A moment from the Count Basie Memoir Project

A hotel on the road with Basie.

Through a connecting door, I could hear him breathing while he slept. It wasn’t a performance night, but travel days wore him out in their own way. I was glad he had been able to get to bed early.

The room was quiet. Then I noticed something different in his breathing.

There was a shudder in the pattern.

I went into his room, turned on the nightstand lamp, and picked up the telephone. I pressed zero.

When the operator answered, I asked for a long-distance call to Freeport.

“Freeport, Long Island?”

“Yes.”

In that moment, I was no longer simply traveling with Count Basie. I was watching over someone whose presence had been woven into my life for as long as I could remember.

There is a particular kind of intimacy that comes with being trusted to care for someone who has spent a lifetime caring for others. It changes the relationship, sometimes so gradually that you don’t recognize the change until a moment makes it impossible to ignore.

This is one of the stories I am beginning to share through the Count Basie Memoir Project—a personal account of the life I experienced with Count and Catherine Basie, told from the perspective of someone who knew them beyond the public spotlight.

The music made Count Basie famous. The life behind the music is another story.

And this is where I begin.

My Basie Memoir Project

There are some stories you remember.

And then there are stories that have been waiting for you to understand what they meant.

I grew up in the world of Count and Catherine Basie.

To me, Count Basie was not simply the legendary bandleader whose name was known around the world. He was part of the landscape of my childhood—a man I knew, watched, traveled with, and eventually, in a very different season of life, helped care for.

The story begins around 1947, when my mother’s connection to the Basie family began with an audition. Years later, that connection would become part of my own life and shape my understanding of family, trust, music, responsibility, and what it means to belong to someone else’s extraordinary world.

I am writing that story now.

The Basie Memoir Project is a work in progress—a memoir drawn from my life with Count and Catherine Basie, the experiences that shaped me, and the relationships that have stayed with me across the years.

Here, I will share selected memories, scenes, and reflections as the work develops. Each offers a glimpse into a larger story: one about childhood, family, trust, and the extraordinary things that can become part of an ordinary life.

What follows is not the whole story.

It is an invitation into it.

— Craig Matthews

The Basie Memoir Project is a memoir in progress.