Lessons from the Basie Bandstand

Lessons from the Basie Bandstand

Dennis Rowland is a Phoenix-based jazz vocalist and former singer with the Count Basie Orchestra. His memoir, Keeping the Beat: What Count Basie Taught Me About Music, Mentorship, and Leadership, released in April during Jazz Appreciation Month and as the Count Basie Orchestra celebrates its 91st Anniversary Tour. Rowland rebuilt his career after a life-altering stroke in 2012.

By Dennis Rowland

When I joined the Count Basie Orchestra in 1977, I didn’t receive a handbook or a lecture about leadership. What I received instead were lessons delivered quietly, night after night, from the bandstand.

Count Basie didn’t mentor with speeches. He mentored with example. A glance, a nod, or a few perfectly placed notes at the piano were often all it took for him to guide one of the greatest orchestras in American music history.

Only later did I realize those same lessons apply far beyond music.

In the business world, mentoring often gets talked about as a formal program—scheduled meetings, structured goals, professional development plans. In the Basie band, it rarely looked like that. But the lessons were there every night.

Basie led with what looked, from the outside, like effortless simplicity. Sitting at the piano, he would flick out a few economical notes and suddenly the whole band understood where the music was going. Behind that simplicity were deeper lessons about preparation, trust, and the long arc of mastery.

One of Basie’s most important lessons was something every leader eventually learns: don’t be discouraged.

Careers take time. Relationships take time. Trust takes time. And sometimes the moment that seems small at the time turns out to shape everything that follows.

I learned that lesson personally through an encounter Phoenix readers will recognize.

Many people know the late Al McCoy as the legendary voice of the Phoenix Suns. What most people don’t know is that our first meeting happened not in an arena, but in a music club.

At the time I was a young singer still finding my way. I had no idea that the introduction that night would eventually lead to decades of singing the national anthem at Suns games, or that it would connect my musical life to one of Phoenix’s most beloved voices.

Years later, life handed me a very different kind of test. In 2012 I suffered a life-altering stroke that temporarily took away many of the things musicians depend on most—strength, coordination, and certainty about what tomorrow might bring. Recovery required patience, persistence, and trust in ways I had never experienced before.

Looking back now, I realize those were the same lessons Basie had been teaching all along.

You keep showing up. You keep doing the work. And over time the connections begin to make sense.

Jazz teaches this in ways that translate far beyond the stage. It teaches listening. It teaches trust among talented people. It teaches how to leave space for others to shine.

And it teaches leaders—whether in music or business—that sometimes the best thing you can do is set the tempo, trust your team, and let the band swing.

This is one of my favorite stories about patience, persistence, and the unexpected connections that shape a career.  It memorializes my first meeting with Al McCoy, but it is also a moment that captured exactly the kind of lesson Count Basie taught his musicians.The story appears in my memoir, Keeping the Beat: What Count Basie Taught Me About Music, Mentorship, and Leadership.