One O'Clock Jump One O'Clock Jump "One O'Clock Jump" is a jazz standard, a 12-bar blues instrumental, written by Count Basie in 1937. The melody derived from band members' riffs--Basie rarely wrote down musical ideas, so Eddie Durham and Buster Smith helped him crystallize his ideas. The original 1937 recording of the tune by Basie and his band is noted for the saxophone work of Herschel Evans and Lester Young, trumpet by Buck Clayton, Walter Page on bass and Basie himself on piano. "One O'Clock Jump" became the theme song of the Count Basie Orchestra. They used it to close each of their
Rock Around the Clock sax solo coming first. In a 2005 retrospective on his uncle Milt Gabler's work ("The Milt Gabler Story"), Billy Crystal identifies Haley's 1954 recording of "Rock Around the Clock" as the single most important song Gabler ever produced. Gabler had previously been responsible for the highly successful string of R&B and jump blues recordings by Louis Jordan in the late 1940s, which were characterised by their strong beat, clearly enunciated lyrics and high production values, all features which Gabler sought to repeat in Haley's recordings. Also significantly, "Rock Around The Clock" was recorded in the very same month that Atlantic