Setting the Style: The Count Basie Orchestra and Its Early Trumpet Players, 1935–1937

The Count Basie Orchestra is one of the most well-known and popular big bands in jazz history. The musical style of the Count Basie Orchestra, associated with, and often attributed to, Kansas City, is one of the foundational styles of contemporary jazz. The sounds of the Count Basie Orchestra have influenced many, if not all, of the most popular modern big bands, including the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, and the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. However, many of its earliest trumpet players remain overlooked. The trumpet section holds certain responsibilities regarding the style of a big band because it often states the melody of a tune, is the loudest and highest sounding section, is used to create a sense of excitement, and houses the lead trumpet player who is most often assigned the role of determining, demonstrating, and disseminating style to and across the band; therefore, performance style is often closely tied to the trumpet section. This being so, one would expect that members of the early iterations of the Count Basie Orchestra’s trumpet section would have long been lionized for their role in the development of one of jazz’s primary styles. However, this is not the case; there are few among them that earned the lifelong recognition that Wilbur “Buck” Clayton and Harry “Sweets” Edison did. The focus of this document is to provide biographical information on the two trumpeters that remain most overlooked from the early Count Basie Orchestra, Carl “Tatti” Smith and Joe Keys. This information will enable us better to flesh out the historical narrative and timeline of the Count Basie Orchestra, and to properly understand and acknowledge the place of these two trumpeters in Jazz history.