Joe Newman was the ideal example of the merger of two jazz generations. A New Orleans emigrant, born and reared in the shadow of Louis Armstrong, he was in and around New York before he had come of age, and soon found himself working with the bop pioneers and absorbing some of their influence. But when he joined the Count Basie Band, of which he was a member off and on from December 1943, he broke out and played the way he felt he should play. The result was a vivid new style; a trademark personal expression of a player who, without altering his style, was equally at home among both mainstream swingers and bop musicians. On these sides, leading groups partly composed of Basie sidemen, he is a clear, intelligent and influential presence.