Walter Page

Walter Sylvester Page ( born February 9, 1900 in Gallatin, Missouri, † December 20, 1957 in New York City, New York ) was an American jazz musician ( a double bass player, band leader ) of the swing.

Life and work

Walter Page received a thorough musical education in Kansas City, he first learned baritone horn and double bass, then saxophone, violin, piano, voice and vocal training, composition and arranging. Earlier in his career he worked in the band of Willie Lewis, whom he described as a fine musician. In the early 1920s he also worked with Bennie Moten and Dave Lewis.

The Blue Devils

1927 broke the band of Willie Lewis and after several engagements founded in small bands Page the Blue Devils, the undisputed band around Oklahoma Territory was. Page and Bennie Moten, who was then in Kansas City had the leading big band, went to both knowledge of their strengths and weaknesses, a cutting contest (battle ) of both bands out of the way.

He is primarily known as a bandleader and as the founder of Walter Page 's Blue Devils, a swing band of the late 1920s and early 1930s that worked initially in the group of Bennie Moten and ultimately in the big band of Count Basie. In the history of jazz Page was one especially as the bassist, back to the pioneering work of today offer classic style of the walking bass. However, in the early years of his career he was, as in the former jazz bands of the Midwest usual, a multi-instrumentalist. Until the first half of the 1930s played Page, like many of his colleagues, the bass voices of many arrangements on the tuba, occasionally even on the low saxophones ( baritone and bass). In all these instruments, he stepped out sporadically as a soloist.

The band was sometimes so successful that it was from the first major merit made ​​a great touring car for extended trips. She worked as a ten -piece band within fifty miles of El Reno, Shawnee, Chickashay and the small towns. Their territory ( hence the designation territory bands ) they defended against other bands in cutting contests and beat so occasionally the bands of Jesse Stone and George E. Lee.

1928 belonged to Bill "Count" Basie in the band for a few months and also the blues singer Jimmy Rushing came about. 1929 left little by first Basie and Eddie Durham and Jimmy Rushing the band and went to Bennie Moten, who could offer them better salaries.

1929 the band played their only two shots with a Page: Squabblin and Blue Devils Blues. Squabblin, composed by Basie, confirmed the impressive solos and ensemble passages, and Jimmy Rushing sings with a finer voice than you know it at Basie later. The Blue Devil Blues is held in a very relaxed helped beat and is half as fast as the comparable stomps the time at Moten. The whole piece is constructed with brass riffs, except for one ensemble passage at the end. The piece is also the first recording by Jimmy Rushing. It starts as a C minor blues and ends as E-flat blues.

Counter 1930 still left Oran "Hot Lips" Page, star soloist and half-brother of Walter, the band and was replaced by Harry Smith. Lester Young was also briefly the band ( and was in the sequel, the 13 Original Blue Devils also later).

Page had left the band in 1931. Just at that time, before Page to work its way toward the main center of New York and the band had just good commitment. He had a pianist promised a job, but it was unable to comply, as a musician and his band did not understand with the pianist and would have only brought dissent their collaboration in the band. He was then condemned by the musicians' union to a fine of $ 250. With this punishment and his own family commitments he could not pay the salaries of the band members and left the band James Simpson, so that the already booked concert dates could be perceived. After that Page played again with small groups, eventually joined Bennie Moten and played in 1934 with the Jeter - Pillars.

The Blue Devils without Walter Page

After Page was gone, decided the saxophonist Buster Smith and the singer Ernest Williams to continue the band. As head they brought Leroy "Snake" White in the band and called themselves The 13 Original Blue Devils. Again, Lester Young played with. They played at the Ritz Ballroom in Oklahoma City. Buster Smith remarked confidently: "We had a strong band. We were pretty strong and they ( Bennie Moten ) would not get us too. Almost everyone hung around here, trying to get a battle of music with us. We went from none of these bands anything until we came across Andy Kirk. He had a good set of brass; it was hard and dropped us to. "

The band was a so-called co -operative band (also the Commonwealth belt ), that is, they voted on matters from band and shared the revenue in accordance with an agreement more or less evenly ( the band leader got a little more ). You missed the chance to regional prominence when she an engagement with Fats Waller in Cincinnati turned down after narrowly voting for a half -hour show, because the pay was too low. Instead, the band toured in the area of Kentucky and West Virginia, where she was still unknown, which ended in a fiasco. When they knocked down in 1933 played in a club, it turned out that booking agent let them play only for the entrance fees that were too low at about $ 30 per night. The police then distrained nor the instruments they were only handed over for the night jobs because they could not pay their debts to a taxi company. They were thrown out of their hotel and some returned to the kind of hobos on a freight train to Kansas City, the other as a hitchhiker. That was the end of the Blue Devils. Jap Jones (tb ), Ted Ross, Buster Smith (as) Lester Young and Bennie Moten be joined.

Had the band with their " schmissigerem " sound ( Basie ) and the impact that it had on many musicians in New York had success, the nationwide development of big band "swing" would have been possibly introduced earlier.

When Basie and rhythm work

Walter Pages interest in music, both as a leader and as a sideman, focused primarily on the development and refinement of a stylistics for the four main instruments of the rhythm section ( piano, guitar, bass and drums ) as they finally from about 1936 in the so-called All American Rhythm Section the former Count Basie orchestra was realized stylistic influence. The other three related musicians ( pianist Basie, guitarist Freddie Green, and Jo Jones on drums ) lifted all out the crucial importance of Pages rhythmic ideas for the creation of this ensemble sound. Jo Jones, who called the Blue Devils under Page the greatest tape I have ever heard in my life and Page as his musical father of Basie, Rushing and Buster Smith, describes himself as a student of Page, who alongside him for two years in the intricacies the Drum game taught ( how to phrase, how to turn on what the kids now call ' dropping bombs ' ... and so a few moral responsibilities ). The swing of this variety differed for the former listeners so much of the music of other jazz cities (New York, Chicago) that it came in style with the toponym Kansas City Swing - all four musicians had been working in so-called territory bands, of toured the city by the central and southwestern United States.

Page himself protested his life, however, as the "inventor " of the walking bass technique to be called, which he attributed to Duke Ellington's bassist Wellman Braud. There is no doubt, however, that, in the jazz world - the enforcement of this play is inextricably linked with Pages names - among musicians and listeners alike. Accordingly, the bassist played alongside his work in the Basie Orchestra not only with many important black musicians of the swing era, his prominent musical position he has been in engagements with white tape, for example, Benny Goodman and Eddie Condon, as evidenced by the racial segregation in the former American society was not without problems. Unlike his younger half-brother, trumpeter Hot Lips Page, Walter was always the swing style connected and showed no strong interest in the emerging post-1940 modern jazz.

Mary Lou Williams: "I experienced the Basie band, as only Page and the winds were on stage Page made ​​people swing to its bass line, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. ".

Page was from its beginnings in the mid-thirties until 1942 when Basie. Then he separated the dispute by Basie, but played again from 1946 to 1949 with him until the Basie band temporarily disbanded in the early 1950s. At the height of the swing era in the 1930s, he recorded with other swing stars such as Benny Goodman, Harry James and Teddy Wilson and accompanied Billie Holiday. After his time with Basie, he played 1952 Eddie Condon in New York, 1956 Big Joe Turner (Boss of the Blues ) and 1957 with Ruby Braff .. He is in his forties and fifties on recordings by Jay McShann, Buck Clayton, Sidney Bechet, Paul Quinichette, Big Joe Turner, Roy Eldridge, Jo Jones, Jimmy Rushing and Nat Pierce heard.

He died in 1957 of pneumonia.

Swell

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