For Juggernaut, Basie Is Never Out of the Picture

Frank Szabo remembers his days as lead trumpeter with the Count Basie band every time he sees the picture on his wall. The photo shows the late, great bandleader at a mid-’70s recording session at the piano with Szabo’s then 4-year-old daughter.

Fellow trumpeter Al Aarons may not have any pictures of his days with the Basie band, but he does have a lot of great stories.

Szabo and Aarons, both members of Basie’s jazz aggregation while the Count was still alive, will provide a direct link to the Basie legacy when they appear in Costa Mesa at the Doubletree Hotel on Sunday as part of drummer Frank Capp’s Juggernaut at the seventh annual “Tribute to Count Basie.”

“He’s just beaming in that picture,” Szabo says of the keepsake photo. The trumpeter joined the Basie band in 1975 and recorded nine albums with the group before Basie died in 1984. “There was something that he had that he just looks great in pictures. He was very photogenic.”

Szabo was 23 when he joined the Basie band in 1975. As the only white musician in the band during the mid-’70s, Szabo says, he developed special feelings for the man.

“Basie was the gentlest, kindest guy you ever met. He didn’t care who you were, just how you played. Nothing bothered him, he was very even tempered, very mellow. And he would laugh! Basie was unbelievable. He was cool to everybody.”

While trumpeter Aarons says he has no mementos from his nearly 10 years with the Basie Band that began in 1961, he does have a lot of memories.

“Basie bought one of those little Jaguar XKE [automobiles],” Aarons recalls with a laugh, “but he was too heavy to actually sit in it. But he liked to have the car around so he used to let me and [trumpeter] Sonny Cohn drive it all over.”

Though nearly all players of this period, including Szabo, got into the band on other musicians’ recommendations, meeting Basie only after they joined the group, Basie picked Aarons out of a Washington, D.C., nightclub.

Aarons traveled with the band for two weeks, learning the music and watching the man he would replace, before actually joining the trumpet section. Despite the break-in period, Aarons says he was still intimidated by his role in one of the best-known orchestras on the planet.

“We were playing Birdland during the first two months I was in the band and I was scared to death. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers were on the same bill and I was really nervous. So [trumpeter] Thad Jones told me I looked bad and needed to relax. He took me backstage and poured me a shot of gin. And Basie saw us and said to me, ‘Don’t let Thad get you fired.’ ”

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Though Aarons and Szabo say Basie was mostly a sweetheart, playing in his orchestra proved demanding.

“Playing with the Basie organization could be brutal,” Szabo says. “With the Basie band, you went out and did the show on your first night, and if they liked you, you stayed. If not, you were out.”

“Basie hated to fire anyone,” Aarons recalls. “He’d always find someone to do it for him. The expectations were always so high for that band. Sure, we always had a lot of fun and the music was great, but people always had such high expectations.”

The Basie veterans fit well into Capp’s Basie-influenced Juggernaut. The 17-piece ensemble’s last two Concord albums, “In a Hefti Bag” and “Play It Again, Sam,” both look to charts written for Basie by Neal Hefti and Sammie Nestico. The late Nat Pierce, who co-led the Juggernaut with Capp until his death, wrote many arrangements in the Basie style for Capp and company and filled in for the ailing Basie during the last years of the Count’s life.

Still, Aarons says, there’s no substitute for the man himself.

“Something about Basie was so important, even though he didn’t contribute [in later years] any arrangements; there was something about him. When he would take off because of illness and Nat Pierce would come in and sub, there was always something, some feeling lacking. We all played the same, but without him there, it just wasn’t the same.”

* The Frank Capp Juggernaut with vocalist Tierney Sutton plays the Count Basie Tribute at the Doubletree Hotel, 3050 Bristol St., Costa Mesa; 6 p.m. Sunday. Two dance floors. $20. (714) 553-9449.