The spirit of Count Basie's Kansas City Seven informs all 61 selections. The sound of Basie's band played an influential role in the writing styles of Cohn, Wilkins and Albam. Cohn's Pres-inspired tenor and the work of Basie-ites Newman, Wilkins, Henry Coker and, of course, Freddie Green among others keep that joyous easy swing alive throughout.

Like the Basie band of the fifties, the music here is tightly arranged and smoothly executed swing with great charts and excellent, succinct solos played with a modern tinge against some of the hippest rhythm sections that jazz has to offer. Other sidemen include Urbie Green, Nat Pierce, Dick Katz, Milt Hinton, Osie Johnson and Shadow Wilson.

This 3-CD set is mastered from the beautiful-sounding original tapes, all made at RCA's Webster Hall studio.

"Whether on mute or open horn, Joe's work is a delight to the ears - not merely because it is sane jazz in the midst of much that today is either overwritten or vacuous, but because it is always fresh, always swinging, always blown from the top-drawer of inspiration. And it is a remarkable tribute to all involved that this session, which ran from midnight to 10 A.M. - and which was, incidentally, captured by engineer Dick Gardner on one mike, around which all the musicians formed a circle, rising only to take their solos - produced jazz of this highly infectious sort. But in reality, it is undoubtedly true that regardless of the time of day or night, these men, in the midst of such telling arrangements, could not but blow wonderfully - and in these recordings, led and sparked by Joe Newman, they have all obviously engraved some of their most sincere, and jazzdom's most sparkling, efforts." - Jack Lewis and Bill Zeitung, Original liner notes to All I Wanna Do Is Swing