You could also use an Aggregate query, where you "Group By" the field in question, and also "Count" the same field. You might want to then ORDER BY that field in descending order, in order to present the data in "waterfall" format; eg.
SELECT SomeField, COUNT(SomeField)
FROM SomeTable
GROUP BY SomeField
ORDER BY SomeField
To avoid using a crosstab query, you could go into the OLE Chart object (double click on it), and set the "Data", "Series in Columns" menu options.
Either way, certainly no reason to need to use multiple queries. This method also avoids requiring a crosstab.
Cheers,
Steve