Bennie Moten's Kansas City Orchestra

In the late 1920s, [a=Bennie Moten]'s Kansas City Orchestra was the most successful Jazz band of the Midwest. The band toured all over the country and had a top selling recording in 1927 for Victor named "South". In 1929, the young [a=Count Basie] of The Blue Devils joined the band, and several other members of that band soon followed. Among them were bass player [a=Walter Page], trumpeter [a=Hot Lips Page], vocalist [a=Jimmy Rushing] and guitarist [a=Eddie Durham] (the first guitarist to experiment with proto-amplifiers, in the solo of [i]Band Box Shuffle[/i] in October 1929).

The acquisition of all these members of the Blue Devils caused the exodus of long-time Moten Band members [a=Thamon Hayes] and [a=Harlan Leonard], who founded their own ensemble.

When Moten hired [a=Ben Webster] and [a=Eddie Barefield] in 1932, the modernization of the band was complete. Later that same year, Moten recorded [i]Moten's Swing[/i], one of the first recordings to use a riff, the foundation of Kansas City jazz.

Count Basie took over the band after Moten's death in 1935.