Count Basie’s career as a bandleader is often said to have begun when he took over Bennie Moten’s band after Moten’s premature death. There was, however, a prior, short-lived band whose formation pre-dates the death of Kansas City’s star bandleader. Basie’s first band came about during the winter of 1933, one-and-a-half years prior to Moten’s death in April 1935. The Depression was just beginning to affect the (until then) thriving entertainment business in Kansas City—thanks to the corrupt city leadership of Tom Pendergast—the so-called “Pendergast Machine”—making work for musicians scarcer than it had been previously. The Paseo Hall ballroom, at one time leased by Moten and open to African American patrons, was remodeled and reopened on July 1, 1933, as the Harlem Night Club. Soon after opening, the Harlem Night Club was made a “whites-only” club. On April 8, 1933, just as the Cullen–Harrison Act made legal the sale of light-beer and wine, the newly remodeled and reopened Eblon Theater, now called the Cherry Blossom club, became the new hotspot for African Americans looking to enjoy the famous Kansas City nightlife. Moten’s Orchestra became the house band at the Cherry Blossom in late July 1933, where they played a full stage show. By mid-September, rumors had spread of the band leaving the Cherry Blossom and of apparent dealings between Moten and another popular Kansas City bandleader, George E. Lee, whose band was employed at the Harlem Night Club. These rumors led the band members to vote to remove Moten from his own group. As Basie stated in his autobiography: “So Bennie called a meeting to find out how things stood…[and] said something like, ‘Well if that’s the way you feel and you’re positive that’s what you want to do, okay.’ And he just walked on out so they could vote their honest opinion.” Moten’s bassist and former leader of the eponymous Walter Page’s Blue Devils claimed the dispute was over a padded bar tab. Whatever the reason, the band dissolved on September 14, 1933; some of Moten’s men went with him to join George E. Lee at the Harlem Night Club in October, although, most stayed and voted Count Basie the new leader. This band was called Count Basie and His Cherry Blossom Victor Recording Orchestra. A review of a performance by Moten’s band on September 18, 1933, stated that Moten was not present and that the band was led by Bill Beasley [sic. Basie]. The trumpeters of this band, all of whom were inherited from Moten’s group, were Oran “Hot Lips” Page, Joe Keys, and Dee [Durwood] “Prince” Stewart. This trumpet section is not only significant for being the first iteration of Basie’s trumpet section, but also because it was the same section that was on the last recordings made by Moten’s band. This infamous recording session, which defined contemporary Kansas City jazz, began the morning of December 13, 1932, in Camden, New Jersey after a depleting tour wrought with misfortune. The session ended around 6 o’clock in the evening after the band had recorded ten songs, each needing only one take. The songs recorded were “Toby,” “Moten Swing,” “The Blue Room,” “Imagination,” “New Orleans,” “The Only Girl I Ever Loved,” “Milenberg Joys,” “Lafayette,” “Prince of Wails,” and “Two Times.” Hot Lips Page can be heard soloing on all except “Imagination” and “The Only Girl I Ever Loved.” Basie claimed that Joe Keys did not go with the Moten band on that tour east, but was replaced by Dee Stewart, however, all other evidence points to the participation of both Keys and Stewart in the session. Dan Minor, who joined the Moten Orchestra in late 1932, as the band made its way east, stated in an interview from 1981 that Joe Keys was, in fact, in the band. The Call first advertised Basie as the leader of his own band at the Cherry Blossom in anticipation of a “Trouveur Cabaret Party…on Oct. 2.” Basie and his band played throughout Kansas City and the surrounding territory through March 1934. On March 3, Basie’s band was advertised as playing nightly at the Club Alamo, “direct from [the] Savoy Ball Room, New York City,” although there is no extant evidence of a trip to New York. It was this same band that was at the Cherry Blossom on December 18, 1933, when the infamous tenor battle between Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Herschel Evans, and Ben Webster occurred, which became a symbol representing the contemporary Kansas City jazz life. In late March or early April 1934, Basie took the band out of the Cherry Blossom club to a hotel in Little Rock, Arkansas. Due to a lack of work, however, the band slowly dissolved. Many of them returned to Kansas City and rejoined Moten’s band. Buddy Tate, tenor saxophonist, joined Basie’s band for the engagement in Little Rock—replacing Lester Young after he was called to replace Coleman Hawkins in Fletcher Henderson’s band in early April. Tate joined Basie again later in 1939. Tate said of the 1933–34 band: “It didn’t last too long because Basie didn’t have a name then and he didn’t have any records. Basie was the last man to go back, even though Bennie [Moten] wanted him to come back.” Basie was back in Kansas City by May 1934. Fortunately for Basie, “There wasn’t any falling out, because Bennie told Basie to take the job and see what he could do with it.” He rejoined Moten’s group while they were still at the Harlem Night Club, but Moten was, in Basie’s words, “…reorganizing and making plans to hit the road again, and as soon I found out that I had a chance to go back and work for him again, I took it….” By October, Basie was advertised as performing a duo with Moten and by January 27, 1935 he was, once again, billed as a featured musician with Moten’s orchestra. After Basie’s band dissolved in Little Rock, Joe Keys joined Nat Towles’ Orchestra in Dallas, Texas and soon after that “Jo Jones sent for Joe Keys to [go] to Minneapolis to join Rook Ganz’ band….” Dee Stewart likely returned to Kansas City. By May 5, 1934, Hot Lips Page was back in Kansas City and had joined the “combined bands of Bennie Moten and George E. Lee at the Harlem club, where he was “said to blow more brass than any other Negro cornetist.” Moten and Lee separated on May 12, and Moten’s Orchestra, featuring Page, continued at the Harlem Night Club. Around June 23, Moten lost trumpeter Jesse Washburn to the band of Billy McKenzie, and it is possible that then Stewart rejoined Moten’s band.