One of Count Basie's most powerful arrangers was Chico O'Farrill. Born in Havana, O'Farrill's father was from Ireland and his mother was of German descent. Sent to a Georgia military school, O'Farrill learned to play trumpet. Back in Cuba in his late teens, he couldn't get enough of Havana's night life.
O'Farrill moved to New York in 1948 and became one of the fathers of Afro-Cuban jazz. He had a way of turning up the brass section's heat and producing exciting arrangements that were as explosive as they were seductive. His work for Benny Goodman's Capitol band in the late 1940s was terrific. For more on O'Farrill's arranging for producer Norman Granz in the late 1940s and early '50s, I highly recommend Cuban Blues: The Chico O'Farrill Sessions on Verve. For more, go here.
For Basie, O'Farrill arranged Basie Meets Bond (1965), a wonderfully inventive album that maximized the band while retaining Bond's cool persona; Basie's Beatles Bag (1966); Broadway Basie's Way (1966); Basie's in the Bag (1967); The Happiest Millionaires; Count Basie and His Orchestra (1967); Annual Report with the Mills Brothers; Standing Ovation (1969), on which he shared arranging credits with Sammy Nestico; Basic Basie (1969); and Count Basie and His Orchestra (1970).
Among them, my favorite is Basic Basie. Don't get me wrong, I love many of the others but this one is special. I first discovered it in 1972 as Evergreen, on Sonny Lester's Groove Merchant label. The album was so good I purchased a second one soon after. Despite the quality of my Dual turntable, I knew I was going to wear it out, and I did.
As Tom Lord's online Jazz Discography notes:
The album appears not only MPS but also on Groove Merchant GM2201 entitled "Evergreens"; this release is listed in Chris Sheridan's Basie discography as the first issue for this session. That's not accurate. Groove Merchant's founder Sonny Lester was the producer of the Basie session, but his oversight was for the MPS label, not Groove Merchant. Groove Merchant GM2201 was published in 1972, a year after the original release of MPS (G)15264, which was published in 1971.
The band: Gene Goe, Oscar Brashear and Sonny Cohn (tp); Waymon Reed (tp,flh); Frank Hooks, Melvin Wanzo and Grover Mitchell (tb); Bill Hughes (b-tb); Marshal Royal (as,cl); Bobby Plater (as,fl); Eric Dixon (ts,fl); Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (ts); Charlie Fowlkes (bar); Count Basie (p,org); Freddie Green (g); Norman Keenan (b,el-b); Harold Jones (d); Chico O'Farrill (arr) on all titles except Eric Dixon on I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You.
The album is perfect from start to finish. To give you a taste, here's Blues in My Heart...
And here's the full album's tracks with ads...
Other Perfection tracks in this ongoing series...
- Paul Desmond and Jim Hall: Any Other Time, go here.
- John Coltrane: You Say You Care, go here.
- Quincy Jones: Funk Junction, go here.
- Art Farmer's Work of Art, go here.
- Miles Davis: A Gal in Calico, go here.
- Gene Krupa: Mulligan Stew, go here.
- Dave Brubeck: The Duke, go here.
- Horace Silver: The Back Beat, go here.
- Horace Parlan: Up & Down, go here.
- Dexter Gordon: Society Red, go here.
- Barney Kessel: You Go to My Head, go here.
- Count Basie: Corner Pocket, go here.
- Herbie Mann: Manteca, go here.
- Donald Byrd: Bronze Dance, go here.
- George Shearing: I'll Be Around, go here.
- Ammmons & Stitt: You Talk That Talk, go here.