Ben Webster - Biography
By Stuart Kremsky
Tenor saxophone stylist Ben Webster is considered one of the triumvirate of swing era tenors, alongside Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. He performed on hundreds of recording sessions, bringing a harsh growl to up-tempo stomps and a caressing, breathy purr to ballads. His unique sound, initially modeled on Hawkins, was a marvel. It served as a powerful influence on such disparate players as Archie Shepp, Lew Tabackin, Scott Hamilton, and Bennie Wallace. Shepp, in a Down Beat “blindfold test,” commented that “if you intend to play the saxophone, you can’t really do a thorough job unless you listen to men like him.”
Benjamin Francis Webster was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 27, 1909. As a child, he took first to the violin, and then the piano. When he was a teenager, his neighbor, the boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson, taught him to play the blues. He was soon playing around as an accompanist for silent films. Webster had gotten as far afield as Amarillo, Texas, when an encounter with saxophonist Budd Johnson inspired him to pick up the horn. Here too he proved to be a quick study. He started to play with the Young Family Band, picking up valuable tips from Lester Young and his father. After the Young band, Webster worked with a number of groups in the musical ferment that was Kansas City in the Thirties. Webster had his first recording experience with Blanche Calloway’s orchestra in 1931. He was a featured soloist with the Bennie Moten orchestra on “Moten Swing” and “Lafayette,” both waxed for Victor at the end of 1932.
Webster next entered a recording studio in the fall of 1934, with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in New York. An association with multi-instrumentalist and arranger Benny Carter led to record dates with Bob Howard, Willie Bryant, and Carter’s own group. In a pair of July 1935 sessions, Webster joined pianist Teddy Wilson’s orchestra with trumpeter Roy Eldridge and clarinetist Benny Goodman to back Billie Holiday. Later that summer, he had his first studio encounters with Duke Ellington and his orchestra, while also working with Wilson and the Cab Calloway orchestra. Most of his recorded work in 1938 is with various editions of the Wilson group. In September 1939, Webster took part in an historic session, forming a sax section with Hawkins, Carter and Chu Berry in a band led by vibraphonist Lionel Hampton that also featured a young Dizzy Gillespie and guitar innovator Charlie Christian.
Ellington, who declined trying to poach Webster from Calloway because the bands shared management, was thrilled to finally have Webster join his Famous Orchestra in January 1940. Webster, for his part, later said that “It was always my ambition to play with the Duke.” He became the first regular tenor saxophonist in the Ellington band, and the fifth reed along with Johnny Hodges (whose rapturous sound on alto was a big inspiration to Webster), Barney Bigard, Otto Hardwick, and Harry Carney. Webster’s brawny tone on tenor added more heft to the ensembles. His solo skills, equally adept on ballads and uptempo numbers, added a significant new voice to the already celebrated group. Emblematic of the saxophonist’s importance to this phase of the Duke’s long career, this edition of the orchestra is known among fans as the Blanton-Webster band, for Ben and bass sensation Jimmy Blanton who joined around the same time. Baritone saxophonist Carney said that “Ben brought a new life to a section that had been together a long time, he was inspired and he inspired us so that we worked together." Webster’s three years in the band including constant touring and the recording of such featured performances as "All Too Soon," “Just A-Sittin’ and A-Rockin’,” “Chelsea Bridge,” and his most famous solo on "Cotton Tail,” which he also co-arranged with Ellington.
Supposedly, it was Blanton who gave Webster his nickname of “Frog.” Less benign was Webster’s other nickname, “the Brute,” based on his bellicose behavior when he drank too much. Eventually, Webster’s temper became too much for Ellington to stand. Mercer Ellington, Duke’s son and a trumpeter in the band, reported that “there was a sort of conflict, a matter of chemistry,” and the two men couldn’t be in the same room without getting into an argument. Duke eventually had to ask Webster to leave the band. For the rest of his career, Webster continued to play Ellington material, and he would reportedly display a photo of Duke in his dressing room for the rest of his career.
After leaving Ellington in the fall of 1943, Webster led his own groups in New York. He also appeared with units led by Woody Herman, James P. Johnson, Cozy Cole, Sid Catlett, Raymond Scott, Hot Lips Page, and Mary Lou Williams on record and in clubs. He was reunited with Benny Carter on record in 1946 after a lapse of seven years; the two men would go to collaborate many more times in the decades to come. Webster rejoined the Ellington organization for several months beginning in late 1948, traveling with the band to California where they appeared in the film Symphony In Swing in 1949. Staying behind in Los Angeles, Webster began an association with entrepreneur Norman Granz’ Jazz At The Philharmonic and Verve Records. In the early Fifties, Webster worked with artists like Johnny Otis, Esther Phillips, and Jay McShann, as well as leading the occasional group for a record date.
From this time on, Webster nearly always worked as a single artist, playing with different rhythm sections in various cities on tour or appearing as a guest artist. Looking through his sizeable discography reveals that he nearly always played with the best musicians, recording in the first half of the Fifties alone with Hodges, Dinah Washington, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, and Gene Krupa, and jamming with a broad range of all stars in a long series of Jazz At The Philharmonic releases.
In 1956, Webster, living in Los Angeles, played on the last session by piano virtuoso Art Tatum. Recording dates with Holiday, Carter, Red Norvo, Harry “Sweets” Edison, and Barney Kessel kept him working hard in 1957. In October 1957 came the historic Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster album for Verve, and in December, Webster, with Hawkins, Holiday, Basie, Lester Young, Thelonious Monk and others appeared on CBS-TV’s The Sound Of Jazz program. Back in New York again from early 1958 until the fall of 1959, Webster worked with Hodges, Rex Stewart, and Mercer Ellington. After a Monterey Jazz Festival appearance in October 1959 backing singer Jimmy Witherspoon, Webster once again stayed on the West Coast. Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster (Verve) and Witherspoon’s At The Renaissance (Fantasy) date from the early part of this sojourn. He also continued to work with Carter, Witherspoon, and Hodges over the next couple of years. Webster also had a fruitful association with pianist Jimmy Rowles, and both men were present on many of these California sessions.
Webster’s lengthy stays in California kept him close to his aunt and grandmother, according to owner/producer Les Koenig in his notes for the release of a Webster quintet recorded live in 1960 At The Renaissance (Contemporary) with Rowles and guitarist Jim Hall in the group. When both relatives died, Webster moved on to New York in the spring of 1962. He stayed on the East Coast for a couple of years, playing and recording with Joe Williams, Clark Terry, Lionel Hampton, and Oliver Nelson. He also led his own groups, recording Soulmates (1963 - Riverside) with pianist Joe Zawinul and See You At The Fair (1964 - Impulse) before decamping for Europe late in 1964.
Webster split his time between Holland and Denmark before settling in Copenhagen, where he lived for the rest of his life. He recorded frequently during his years in Europe. Although he sometimes got to play with visiting American musicians like Roy Eldridge, Teddy Wilson, and pianist Earl Hines, or with other expatriates like pianist Kenny Drew, trumpeter Bill Coleman, and saxophonist Don Byas, Webster was most often teamed with local rhythm section or big bands. Webster had mellowed a bit over the years, and the ascendence of the gentle and sentimental side of his personality led him to play more and more ballads. As jazz writer Alun Morgan has noted, “No one else in jazz has ever breathed so much feeling into ballads as Ben; he was a man who carried with him a permanent ambiance and atmosphere reminiscent of the early hours of the morning.”
Webster, who refused to fly, traveled around Europe by train. Many of the albums from his European stay are taken from concerts and club dates. One of the more unusual releases from this period is a rehearsal tape of Webster with the Danish Radio Jazz Orchestra made in the fall of 1970. Issued by Storyville Records with the approval of The Ben Webster Foundation, it contains revealing multiple takes and instructions in words and scat singing. Two weeks after what proved to be his last concert, in Leiden, Holland, Ben Webster died in Amsterdam from a stroke on September 20, 1973. A much-beloved figure to his European friends, his legacy is well-served by the Copenhagen-based Ben Webster Foundation, which promotes his music to “a younger audience seeking the feeling and the special warm expression that Ben Webster communicated through his music.”
