Riding with the boys on the Basie
bus
No sooner has the last plink,
plank, plunk died away than the Basie band takes the first step toward a
trip on the Basie bus.
 ome things will never change.
For better than 50 years, somewhere a Count
Basic band has been riding around America in a bus or on a plane, on their
way to or from a gig, the Flying Dutchmen of jazz.
This practice started when their piano-playing leader nicked a personal
Greyhound from the bus firm of the same name when the Barons of Rhythm, as
the band was then known, were playing the Reno in Kansas City with Lester
Young and Herschel Evans on tenors and Buck Clayton on trumpet.
In the
middle of the Great Depression, the boys in the band would ride out to
one-nighters in Tulsa, Okla., Muskogee, Okmulgee, Oklahoma City, and over
to Wichita, Kan., and Omaha, Neb.
Basie kept a draw book to record advances to the
musicians. "Lester used to get either 55 or 60 cents," he remembered in
his autobiography, "Good Morning Blues," "but you couldn't draw more than
a buck and a quarter. But you could get a full course meal for 35 cents,"
 owadays, the boys in the band all have credit cards (and a few have gray
hair), but they're still on the bus. The Sunday after this gig, they'd ride it to a weeklong
engagement at Disneyland. To find out how they keep going — and perhaps
why — your reporter joined the Basie band, which was then being led by Frank Foster after Basie
died in 1984, on a bus jaunt from a date at the Del Mar Fair, which
was held on the grounds of the track Bing Crosby helped found, to downtown
Hollywood, where they would rest for a night before playing another fair
in Ventura, Calif.
The familiar plink, plank, plunk that ends "One O'Clock Jump" had scarcely
died away before the 17 sidemen slipped from the open air bandstand and
headed for their dressing rooms. They'd flown into LAX from Chicago that
morning after playing a date in Racine, Wis., and taken a chartered bus
south.
An air-conditioned and immaculate beauty, it was waiting for them a few
steps from the stage as they took off their brown band uniforms and
stashed them in their sturdy aluminum suitcases with the blue ones and the
tuxedos that Basic's men must carry everywhere. The suitcases went into
the bus cargo hold, the instruments onto the bus, including Cleveland
Eaton's bass, which took up three seats. He always sits in the back.
Meanwhile, saxophonist Danny House, a blond-haired Californian who joined
the band four years ago, donned his native T-shirt and jeans to help roll
a half-dozen Anvil cases containing the foldaway bandstands, the charts,
and the electronic gear down the ramp for boarding.
 and manager Sonny Cohn, a trumpet player who's been with the Basie bunch
for 28 years, was standing beside the driver as the globetrotters filed
aboard, now in their street clothes. The Chicagoan's voice was kindly but
firm.
"All right, it's 4:17. Let's move it on out of here." The 17 men had left
the stage at 4 p.m. on the dot, as we see in the top photo.
There's no limit on luggage. "You can carry as much as you feel you need
to make it out there," trumpeter Bobby Ojeda confided. Among the comforts
brought into play as the bus drew onto Interstate 5 was Bobby's Sony
Walkman. It has dual earphones, which he and trumpet newcomer Mike
Williams, just out of North Texas State, wore to listen to Bobby's tapes.
Trumpet soloist Byron Stripling and alto man Danny Turner also got out
their portable tape players and put on earphones, as did drummer Gregg
Fields, after he survived a playful attempt by baritone saxophonist John
Williams to throw him off the bus.
Within a half-hour, eyes began to close here and there, and although
California sunshine was streaming through the tinted picture windows,
nobody was looking out except when a covey of military helicopters thumped
by to the west.
"Uh-oh, he's got his tail down a little low," exclaimed Ojeda. "Uh-oh,
uh-oh! No, he's out of it. On maneuvers," he smiled, turning to the new
kid in the section, Williams.
Kenny Hing, the diminutive tenor stalwart, had just settled into his
paperback and 26-year veteran reed man Eric Dixon was rapping across the
aisle up front with Cohn and Williams about how Basic rode in Cadillacs
until his very last year, when he switched to a Lincoln Continental.
 very once in a while Ojeda would look up at Williams, who was standing in
the aisle listening to the tapes on Ojeda's Walkman, and say something
like "The original arrangement of 'Artistry in Rhythm.' Ernie Royal on
lead trumpet!" or "Pete Candoli! Old-fashioned!"
Suddenly the northbound bus began to decelerate strongly, throwing everyone back into
their seats. The driver was braking expertly, which was a good thing,
because 10 cars ahead in the No. 2 lane, a guy in a brand-new cherry red
Honda had stalled and was at a standstill, "Nice driving! Nice driving!"
came the cry as the Basie bus changed to the No. 1 lane and pulled past.
The danger was quickly forgotten in the struggle against
traffic from then on, past the nuclear plant at San Onofre, past the
oldest drive-in movie theater in America, past TRW, where the guys in "The
Falcon and the Snowman" had worked: scenic but not too scenic.
Guitarist Paul Weeden, a man in his 60s who joined the band this year in
place of the late Freddie Green, downplayed the grueling aspects of his
new job. An Indianapolis, Ind., player who now lives on an island off
Norway, Weeden is just glad to be in the Count Basie band. That makes up
for everything, he was saying in his soft voice.
ut I was watching Turner, who still had his earphones on. From a tote bag
neatly stowed beside him, he had deftly withdrawn a nicely browned oatmeal
cookie. Spilling not a crumb, he lifted it to his lips and ate exactly
half of it. Then he rewrapped it in Saran Wrap and stashed it in the tote
for later.
This made me so sad that I fell asleep like the rest. Before I knew it,
Ojeda was shouting again.
"Take Highland! Take Highland!" he said. "Sunset!" Williams cried from up
front. "Turn on Sunset! There's Bowl traffic on Highland." The driver
turned on Sunset, stopped at the Hallmark House ("Motor Hotel of Modern
Elegance"), and before you could say plink, plank, plunk, the stalwart 17
were lugging their gear inside.
Dixon and Cohn headed for the coffee shop and ordered shrimp. "I'm gonna
get me a newspaper right over there at that stand, and a candy bar, and
head for that room," said Dixon as they finished their meal.
"I think I'm gonna do exactly the same thing," said Cohn. It was 6:45 p.m.
Tomorrow at 4 p.m. they would be on the bus again.
|
