CARMEN BRADFORD
COUNT BASIE FEATURED SINGER
It was 1982 and Carmen Bradford was waiting backstage, where she and the Austin-based band Minor Miracle were opening for the Count Basie Orchestra, when she saw Basie himself, sitting in the electric cart he used to get around. Bradford asked the world-famous band leader to give her a listen and in a brash moment, she told Basie that he should hire her as the orchestra’s vocalist. Months later, when Basie called to offer her the job, Bradford hung up on him. “I thought he was my cousin, playing a joke,” she said. Bradford, who took Basie’s second call, has been associated with the Basie organization ever since. She can name every musician who was in the orchestra when she joined it, as she proved in a phone call from her home in Atlanta. Among them was the legendary guitarist Freddie Green, who joined Basie ac ouple of years after the orchestra was formed in 1935. After one of her initial performances, he had some advice for the twenty-two-year-old vocalist. “I can’t remember what song I was singing,” Bradford said, “but he pulled me off to the side and said to me, ‘This is not an R& B gig. You can’t fill the songs with runs and hollers. The arranger has taken the time to study you, to know where you breathe, how long you hold the notes. He uses this when he writes in where the trumpets should shout and where the saxophones will embellish. You have to sing where you’re supposed to sing in these arrangements, not sing all over the place. ’It was quite a lesson.”
Bradford could be excused for her short-livedR&B take on Basie’s music. The daughter of vocal st Melba Joyce and cornetist-composer-educator Bobby Bradford, she was exposed to all kinds of music as a child growing up in southern California. “Neither of my parents tried to steer me in any direction as to what music to listen to. ere a middle-class household with all the craziness tha ids of the ’60s and ’70s
experienced. My father would practice in the bathroom mirror, and we went to his concerts. Mom’s gigs too. But Motown was alive and well when I was growing up.” She didn’t get into jazz until the age of sixteen. “I was in my dad’s office [at Pomona College] and pulled out some albums he played for his classes. I heard Sarah Vaughan and then started listening to the rest of the collection. I didn’t sing at an early age but grew up knowing all the words to music my mother played: Ella, Jobim, Tony Bennett — that movie album of his. I knew all that stuff. But I was in love with Chaka Khan.”
Bradford stayed with the Basie Orchestra until 1990, but she never really went away. As a solo act, she released Finally Yours, a 1992 collection that includes tunes from Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald, and Ray Charles. (Frank Foster plays tenor sax.) That was followed by With Respect, a disc that includes pianist Cedar Walton, Brazilian guitarist Dori Caymmi, and longtime Branford Marsalis bassist Robert Hurst. She also spent time teaching in the music department of the University of Southern California. “When I left the Basie band, I thought it was time to go. I’d done two recordings with them. They’ve always called me when they needed me, when they’re between singers or wanted me back. It’s great when people see a familiar face that they can connect with the band. Every time I go back, I go back because of my love for Mr. Basie. He changed my life, gave me wings.”
She named some of her favorite Basie Orchestra arrangements — Thad Jones’ “Stormy Weather,” Chico O’Farrill’s “Our Love Is Here to Stay,” Eric Dixon’s “A Foggy Day (In London Town)” — but says that saxophonist Frank Foster, who directed the orchestra between 1986 and 1995, is her “absolute” favorite. “He wrote beautiful music the entire time he was with the band and in the sax section. I can’t think of anyone who paid more attention to my abilities than he did. I’ll never forget a time on the bus, going to the next gig. I went to the back to see what was going on, and he was back there sitting and talking and laughing with three or four guys, carrying on three or four conversations, and all the time he’s writing, writing arrangements. And I thought, where am I, to be in the midst of these incredible people?”