Red Bank Jazz Fest Sunday To Highlight Count Basie's Legacy

RED BANK, NJ — Jazz legend William “Count” Basie, born and raised in Red Bank, will be celebrated in events marking the 119th anniversary of his birth Aug. 21.

On Sunday, Aug. 20, Red Bank’s Jazz Arts Project will celebrate Basie as part of the borough’s summer-long Westside Jazz Concerts series at Johnny Jazz Park on Shrewsbury Avenue at Drs. James Parker Boulevard.

The Sunday afternoon series concludes Aug. 20, 1 p.m. with One O'Clock Jump!, the special event honoring Basie.

The Charnee Wade Quintet, Timothy Ogunbiyi Quartet, Julius Tolentino & The Next Wave and the Eddie Allen Aggregation Big Band will perform. This is a free event, open to all ages.

On Monday Aug. 21, the Count Basie Center for the Arts will formally dedicate a statue of "The Count," which was recently unveiled at the organization’s summer gala. It is situated in the William and Catherine Basie Arts Plaza.

Master sculptor Brian Hanlon, whose studio is based in Island Heights in Ocean County, will lead the dedication.

Wayne Winborne, executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, will also speak at the event, offering his expertise on Basie's musical legacy. There will be performances of Basie jazz pieces by pianist Phil Bingham.

Another Hanlon sculpture, this a bust of Basie, has been in the lobby of the theater for nearly 20 years, said Jonathan E. Vena, the Basie chief marketing officer.

The free event runs from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. Members of the public interested in attending the event, to be held outdoors at the Basie Center’s William and Catherine Basie Arts Plaza, must RSVP at info@thebasie.org.

Space is limited, but there are plans to stream the dedication on Facebook for those we have to turn back should we reach capacity.

Refreshments will be served, including a commemorative birthday cake to conclude the ceremony, Vena said.

Over a 60-plus year career, Basie helped to establish jazz as a serious art form played not just in clubs but in theaters and concert halls across the world, the center said.

He established swing as one of jazz’s predominant styles and solidified the link between jazz and the blues, performing for everyone from Queen Elizabeth II to John F. Kennedy during his career.

He was widely admired, including by such musicians as Frank Sinatra, Duke Ellington and Billie Holliday, who all worked with him.

In 1984, what was then known as the Monmouth Arts Center was renamed in Basie’s honor.

Today, the Count Basie Center for the Arts is recognized worldwide as a nonprofit performing arts center and an innovator in the arts and performing arts education and preservation, the Basie Center notes. Count Basie Center programming is made possible, in part, by part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

For more information on the arts center, visit www.thebasie.org.

For more information on William “Count” Basie, you can read his full bio here.

The biography is filled with details about Basie's young life in Red Bank and his career as a musician.

Here is a sampling: Basie was born at 229 Mechanic St. in Red Bank on Aug. 21, 1904. His father, Harvey Lee Basie, was a coachman and caretaker; his mother, Lillian Childs Basie, was a laundress, taking in washing and ironing.

The family always owned a piano, and Lilly Ann paid twenty-five cents per lesson to teach William to play. The young man did chores at Red Bank’s now-defunct Palace Theater. A projectionist taught him to rewind the reels, switch between projectors, and operate the spotlight for the vaudeville shows.

On the afternoon the Palace’s house pianist failed to show for work, Basie offered to fill in – but was denied. Nonetheless persistent, the young Basie waited for the film to start, crept into the orchestra pit, and accompanied the film anyway. He was invited back to perform that evening, the center's biography notes.

"Though Basie’s initial intentions were to become a drummer, his ambitions in that direction were forever erased after hearing drummer Sonny Greer from Long Branch. Greer, who later rose to fame as the drummer for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, was so obviously superior to Basie that he made a hasty retreat to the piano," the bio states.

But the men became friends and formed a duo. Decades later, the two would be among 57 musicians photographed on the stoop of a Harlem brownstone by Art Kane, in a shot to accompany an Esquire magazine article on the “Golden Age of Jazz.” The photograph would later become as famous as the subjects it depicted, as inspiration for the documentary "A Great Day in Harlem."