Credit: Far Out / jgullo
Mon 3 August 2026 22:00, UK
Behind the success of every great musician, there’s a great talent scout. Yeah, everybody needed the talent to be scouted in the first place, but without someone from the music industry signing, championing and shouting about them, they’d find it a lot harder to go from best-local-talent to top-of-the-world.
In fact, behind a lot of the greatest artists of the 20th century was the same talent scout. Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others, were all spotted, scouted or signed by John Henry Hammond Sr, and if that wasn’t enough of a legacy for the Columbia Records man, he was also instrumental in bringing Robert Johnson back into notoriety and renown, producing the final recording sessions by Bessie Smith and supporting Pete Seeger when all others had turned their backs on him. Hammond Sr was one of the driving forces behind the integration of Black and white musicians, audiences and attitudes in jazz from the 1930’s onwards, as well.
Incredibly, though, despite his faultless and frankly incredible track record, Hammond’s instincts weren’t always understood, appreciated or even respected by his Columbia colleagues. Some of them questioned both his decision to sign Billie Holiday and her ability to sing, and none of them could figure out what to do with Aretha Franklin, who exploded into life only once she’d moved on to Atlantic Records and began recording at the Fame Recording Studios in Muscle Shoals, AL, in 1967.
Then, most famously, when Bob Dylan’s debut album didn’t take off in the way that the label had hoped, the musician became known around Columbia’s New York offices as “Hammond’s folly”. And though he was eventually always proven right with those signings, there was one that nobody could ever have doubted, even from the get-go.
Hammond first heard Count Basie on his car radio at the end of 1935, on a live broadcast from the Reno Club in Kansas City, as the pianist, arranger and bandleader led his Barons of Rhythm through a sort of swinging style that even a jazz aficionado like Hammond hadn’t ever heard before. The unconventional nine-piece was more Duke Ellington or Fletcher Henderson than Paul Whiteman or Isham Jones, but maybe even more swinging and adventurous than even those two, as well.
Credit: Far Out / William Morris Agency
It was love at first listen, and Hammond wasted no time in seekout out and subsequently signing Basie and his band, and in the process, freeing them from their Reno Club commitments, where they were booked to play seven nights a week, from nine at night to five in the morning, for only $2.50 each per session.
Of course, Hammond ended up working on many legendary recording sessions with even more legendary recording artists, but it was Basie with whom he loved working the most, and described the 1936 session that he produced with the bandleader as “the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I’ve ever had anything to do with”.
However, his evocative piano-playing didn’t just blow away Hammond, but also Sinatra, who loved working with him, and recorded some of his finest cuts in sessions with the bandleader. Another one of Sinatra’s frequent collaborators, pianist Bill Miller, said, “I think more or as much as any other musician, Frank admired and adored Bill Basie. Any time we had a record date or gig with Basie and his band, Frank was extremely happy to be working with him.”
But what made Count Basie so great was the universal reach of his music, so it makes sense that guys like John Hammond or Frank Sinatra loved him, but even with people who were much further removed, like the guys in the Grateful Dead, he was a favourite too.
Bob Weir caught a Count Basie show in 1983 and was as blown away as anybody, later saying of the night, “A number of years back, I went to see Count Basie. He was playing the Venetian Room, an elegant nightspot in San Francisco. He came on and the band, they swung like angels; particularly the quartet. Three of the four people in the quartet had been together for 50 years or so. And it was just the most wonderful evening I could have imagined.”
A lot of people consider the Grateful Dead to be the greatest American band of all time (no, honestly), but all that tells you is that those people have never listened to Count Basie, Walter Page, Jo Jones, Lester Young, Jimmy Rushing, Freddie Green, Joe Keys, Carl Smith and Claude Williams when they really started swinging together.
