Count Basie Orchestra - The Atomic Mr. Basie

I have a friend named Eleanor who I met in college. Eleanor was the youngest of 5 kids, so her parents were more than a decade older than mine. If my calculations are correct, they got married sometime in the late 1950s. They lived in this really fantastic house outside of Los Angeles. The only word I can use to describe this house is swank. It looked pretty much like they decorated it when they got married and then didn't change anything. I loved it. No one had a more perfect fifties lifestyle than the one I imagined for Eleanor's parents - there was a lot of poolside cocktails and cigarette cases and meaty dinners served by Mrs. B while wearing little sheer aprons, and Count Basie was playing on the stereo all the time. I hope that they never ever sell that house and that it stays the way it was forever, because, I'm telling you, it really was fabulous.

Favorite tracks: "Whirly-Bird", "The Late Late Show"