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Neighborhood
Wikipedia ties Count Basie to St. Albans, Queens. A tie, not always an origin
On the map at 174-27 Adelaide Road
174-27 Adelaide Road, Queens: His home in Addisleigh Park.
Source: untappedcities.com
Places
Listen and read
Music spots
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Venue
Savoy Ballroom
1926–1958The ballroom on Lenox Avenue between 140th and 141st Streets was open from 1926 to 1958. Ella Fitzgerald, fresh from a 1934 talent show win at the Apollo, became the teenage singer with Chick Webb’s house band, and in 1938 Count Basie’s band challenged Webb’s. A plaque for the ballroom was unveiled on the block in 2002, per Wikipedia.
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Venue
Birdland (the first club)
1949–1965Named for Charlie Parker, it opened just north of West 52nd Street in December 1949 with Harry Belafonte and Lennie Tristano on the bill. The Count Basie Orchestra was a regular booking and recorded Basie at Birdland here, and Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis appeared. It closed in 1965; today’s Birdland is on West 44th Street, per Wikipedia.
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Venue
Brooklyn Academy of Music
1956–1981Its “Jazz at the Academy” series brought Count Basie and Louis Armstrong to the Opera House stage from 1956, and a late-1960s series featured Thelonious Monk and Tito Puente, per BAM's archivist.
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Moment
“A Great Day in Harlem”
1958On 12 August 1958 Art Kane photographed 57 jazz musicians for Esquire on this block of East 126th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, where police had blocked off the traffic. Count Basie sat down on the curb and a dozen children followed; Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins are in the picture too, per Wikipedia. In August 2021 the Amsterdam News announced a ceremony co-naming the block Art Kane Harlem 1958 Place.
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Venue
Forest Hills Stadium
1964The West Side Tennis Club’s 14,000-seat stadium, built in 1923, is also a concert venue. A poster for its 1964 concerts billed Barbra Streisand, Count Basie and Harry Belafonte, and in the 1960s and 1970s it hosted Simon & Garfunkel among others. It reopened for concerts in 2013, per Wikipedia.
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