Bennie Moten’s reputation rests chiefly on having led an outfit that supplied much of the original Count Basie Orchestra’s personnel, yet he merits fuller acknowledgment. A skilled ragtime-oriented pianist, he directed the leading territory band of the 1920s, the group that established the prevailing standard for Kansas City jazz. Such was its preeminence that Moten absorbed several rival units, among them Walter Page’s Blue Devils, whose members largely transferred into his own expanding ensemble. He organized the band, at first a sextet, in 1922; the following year it entered the studio for the first time. Its Okeh sides from 1923 to 1925 included the initial recording of his signature success “South.” Between 1926 and 1932 the orchestra recorded for Victor, where the original sidemen stayed little known while later arrivals included brother Buster Moten on occasional jazz accordion, Harlan Leonard, Jack Washington, Eddie Durham, Jimmy Rushing, Hot Lips Page, and, beginning in 1929, Count Basie. So impressed was Moten by Basie’s keyboard work that Count took over the piano chair on record, though Moten still performed a feature or two in live settings. The band’s final and most renowned session took place on December 13, 1932, producing ten titles whose ensemble character already evoked the Basie sound of five years later. At that date the personnel also featured Ben Webster, Eddie Barefield, and Walter Page, and the date marked the first appearance of “Moten Swing.” Moten died in 1935 after complications from a tonsillectomy. Buster Moten assumed brief leadership, yet most of the principal players, together with notable additions such as Lester Young, soon gravitated toward Count Basie.
