Count Basie

MVD's addition to their Swing Era series featuring Count Basie is a collection of film/videos from Studio Telescriptions, Snader Telescriptions, and other sources. There are seven Count Basie tracks that are valuable, revealing, and downright exciting. Fats Waller's four songs start off with "Honeysuckle Rose," taken from a short directed by Warren Murray and released by Soundies Distribution Corporation and, needless to say, it is fantastic. As with the George Shearing collection on Idem/Music Video Distributors, there's no commentary or bonus features, and the inclusion of both would do much to explain how these nuggets came to be. The philosophy at play here seems to be that it's all about the music -- and there is lots of it, 32 tracks from Basie, Waller, Louis Armstrong, Joe Turner, Henry "Red" Allen, a couple of tunes from Gene Krupa, Lucky Millinder, and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. Millinder's "Do The Huckelbuck" is taken from the 1948 Moms Mabley film Boarding House Blues, directed by Josh Binney, and it is classic. The sound quality is surprisingly great, and the "film" quality holds up very well decades after the fact. If used as study material in schools, this component of the Swing Era series could open up new audiences to not only these important performances but to the classy lost art of early music videos. Grade A. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide