Count Basie Teacher Resources

Students discuss musical instruments common to jazz and compare several songs by various artists. They identify musical grooves common to jazz music. They compare a string quartet to a traditional jazz group.

Students compare and contrast two versions of April in Paris. They discuss the songs in terms of the grooves each one captures and identify the instruments responsible for creating them.

Students explore, analyze, study and read a variety of poems and listen to jazz that have their roots in the Harlem Renaissance. They then discuss the similarities and differences of themes in the works of different poets and composers.

Your learners will dance in their seats as this talented drummer connects math to music in a short video clip. Clayton Cameron shows how math puts the "cool" in various genres of music, including jazz, hip-hop, pop,...

In this paraphrasing learning exercise students are tasked to paraphrase five short passages. Students write their paraphrase and can then self check against sample answers.

Students study the life of Quincy Jones and research black music for selected decades of the 20th Century. They discuss the qualities that help one create and sustain a successful career. They design a timeline of what their future...

Tenth graders differentiate angiosperms and gymnosperms. In this biology lesson, 10th graders construct a musical phylogenetic tree from information they gathered on resource websites. They present their project in class.

Here is a truly wonderful site devoted to the life and music of Count Basie. A musicography tracks his creations through the decades of his life, and there are also photo essays to add celebrity interest to this excellent site.

This Count Basie page is one of the few that has links to discussion boards. Also contains links to buy his albums, and links to other sites.

An image of Count Basie.

This is just a large black & white photo of Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald. It's a nice one!

An image of Count Basie.

A series of downloadable lectures about jazz, "America's classical music," by Dr. Billy Taylor, provides information on the origins and fundamentals of Jazz Music. Links to select an artist, style,or jazz geography.

This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Walter Page, a black American swing-era musician, one of the first to play "walking" lines on the string bass. A pioneer of the Southwestern jazz style, he was a star of the Count Basie...

Biographical details on Lester Young, American tenor saxophonist popular in the mid-1930s jazz world who played with the Count Basie band.

Has reviews, interviews, and articles. Of special interest is the jazz time-line.

This is a very brief encyclopedia article on the life and music of Billie Holiday (1915-1959).

An image of Lena Horne.