world it has drawn on many different national, regional and local musical cultures giving rise, since its early 20th century American beginnings, to many distinctive styles. . Among these styles are New Orleans jazz, dating from the early 1910s, big band swing and Kansas City jazz from the 1930s, and on through bebop from the mid-1940s to cool jazz, modal, hard bop, free jazz, fusion and Latin jazz in various forms. Late in the century it was influencing significant strains of new forms like electronic dance and rap. In a 1988 interview, trombonist J.J. Johnson said, "Jazz is restless. It won't stay put and it never will".
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