This emotionally charged, historic live recording from 1957, featuring his band’s legendary players as well as ist rising stars, is one of Count Basie’s best. When the Count Basie band walked onto the stage at Newport in 1957, the very air was saturated with electricity. The nearly 8,000 fans in the audience could feel it, too – a sense of history in the making. The crowd was there to see a reconstituted version of the original Basie band, with luminous sidemen like Lester Young, Illinois Jacquet, Jo Jones, and Jimmy Rushing back on the stand, alongside the updated edition – a sleek, sophisticated unit was a hotbed for ascending stars like Thad Jones and Frank Foster. Basie’s set goes on record as the most exciting and hard-swinging performance of one extraordinary night. High-resolution, 96 kHz, 24-bit digital transfer. New liner notes, photographs, original cover art, and more. 5 bonus tracks.