SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
FALL, 2019
VOLUME SEVEN NUMBER THREE
MAX ROACH
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
BEN WEBSTER
(September 7-13)
GENE AMMONS
(September 14-20)
TADD DAMERON
(September 21-27)
ROY ELDRIDGE
(September 28-October 4)
MILT JACKSON
(October 5-11)
CHARLIE CHRISTIAN
(October 12-18)
GRANT GREEN
(October 19-25)
ROY HARGROVE
(October 26-November 1)
LITTLE JIMMY SCOTT
(November 2-8)
BLUE MITCHELL
(November 9-15)
BOOKER ERVIN
(November 16-22)
LUCKY THOMPSON
Ben Webster
(1909-1973)
Artist Biography by Scott Yanow
Ben Webster was considered one of the "big three" of swing tenors along with Coleman Hawkins (his main influence) and Lester Young. He had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with his own distinctive growls) yet on ballads he would turn into a pussy cat and play with warmth and sentiment. After violin lessons as a child, Webster learned how to play rudimentary piano (his neighbor Pete Johnson taught him to play blues). But after Budd Johnson showed him some basics on the saxophone, Webster played sax in the Young Family Band (which at the time included Lester Young). He had stints with Jap Allen and Blanche Calloway (making his recording debut with the latter) before joining Bennie Moten's Orchestra in time to be one of the stars on a classic session in 1932. Webster spent time with quite a few orchestras in the 1930s (including Andy Kirk, Fletcher Henderson in 1934, Benny Carter, Willie Bryant, Cab Calloway, and the short-lived Teddy Wilson big band).
In 1940 (after short stints in 1935 and 1936), Ben Webster became Duke Ellington's first major tenor soloist. During the next three years he was on many famous recordings, including "Cotton Tail" (which in addition to his memorable solo had a saxophone ensemble arranged by Webster) and "All Too Soon." After leaving Ellington in 1943 (he would return for a time in 1948-1949), Webster worked on 52nd Street; recorded frequently as both a leader and a sideman; had short periods with Raymond Scott, John Kirby, and Sid Catlett; and toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic during several seasons in the 1950s. Although his sound was considered out-of-style by that decade, Webster's work on ballads became quite popular and Norman Granz recorded him on many memorable sessions. Webster recorded a classic set with Art Tatum and generally worked steadily, but in 1964 he moved permanently to Copenhagen where he played when he pleased during his last decade. Although not all that flexible, Webster could swing with the best and his tone was a later influence on such diverse players as Archie Shepp, Lew Tabackin, Scott Hamilton, and Bennie Wallace.
Big Ben
August 12, 2001
The New Yorker
Aside from memories, all that remains of the unique and magisterial tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, who died in 1973, in Amsterdam, is his plain gravestone in Copenhagen ("Ben Webster 1909-1973"), where he lived during his last years; Ol Betsy, the so-christened tenor that he bought in 1938 and used the rest of his life (he left deathbed instructions that Ol Betsy was never to be played again, and it now resides at the Institute of Jazz Studies, at Rutgers); assorted CDs and a new, revivifying Mosaic reissue, "The Complete Verve Johnny Hodges Small Group Sessions 1956-1961," which includes ninety-five tracks, half of which Webster, then at his peak, sits in on; and Webster's first biography, "Ben Webster: His Life and Music" (Berkeley Hills), a scattershot but valuable effort by the Dutch writer Jeroen de Valk.
In 1964, Webster, who had never been to Europe, was offered a month-long gig at Ronnie Scott's club in London. He went, and he never came back, thus joining the dozens of black American jazz musicians who immigrated to Europe in the fifties and sixties. His life had all but dried up here. In 1963, his mother, Mayme, and his great-aunt Agnes Johnson, both beloved, had died in their nineties. They had reared him in Kansas City, where he was born, and had always taken him in when he needed to go home and retrench. (He was married once, briefly, in the forties.) And it had become increasingly difficult to find work. (So much so that in the early sixties he appeared at the Metropole, on Seventh Avenue, with a hybrid group that included Pee Wee Russell, Buck Clayton, J. C. Higginbotham, and Bud Freeman.) Caught between the Beatles on the right and the jazz avant-garde of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane on the left, Webster had slipped totally out of fashion. There has long been a disturbing tendency among jazz aficionados to regard each innovation in the music as "progress," a practice that sends the musicians who have supposedly been supplanted into the outer darkness.
When Webster arrived abroad, he discovered almost immediately that he was relished not only in England but in Sweden and Norway and Denmark and Holland, and in due course he settled in Amsterdam, where he was coddled by his landlady, a Mrs. Hartlooper. (Mayme and Agnes Johnson had spoiled Webster so completely that he could not function properly without some sort of loving caretaker.) In 1969, he moved to Copenhagen, where he was shepherded by a nurse, Birgit Nordtorp. He worked almost steadily, but his drinking, which had begun to accelerate in the forties, was getting in the way. Like Bob and Ray's Captain Wolf Larsen, who was an angel when he was sober and kicked his passengers down the galley stairs when he was drunk, Webster, normally as sweet as cream, became so fractious when he was drunk that he had long been known among American musicians as "the Brute." The pianist Jimmy Rowles loved Webster, and said after his death, "Benny Carter was the only man he'd listen to when he was like that. . . . Ben used to say of Carter, 'There's a man who can bake a cake as light as a feather and whip any man.' " Rowles also knew the good Webster. They hung out in the fifties, when they lived and worked on the West Coast, and sometimes they played golf. "We'd tee up," Rowles said, "and all these fancy types would be waiting their turn, mumbling under their breath about that big black guy who was holding them up. Ben would have one of his little hats on the back of his head, and he'd stand before the ball, his big front sticking out, and talk to himself: 'Now, Ben, do it just like when you were in the Masters. Keep your head down, and not too many Wheaties.' And he'd take a terrific swing—pouf!—and the ball would dribble ten feet. We only saw each other on the tees and greens, but we laughed our way around the whole course."
For all his idiosyncrasies, Webster was a meticulous musician, and he soon discovered a musical problem in Europe that had never existed at home: many of the best European musicians he played with tended to be amateurish; instead of supporting him, they ended up in his wake. These problems eventually aggravated his drinking, and he began showing up at concerts and clubs dead drunk, or missing important engagements altogether. Webster had broad shoulders, a fine beaked nose, and imperious flanking bags under his eyes, and he radiated a powerful handsomeness. But in his last years he gained an enormous amount of weight; his legs gave out and he used a cane, and his playing became halting and even incoherent. Yet he never lost his sweetness. De Valk quotes a young tenor saxophonist, Jesper Thilo: "He lived alone, and he really liked it when someone came by. I went over to his flat a lot. We'd have a beer or something stronger, and talk about music. . . . I think he wanted the same role for himself that Coleman Hawkins had in New York. He wanted to help me with things he knew a lot about, like tone formation. He taught me a lot about embouchure, about how to develop a good sound."
In 1964, Webster, who had never been to Europe, was offered a month-long gig at Ronnie Scott's club in London. He went, and he never came back, thus joining the dozens of black American jazz musicians who immigrated to Europe in the fifties and sixties. His life had all but dried up here. In 1963, his mother, Mayme, and his great-aunt Agnes Johnson, both beloved, had died in their nineties. They had reared him in Kansas City, where he was born, and had always taken him in when he needed to go home and retrench. (He was married once, briefly, in the forties.) And it had become increasingly difficult to find work. (So much so that in the early sixties he appeared at the Metropole, on Seventh Avenue, with a hybrid group that included Pee Wee Russell, Buck Clayton, J. C. Higginbotham, and Bud Freeman.) Caught between the Beatles on the right and the jazz avant-garde of Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane on the left, Webster had slipped totally out of fashion. There has long been a disturbing tendency among jazz aficionados to regard each innovation in the music as "progress," a practice that sends the musicians who have supposedly been supplanted into the outer darkness.
When Webster arrived abroad, he discovered almost immediately that he was relished not only in England but in Sweden and Norway and Denmark and Holland, and in due course he settled in Amsterdam, where he was coddled by his landlady, a Mrs. Hartlooper. (Mayme and Agnes Johnson had spoiled Webster so completely that he could not function properly without some sort of loving caretaker.) In 1969, he moved to Copenhagen, where he was shepherded by a nurse, Birgit Nordtorp. He worked almost steadily, but his drinking, which had begun to accelerate in the forties, was getting in the way. Like Bob and Ray's Captain Wolf Larsen, who was an angel when he was sober and kicked his passengers down the galley stairs when he was drunk, Webster, normally as sweet as cream, became so fractious when he was drunk that he had long been known among American musicians as "the Brute." The pianist Jimmy Rowles loved Webster, and said after his death, "Benny Carter was the only man he'd listen to when he was like that. . . . Ben used to say of Carter, 'There's a man who can bake a cake as light as a feather and whip any man.' " Rowles also knew the good Webster. They hung out in the fifties, when they lived and worked on the West Coast, and sometimes they played golf. "We'd tee up," Rowles said, "and all these fancy types would be waiting their turn, mumbling under their breath about that big black guy who was holding them up. Ben would have one of his little hats on the back of his head, and he'd stand before the ball, his big front sticking out, and talk to himself: 'Now, Ben, do it just like when you were in the Masters. Keep your head down, and not too many Wheaties.' And he'd take a terrific swing—pouf!—and the ball would dribble ten feet. We only saw each other on the tees and greens, but we laughed our way around the whole course."
For all his idiosyncrasies, Webster was a meticulous musician, and he soon discovered a musical problem in Europe that had never existed at home: many of the best European musicians he played with tended to be amateurish; instead of supporting him, they ended up in his wake. These problems eventually aggravated his drinking, and he began showing up at concerts and clubs dead drunk, or missing important engagements altogether. Webster had broad shoulders, a fine beaked nose, and imperious flanking bags under his eyes, and he radiated a powerful handsomeness. But in his last years he gained an enormous amount of weight; his legs gave out and he used a cane, and his playing became halting and even incoherent. Yet he never lost his sweetness. De Valk quotes a young tenor saxophonist, Jesper Thilo: "He lived alone, and he really liked it when someone came by. I went over to his flat a lot. We'd have a beer or something stronger, and talk about music. . . . I think he wanted the same role for himself that Coleman Hawkins had in New York. He wanted to help me with things he knew a lot about, like tone formation. He taught me a lot about embouchure, about how to develop a good sound."
Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Ben Webster were the founding emperors of the jazz tenor saxophone. Hawkins more or less invented the instrument, Young reinvented it tonally and melodically (Hawkins sped through the chords, while Young floated above), and Webster developed an enormous lyrical sound and swinging directness—an easy, embracing quality—that touched you in a way that Hawkins and Young, for all their genius, rarely did. Webster had rummaged around in Hawkins's style for most of the thirties. Then, in 1940, he joined Duke Ellington and fell under the sway of the magical Johnny Hodges, who by example taught him about tone and emotion, about how to trap his listeners. When he left Ellington, in 1943, and joined Sid Catlett on Fifty-second Street, he had perfected his huge style.
It came in three speeds. He seemed to breathe rather than play his slow ballads; he'd start phrases with a whispering breath that would grow majestically into a full tone, then gradually melt back into breath—a kind of aural appearing-and-disappearing act. Webster's ballads were intimate and cajoling, but never sentimental. Everything tightened when he played the blues. The breathiness vanished, and his phrases became short and hard; he preached and badgered. His ballads insinuated, but his slow blues were in your face. Webster swung irresistibly in medium tempos. His blues moved at a run, and if he played a thirty-two-bar song he would alter the melody discreetly in the first chorus, then elbow the melody aside, replacing it with pure blocks of sound. Fast tempos sometimes got away from him. He'd coast through his first chorus and, either angry or perhaps hungover, start growling, an abrasive sound that would finally end a chorus or two later with a shuddering, out-of-my-way tremolo. But sometimes this abrasiveness worked, as in Webster's celebrated roaring solo on Ellington's "Cotton Tail." In the late forties, with Webster sailing along, jazz was struck by a cataclysm it still suffers from. Art Tatum and Charlie Parker began flooding the music with sixteenth notes and cascading, glissandolike runs and arpeggios, and they turned jazz into a baroque music. Webster became one of the last non-rococo players, a champion of quarter notes and whole notes. But the thousand-notes-a-chorus musicians who eventually surrounded him made his rich, wasteless lyricism sound monumental.
For whatever reason, most of Webster's music on the Mosaic album is blues of various speeds. Many of them are classics, in particular the five blues recorded in April of 1958 with Roy Eldridge, Vic Dickenson, Hodges, Billy Strayhorn (whose accompaniment is spiky and rueful), and Sam Woodyard, and the four blues set down by almost the same group several months later. "Not So Dukish" and "Preacher Blues," done in September of 1958 with an Ellington contingent, takes the blues even further down. Best of all, though, are the dozen lightsome, loving numbers that Hodges and Webster, the Master and the Disciple, recorded with a rhythm section in 1960, among them "Dual Highway," "Ifida," and "I'd Be There"—three instances of the secret language that jazz musicians often speak. Six of the Hodges-Webster duets have never been released before.
Webster, clean and sober, appears in a photograph
It came in three speeds. He seemed to breathe rather than play his slow ballads; he'd start phrases with a whispering breath that would grow majestically into a full tone, then gradually melt back into breath—a kind of aural appearing-and-disappearing act. Webster's ballads were intimate and cajoling, but never sentimental. Everything tightened when he played the blues. The breathiness vanished, and his phrases became short and hard; he preached and badgered. His ballads insinuated, but his slow blues were in your face. Webster swung irresistibly in medium tempos. His blues moved at a run, and if he played a thirty-two-bar song he would alter the melody discreetly in the first chorus, then elbow the melody aside, replacing it with pure blocks of sound. Fast tempos sometimes got away from him. He'd coast through his first chorus and, either angry or perhaps hungover, start growling, an abrasive sound that would finally end a chorus or two later with a shuddering, out-of-my-way tremolo. But sometimes this abrasiveness worked, as in Webster's celebrated roaring solo on Ellington's "Cotton Tail." In the late forties, with Webster sailing along, jazz was struck by a cataclysm it still suffers from. Art Tatum and Charlie Parker began flooding the music with sixteenth notes and cascading, glissandolike runs and arpeggios, and they turned jazz into a baroque music. Webster became one of the last non-rococo players, a champion of quarter notes and whole notes. But the thousand-notes-a-chorus musicians who eventually surrounded him made his rich, wasteless lyricism sound monumental.
For whatever reason, most of Webster's music on the Mosaic album is blues of various speeds. Many of them are classics, in particular the five blues recorded in April of 1958 with Roy Eldridge, Vic Dickenson, Hodges, Billy Strayhorn (whose accompaniment is spiky and rueful), and Sam Woodyard, and the four blues set down by almost the same group several months later. "Not So Dukish" and "Preacher Blues," done in September of 1958 with an Ellington contingent, takes the blues even further down. Best of all, though, are the dozen lightsome, loving numbers that Hodges and Webster, the Master and the Disciple, recorded with a rhythm section in 1960, among them "Dual Highway," "Ifida," and "I'd Be There"—three instances of the secret language that jazz musicians often speak. Six of the Hodges-Webster duets have never been released before.
Webster, clean and sober, appears in a photograph
Valk's biography, and Webster, drunk, appears in a picture in the Mosaic album booklet. The first photo from the biography, taken in 1968 in Amsterdam, shows Webster sitting on a beautiful bike, his left foot resting on the sidewalk. He is gesticulating with his left hand and talking to someone, and he is dressed elegantly in a dark tie, a dark shirt, and a dark suit with a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. He has one of his smallish fedoras on his head, and his shoes are shined. Both Hodges and Webster appear in the photograph in the album booklet, and it is terrifying. It was taken at a party in Chicago in 1955. Hodges is dressed in a tie and a sweater and a houndstooth jacket. He is holding a drink and gazing calmly to his right. Webster, at the left, looks wild and unkempt. His left arm is draped heavily around Hodges' shoulders, his tie is loose, and his shirt is open at the neck. He is looking in the same direction as Hodges, but his mouth is open, his eyes are squinted, and he looks like he is shouting and just about to push Hodges away and flatten the enemy.
The Webster who lived uneasily between these two Websters appears in de Valk's book, too. In 1971, Webster played a concert in Oslo attended by the Crown Prince of Norway. Afterward, the musicians were introduced to the Prince. Webster, whose stick legs were in poor shape, was the last to make it up to the royal box. Quoting the trumpet player Keith Smith, de Valk writes, "The other band leaders were through with their formal introductions . . . when the distinct sound of curses and groans grew uncomfortably nearer, echoing up the grand staircase. . . . Ben, having finally completed his ascent, staggered through the door. . . . The aide—almost speechless at the break in decorum—proceeded with his introductions: 'Your Royal Highness, this is Ben Webster.' The Crown Prince nodded regally, and the aide continued, 'Mr. Webster, may I present his Royal Highness the Crown Prince of Norway,' pointing Ben nervously in the right direction, at which point Ben lunged forward, slapped the Crown Prince on the back, yelling 'Ben Webster, King of the Tenors—pleased to meet you, Prince!' "
This article appears in the print edition of the August 20 & 27, 2001, issue.
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/09/arts/ben-webster-a-jazz-great-is-still-being-discovered.html
BEN WEBSTER: A JAZZ GREAT IS STILL BEING DISCOVERED
by John S. Wilson
February 9, 1986
New York Times
See the article in its original context from
February 9, 1986, Section 2, Page 30
Ben Webster, the tenor saxophonist who died in Amsterdam in 1973 at the age of 64, played in some of the most celebrated big bands of the 1930's and 40's, including those led by Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter and Andy Kirk. He was also in Teddy Wilson's short-lived band in 1939 and the Bennie Moten band of the early 30's, which spawned Count Basie's Orchestra and was part of Norman Granz's touring troupe of jazz stars, Jazz at the Philharmonic, in the 1950's. In his last years, he led small groups and freelanced in this country and Europe.
Yet despite all this prominent activity, there was never as wide a public awareness of him as there was of his only peers on the tenor saxophone, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Their careers, at least in the latter stages, were as peripatetic as Webster's. But, unlike him, they both became known early in their careers through long association with a major band - Hawkins with Fletcher Henderson, Young with Count Basie.
It is only in retrospect that Webster has found an audience such as they had. And, possibly because he is still being discovered, he seems a much more vital musical personality now than the more familiar Hawkins and Young.
Webster's playing focused on two extremes. One was a raw, tough, swaggering drive that became overwhelming at fast tempos. The other was his ballad approach - tender, melting but with phrasing so accented that even at its gentlest and most introspective his playing swung. Using both aspects, he was completely at home in any musical circumstance. A two-disk album called ''The Complete Ben Webster on EmArcy'' (EmArcy Jazz Series, 824836-1 on LP and 824836-4 on cassette) is a set that typifies Ben Webster's career. It involves many of the crosscurrents with which he became involved and, like Webster himself, stands apart from most albums that are called ''The Complete. . .'' anybody.
Typically such albums are collections of recordings by musicians who had careers primarily as leaders. This ''Complete Ben Webster'' is complete only in the sense that it includes all the recordings on which he played for Mercury Records (despite the album's title), covering a two-year period from 1951 to 1953. He appears as a leader on only one of the four sides and then with a group put together for the recording session. On the others he is heard as a sideman with Jay McShann's Orchestra and Johnny Otis's rhythm and blues band, as a featured soloist with the Johnny Richards Orchestra, as an accompanist to the singer Dinah Washington and to the vocal quartet, the Ravens, and as a member of a quintet led by the alto saxophonist Marshall Royal.
He plays major roles and minor roles and sometimes the justification for the inclusion of a recording is only because, as Dan Morgenstern's liner notes suggest, his presence in the ensemble can be felt. It is a set that includes alternate and unissued takes, a kind of collection which can become a bore. But in this instance the three ''takes'' are performances in which Webster is in charge - ''Randles' Island'' and ''Old Folks'' with his own sextet and ''Star Dust'' on which he is featured with Johnny Otis's band -can be instructive, showing the changes in Webster's solos and the accompanying variations in the ensemble backing as well as in trumpet solos by Gerald Wilson on ''One O'Clock Jump'' and Maynard Ferguson on ''Randles' Island,'' which all fall into place in the final version.
Webster was a compassionate accompanist. Playing with Jay McShann's band in support of the rather colorless blues singing of PeeWee Crayton, he plays a brief solo that is close-to-the-bone blues but played in a manner that does not demolish Crayton. A few minutes later, however, he rises out of saxophone riffs by the McShann band on ''The Duke and the Beast'' with a magisterial tone that runs through a commanding gamut of dark, gentle, sinuous lines that are filled with shades of singing, crying passion. And when he is backing a singer who can stand up to his burly swagger -Dinah Washington on ''Trouble in Mind'' - he gives her the raw blues power that properly complements her singing.
One of the most surprising records in the set is an exquisite ballad performance, ''Don't Mention My Name,'' by the Ravens, a rhythm and blues vocal quartet that was formed in the mid-40's. This arrangement, which has the tone and timbre of Tommy Dorsey's ballads in the 1940's, is built around the high tenor voice of Joe Van Loan, backed by the soft, deep harmonizing of the rest of the group and a distant muted trumpet. Webster moves into this setting with a delicate, exquisitely nuanced solo that shows the saxophonist at his warm, romantic best.
There are two more brilliant examples of that side of Webster's playing in another session recorded in 1960 and just released for the first time as ''Ben Webster at the Renaissance'' (Contemporary, C7646 on LP and C-5-7646 on cassette). On it, Webster is heard leading a quintet at the Renaissance Ballroom in Los Angeles with Jimmy Rowles on piano, Jim Hall, guitar, Red Mitchell, bass, and Frank Butler, drums.
Webster's approach to ballads became increasingly tender and subtly moving as he grew older, and it is informative to compare his ''Star Dust'' on this 1960 collection with the ''Star Dust'' he played nine years earlier in the EmArcy Collection. The later version is softer, more delicate and more skillfully cushioned than the earlier versions (there are three progressively better ''takes'' in the EmArcy set and this might be a fourth and still better one).
On the Contemporary disk's ''Star Dust'' and ''Georgia On My Mind,'' both extended performances which share the two sides with a pair of moderately up-tempo pieces, ''Ole Miss'' and ''Caravan,'' Webster displays the variety of devices he developed to project a richly romantic mood without allowing it to become soggy or mawkish. He creates feathery lines that are little more than a moving breath, yet they have substance and body. He moves through little pirouettes that give his playing a lovely sparkle. There are phrases in which each note is expressed so deliberately that it has an almost painstakingly established identity and there are murmuring, descending passages that dwindle to a ghostly aura. And yet they project an intensity, a strong sense of involvement expressed in the tenderest of tones.
The presence of the pianist Jimmy Rowles is an important factor in these performances. Webster was a close and early influence on Rowles (succeeding Guy Lombardo's pianist, Freddie Kreitzer, in that role) and they maintained a very close musical relationship. Rowles's solo on ''Star Dust'' is colored by phrases that reflect Webster's playing, and on ''Ole Miss'' he builds a swinging mood in which he seems to be coaxing Webster toward a more overtly rhythmic attack.
Yet despite all this prominent activity, there was never as wide a public awareness of him as there was of his only peers on the tenor saxophone, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Their careers, at least in the latter stages, were as peripatetic as Webster's. But, unlike him, they both became known early in their careers through long association with a major band - Hawkins with Fletcher Henderson, Young with Count Basie.
It is only in retrospect that Webster has found an audience such as they had. And, possibly because he is still being discovered, he seems a much more vital musical personality now than the more familiar Hawkins and Young.
Webster's playing focused on two extremes. One was a raw, tough, swaggering drive that became overwhelming at fast tempos. The other was his ballad approach - tender, melting but with phrasing so accented that even at its gentlest and most introspective his playing swung. Using both aspects, he was completely at home in any musical circumstance. A two-disk album called ''The Complete Ben Webster on EmArcy'' (EmArcy Jazz Series, 824836-1 on LP and 824836-4 on cassette) is a set that typifies Ben Webster's career. It involves many of the crosscurrents with which he became involved and, like Webster himself, stands apart from most albums that are called ''The Complete. . .'' anybody.
Typically such albums are collections of recordings by musicians who had careers primarily as leaders. This ''Complete Ben Webster'' is complete only in the sense that it includes all the recordings on which he played for Mercury Records (despite the album's title), covering a two-year period from 1951 to 1953. He appears as a leader on only one of the four sides and then with a group put together for the recording session. On the others he is heard as a sideman with Jay McShann's Orchestra and Johnny Otis's rhythm and blues band, as a featured soloist with the Johnny Richards Orchestra, as an accompanist to the singer Dinah Washington and to the vocal quartet, the Ravens, and as a member of a quintet led by the alto saxophonist Marshall Royal.
He plays major roles and minor roles and sometimes the justification for the inclusion of a recording is only because, as Dan Morgenstern's liner notes suggest, his presence in the ensemble can be felt. It is a set that includes alternate and unissued takes, a kind of collection which can become a bore. But in this instance the three ''takes'' are performances in which Webster is in charge - ''Randles' Island'' and ''Old Folks'' with his own sextet and ''Star Dust'' on which he is featured with Johnny Otis's band -can be instructive, showing the changes in Webster's solos and the accompanying variations in the ensemble backing as well as in trumpet solos by Gerald Wilson on ''One O'Clock Jump'' and Maynard Ferguson on ''Randles' Island,'' which all fall into place in the final version.
Webster was a compassionate accompanist. Playing with Jay McShann's band in support of the rather colorless blues singing of PeeWee Crayton, he plays a brief solo that is close-to-the-bone blues but played in a manner that does not demolish Crayton. A few minutes later, however, he rises out of saxophone riffs by the McShann band on ''The Duke and the Beast'' with a magisterial tone that runs through a commanding gamut of dark, gentle, sinuous lines that are filled with shades of singing, crying passion. And when he is backing a singer who can stand up to his burly swagger -Dinah Washington on ''Trouble in Mind'' - he gives her the raw blues power that properly complements her singing.
One of the most surprising records in the set is an exquisite ballad performance, ''Don't Mention My Name,'' by the Ravens, a rhythm and blues vocal quartet that was formed in the mid-40's. This arrangement, which has the tone and timbre of Tommy Dorsey's ballads in the 1940's, is built around the high tenor voice of Joe Van Loan, backed by the soft, deep harmonizing of the rest of the group and a distant muted trumpet. Webster moves into this setting with a delicate, exquisitely nuanced solo that shows the saxophonist at his warm, romantic best.
There are two more brilliant examples of that side of Webster's playing in another session recorded in 1960 and just released for the first time as ''Ben Webster at the Renaissance'' (Contemporary, C7646 on LP and C-5-7646 on cassette). On it, Webster is heard leading a quintet at the Renaissance Ballroom in Los Angeles with Jimmy Rowles on piano, Jim Hall, guitar, Red Mitchell, bass, and Frank Butler, drums.
Webster's approach to ballads became increasingly tender and subtly moving as he grew older, and it is informative to compare his ''Star Dust'' on this 1960 collection with the ''Star Dust'' he played nine years earlier in the EmArcy Collection. The later version is softer, more delicate and more skillfully cushioned than the earlier versions (there are three progressively better ''takes'' in the EmArcy set and this might be a fourth and still better one).
On the Contemporary disk's ''Star Dust'' and ''Georgia On My Mind,'' both extended performances which share the two sides with a pair of moderately up-tempo pieces, ''Ole Miss'' and ''Caravan,'' Webster displays the variety of devices he developed to project a richly romantic mood without allowing it to become soggy or mawkish. He creates feathery lines that are little more than a moving breath, yet they have substance and body. He moves through little pirouettes that give his playing a lovely sparkle. There are phrases in which each note is expressed so deliberately that it has an almost painstakingly established identity and there are murmuring, descending passages that dwindle to a ghostly aura. And yet they project an intensity, a strong sense of involvement expressed in the tenderest of tones.
The presence of the pianist Jimmy Rowles is an important factor in these performances. Webster was a close and early influence on Rowles (succeeding Guy Lombardo's pianist, Freddie Kreitzer, in that role) and they maintained a very close musical relationship. Rowles's solo on ''Star Dust'' is colored by phrases that reflect Webster's playing, and on ''Ole Miss'' he builds a swinging mood in which he seems to be coaxing Webster toward a more overtly rhythmic attack.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 8, 1986, Section 2, Page 30 of the National edition with the headline: BEN WEBSTER: A JAZZ GREAT IS STILL BEING DISCOVERED. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
Why Jazz Fans In Denmark Feel A Connection To Kansas City
September 30, 2014
KCUR
Was Kansas City-born Ben Webster "king of the tenors"
as this album title suggests?
Ben Webster hated to fly on airplanes.
When he went to Europe to perform for his fans across the Atlantic, the trip was one-way.
A contemporary of Charlie Parker, Webster grew up in Kansas City, Mo., right off of 24th Street. He taught himself to play the piano at a young age, and started his career performing as a pianist for silent films. It wasn't until he was about 20 years old that he took up the saxophone.
But it was on the tenor sax that he played with the biggest names in jazz: Bennie Moten, Cab Calloway, Lester Young, Jay McShann, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington and yes, Charlie Parker, whose name has become synonymous with Kansas City jazz.
In 1964, Webster received an invitation to be a musician-in-residence at a club in London, according to the Ben Webster Foundation. He accepted. Webster got gigs throughout Europe, eventually making Copenhagen, Denmark, his home.
In 1964, Webster received an invitation to be a musician-in-residence at a club in London, according to the Ben Webster Foundation. He accepted. Webster got gigs throughout Europe, eventually making Copenhagen, Denmark, his home.
"Many African-Americans ... found a kinship in Europe that they did not find in other places," Anita Dixon of the Mutual Musicians Foundation explained Tuesday on Central Standard.
She just got back from a trip to Copenhagen to meet with the folks at the Ben Webster Foundation.
"Segregation was the rule of the day in America. It was not in Europe," she said.
Copenhagen now celebrates Webster and his legacy in much the same way that Kansas City celebrates Charlie Parker. The Ben Webster Foundation awards a coveted prize to a musician every year. Webster is buried in the same cemetery as Hans Christian Andersen, and his landmark birthdays are roundly feted.
Dixon said the jazz audience of Denmark considers Webster and his Kansas City roots integral to Copenhagen's own musical history.
"The style of the music is heavily studied," she said of the jazz scene she encountered. "The study of the Kansas City style in jazz is unequaled."
THE MUSIC OF BEN WEBSTER: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH BEN WEBSTER:
Ben Webster & Harry "Sweets" Edison – Ben & Sweets (1981) (Full Album)
BEN WEBSTER - At Ease With Ben Webster (Full Album)
Ben Webster meets Oscar Peterson (Hannover
Ben Webster - Masters Of Jazz (Full Album)
Ben Webster — "For the Guv'nor" [Full Album] 1969
Ben Webster — "Plays Duke Ellington" [Full Album]
Ben Webster - Ben At His Best ( Full Album)
Ben Webster - Days Of Wine And Roses (Full Album)
Ben Webster – Ben Webster Plays Ballads (1988)
Ben Webster & Coleman Hawkins - Prisioner of Love
Ben Webster - Body and soul
For All We Know: Ben Webster and Oscar Peterson
Ben Webster - King of the tenors
Ben Webster Jazz 625 65
Ben Webster - Solitude
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Webster
Ben Webster
BEN WEBSTER
Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He is considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Known affectionately as "The Brute"[1]
or "Frog", he had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with
growls), yet on ballads he played with warmth and sentiment. He was
indebted to alto saxophonist Johnny Hodges, who, he said, taught him to play his instrument.
Early life and career
Born in Kansas City, Missouri, he studied violin in elementary and taught himself piano with the help of his neighbor Pete Johnson, who taught him the blues. In 1927-1928 he played for silent movies in Kansas City and in Amarillo, Texas.[2]
Once Budd Johnson
showed him some basics on the saxophone, Webster began to focus on that
instrument, playing in the Young Family Band (which at the time
included Lester Young),[3] although he did return to the piano from time to time, even recording on the instrument occasionally.[4] Kansas City at this point was a melting pot from which emerged some of the biggest names in 1930s jazz.[5] Webster joined Bennie Moten's band in 1932, a grouping which also included Count Basie, Hot Lips and Walter Page.[6] This era was recreated in Robert Altman's film Kansas City.[7]
Webster spent time with quite a few orchestras in the 1930s, including Andy Kirk, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra in 1934, then Benny Carter, Willie Bryant, Cab Calloway, and the short-lived Teddy Wilson big band.[8]
With Ellington
Ben Webster played with Duke Ellington's orchestra for the first time in 1935, and by 1940 was performing with it full-time as the band's first major tenor soloist.[8] He credited Johnny Hodges, Ellington's alto soloist, as a major influence on his playing.[9] During the next three years, he played on many recordings, including "Cotton Tail" and "All Too Soon";[8] his contributions (together with that of bassist Jimmy Blanton) were so important that Ellington's orchestra during that period is known as the Blanton–Webster band.[10] Webster left the band in 1943 after an angry altercation during which he allegedly cut up one of Ellington's suits.[11] Another version of Webster's leaving Ellington came from Clark Terry,
a longtime Ellington player, who said that, in a dispute, Webster
slapped Ellington, upon which the latter gave him two weeks notice.[12]
After Ellington
_(LOC)_(4843148497).jpg)
"Portrait of Ben Webster, Famous Door, New York, N.Y., ca. Oct. 1947".
After leaving Ellington in 1943, Webster worked on 52nd Street in New York City, where he recorded frequently as both a leader and a sideman.[13] During this time he had short periods with Raymond Scott, John Kirby, Bill DeArango, and Sid Catlett, as well as with Jay McShann's band, which also featured blues shouter Jimmy Witherspoon. For a few months in 1948, he returned briefly to Ellington's orchestra.
In 1953, he recorded King of the Tenors with pianist Oscar Peterson, who would be an important collaborator with Webster throughout the decade in his recordings for the various labels of Norman Granz. Along with Peterson, trumpeter Harry 'Sweets' Edison and others, he was touring and recording with Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic package. In 1956, he recorded a classic set with pianist Art Tatum, supported by bassist Red Callender and drummer Bill Douglass. Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster with fellow tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins was recorded on December 16, 1957, along with Peterson, Herb Ellis (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), and Alvin Stoller (drums). The Hawkins and Webster recording is a jazz classic, the coming together of two giants of the tenor saxophone, who had first met back in Kansas City.
In the late 1950s, he formed a quintet with Gerry Mulligan
and played frequently at a Los Angeles club called Renaissance. It was
there that the Webster-Mulligan group backed up blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon on an album recorded live for Hi-Fi Jazz Records.[14]
That same year, 1959, the quintet, with pianist Jimmy Rowles, bassist
Leroy Vinnegar, and drummer Mel Lewis, also recorded "Gerry Mulligan
Meets Ben Webster" for Verve Records (MG V-8343).[15]
In Europe
Webster
generally worked steadily, but in 1965 he moved permanently to Europe,
working with other American jazz musicians based there as well as local
musicians. He played when he pleased during his last decade. He lived in
London for one year, followed by four years in Amsterdam and made his last home in Copenhagen in 1969.[16] Webster appeared as a sax player in a low-rent cabaret club in the 1970 Danish blue film titled Quiet Days in Clichy. In 1971, Webster reunited with Duke Ellington and his orchestra for a couple of shows at the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen; he also recorded "live" in France with Earl Hines.[17] He also recorded or performed with Buck Clayton, Bill Coleman and Teddy Wilson.
Webster suffered a cerebral bleed in Amsterdam in September 1973, following a performance at the Twee Spieghels in Leiden, and died on 20 September. His body was cremated in Copenhagen and his ashes were buried in the Assistens Cemetery in the Nørrebro section of the city.[18]
Legacy
After Webster's death, Billy Moore Jr., together with the trustee of Webster's estate, created the Ben Webster Foundation.
Since Webster's only legal heir, Harley Robinson of Los Angeles, gladly
assigned his rights to the foundation, the Ben Webster Foundation was
confirmed by the Queen of Denmark's
Seal in 1976. In the Foundation's trust deed, one of the initial
paragraphs reads: "to support the dissemination of jazz in Denmark". The
trust is a beneficial foundation which channels Webster's annual
royalties to musicians in both Denmark and the U.S. An annual Ben Webster Prize
is awarded to a young outstanding musician. The prize is not large, but
is considered highly prestigious. Over the years, several American
musicians have visited Denmark with the help of the Foundation, and
concerts, a few recordings, and other jazz-related events have been
supported.
Webster's private collection of jazz recordings and memorabilia is archived in the jazz collections at the University Library of Southern Denmark, Odense.[19]
Ben Webster used the same Saxophone from 1938 until his death in
1973. Ben left instructions that the horn was never to be played again.
It is on display in the Jazz Institute at Rutgers University in New
Brunswick, NJ.[20]
Ben Webster has a street named after him in southern Copenhagen, "Ben Websters Vej".[21]
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Ben Webster among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.[22]
Discography
As leader / co-leader
- King of the Tenors [AKA The Consummate Artistry of Ben Webster] (Norgran, MGN-1001, 1953)
- 1953: An Exceptional Encounter [live] (The Jazz Factory, 1953) – with Modern Jazz Quartet
- Music for Loving (Norgran MGN-1018, 1954) AKA Sophisticated Lady (Verve, 1956), and Music With Feeling (Norgran MGN-1039, 1955) – reissued as a 2-CD set: Ben Webster With Strings (Verve 527774, 1995; which also includes as a bonus: Harry Carney With Strings, Clef MGC-640, 1954)
- The Art Tatum - Ben Webster Quartet (Verve, 1956 [1958]) – with Art Tatum
- Soulville (Verve, 1957)
- The Soul of Ben Webster (Verve, 1958)
- Ben Webster and Associates (Verve, 1959)
- Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster (Verve, 1959)
- Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson (Verve, 1959)
- Ben Webster at the Renaissance (Contemporary, 1960)
- The Warm Moods (Reprise, 1961)
- Wanted to Do One Together (Columbia, 1962) – with Harry Edison
- Soulmates (Riverside, 1963) – with Joe Zawinul
- See You at the Fair (Impulse!, 1964)
- Stormy Weather (Black Lion, 1965) – recorded at The Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen
- Gone With The Wind (Black Lion, 1965) – recorded at The Jazzhus Montmartre, Copenhagen
- Meets Bill Coleman (Black Lion, 1967)
- Big Ben Time (Ben Webster in London 1967) (Philips, 1968)
- Webster's Dictionary (Philips, 1970)
- No Fool, No Fun [The Rehearsal Sessions, 1970 with The Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra] (Storyville Records STCD 8304, 1999)
- Ben Webster Plays Ballads [recordings from Danish Radio 1967–1971] (Storyville SLP-4118, 1988)
- Autumn Leaves (with Georges Arvanitas trio) (Futura Swing 05, 1972)
- Gentle Ben (with Tete Montoliu Trio) (Ensayo, 1973)
- My Man: Live at Montmartre 1973 (Steeplechase, 1973)
- Ballads by Ben Webster (Verve, Recorded 1953-1959, released 1974, 2xLP)
As a sideman
With Count Basie
- String Along with Basie (Roulette, 1960)
With Buddy Bregman
- Swinging Kicks (Verve, 1957)
With Benny Carter
- Jazz Giant (Contemporary, 1958)
- BBB & Co. (Swingville, 1962) with Barney Bigard
With Harry Edison
- Sweets (Clef, 1956)
- Gee Baby, Ain't I Good to You (Verve, 1957)
With Duke Ellington
- Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band (RCA, 1940–1942 [rel. 2003])
With Dizzy Gillespie
- The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (Bluebird, 1937–1949 [rel. 1995])
With Lionel Hampton
- You Better Know It!!! (Impulse, 1965)
With Coleman Hawkins
- Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster (Verve, 1957)
- Coleman Hawkins and Confrères (Verve, 1958)
With Woody Herman
- Songs for Hip Lovers (Verve, 1957)
With Johnny Hodges
- The Blues (Norgran, 1952–1954, [rel. 1955])
- Blues-a-Plenty (Verve, 1958)
- Not So Dukish (Verve, 1958)
- "Groove" (Pacific Jazz, 1961) – with Les McCann
- Tell It Like It Tis (Pacific Jazz, 1961 [rel. 1966])
With Illinois Jacquet
- The Kid and the Brute (Clef, 1955)
With Barney Kessel
- Let's Cook! (Contemporary, 1957 [rel. 1962])
With Mundell Lowe
- Porgy & Bess (RCA Camden, 1958)
With Les McCann
- Les McCann Sings (Pacific Jazz, 1961)
With Carmen McRae
- Birds of a Feather (Decca, 1958)
With Oliver Nelson
- More Blues and the Abstract Truth (Impulse!, 1964)
With Buddy Rich
- The Wailing Buddy Rich (Norgran, 1955)
With Art Tatum
- The Tatum Group Masterpieces, Volume Eight (Pablo, 1956)
With Clark Terry
- The Happy Horns of Clark Terry (Impulse!, 1964)
With Joe Williams
- At Newport '63 (RCA Victor, 1963)
References
- Rosen, Jody (June 25, 2019). "Here Are Hundreds More Artists Whose Tapes Were Destroyed in the UMG Fire". The New York Times. Retrieved June 28, 2019.
