HOME THE CELEBRATION THE ORGANIZATION THE LEGACY THE MO HOLIDAY HONOREE REFLECTIONS MEMBERSHIP COLLECTIBLE PROFILES FRIENDS CONTACT US	Throughout the year the festival celebrates some of the most accomplished jazz artists and musicians of the music's history. Annually, we acommemorate the lives and works of those artists of Missouri who have contributed to this phenemenal American treasure by featuring that person as the festivals honoree. They, along with the events annual theme, are the focus of highlted activites and the years' marketing campaign. Join us in celebrating this year's honoree; William "Count" Basie Count Basie was a leading figure of the swing era in jazz and, alongside Duke Ellington, an outstanding representative of big band style. After studying piano with his mother, as a young man he went to New York, where he met James P. Johnson, Fats Waller (with whom he studied informally), another pianist of the Harlem stride school. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career. Stranded in Kansas City in 1927 while accompanying a touring group, he remained there, playing in silent-film theaters. In July 1928, he joined Walter Page's Blue Devils which, in addition to Page, included Jimmy Rushing; both later figured prominently in Basie's own band. Basie left the Blue Devils early in 1929 to play with two lesser-known bands in the area. Later that year, he joined Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra, as did the other key members of the Blue Devils shortly after.