Genres Big band Active until 1933 | Years active 1920s-1930s Genre Big band | |
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Past members William "Count" Basie
Abe Bolar
Eddie Durham
Jo Jones
Oran "Hot Lips" Page
Walter Page
Jimmy Rushing
Henry "Buster" Smith
LeRoy V."Snake" White
Claude Williams
Lester Young Origin Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States (1925) Associated acts Walter Page, Bennie Moten, Buster Smith Members Count Basie, Walter Page, Jimmy Rushing, Lester Young, Hot Lips Page Similar Bennie Moten, Buster Smith, Benny Moten's Kansas C, Claude Williams, Count Basie Orchestra | ||
The Oklahoma City Blue Devils was the premier American Southwest territory jazz band in the 1920s. Originally called Billy King's Road Show, it disbanded in Oklahoma City in 1925 where Walter Page renamed it. The name Blue Devils came from the name of a gang of fence cutters operating during the early days of the American West.
Several prominent jazz musicians were members, including Lester Young, William "Count" Basie and Buster Smith. The Blue Devils disbanded in 1933, after which Basie recruited most of the group's members to join his group, which had begun in 1931, but then changed the name to the Count Basie Orchestra.
The 1979 film The Last of the Blue Devils documents a musical reunion with Basie, Big Joe Turner and other figures from the history of southwestern and Kansas City jazz.