Walter Page

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Walter Page was born in Gallatin, Missouri, in 1900 and grew up in Kansas City. At Lincoln High School he learned the double bass from the former military bandleader Major N. Clark Smith, after first playing bass drum and bass horn in brass bands. He studied at the University of Kansas and, between 1918 and 1923, played tuba, bass saxophone and double bass in Bennie Moten's orchestra. In 1925 he formed Walter Page and the Blue Devils, a territory band from the area around Oklahoma City and Wichita, in which Count Basie, Jimmy Rushing and Lester Young, among others, played.

Music and breakthrough

Page drew attention above all with his bass playing. He is regarded as one of the first to play four beats to the bar and as the most important spreader of the walking bass, in place of the older two-beat style of New Orleans. His sound was so solid that Eddie Durham said he was like a house with one note. He played in Count Basie's orchestra from 1935 to 1942 and again from 1946 to 1949. Together with the pianist Basie, the drummer Jo Jones and the guitarist Freddie Green, he formed the All-American Rhythm Section, the rhythm section that defined the Basie sound. He left room for the soloists and played a straight line.

Influence

Page also played baritone saxophone and tuba, and with the Kansas City Six he recorded one of the first jazz solos on double bass, Pagin' the Devil. Later he worked as a freelancer with, among others, Buck Clayton, Roy Eldridge and Eddie Condon. He died in New York in 1957 of pneumonia. Because of his early death he remains less well known than his influence deserves, for his walking bass became the model for later jazz bassists.

Listening

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