Background

Benjamin Francis Webster was born and raised in Kansas City, Mo. From the 1930's until his death he was considered, along with Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, one of the giants of the tenor saxophone. Like many black jazzmen of the era, he was raised by women. His mother and grandmother, who taught him violin, were both schoolteachers.

Education

Webster attended the local Attucks Elementary School and enrolled at Wilberforce College in Ohio, where he took college preparatory courses from 1922 to 1925.

Career

The legendary blues pianist Pete Johnson, a neighbor in Kansas City, was Webster's first musical influence and taught him piano. Webster organized his first musical group, Rooster Ben and His Little Red Roosters, and his first paid gig was playing piano with Bretho Nelson in Enid, Okla. , in the mid-1920's. It was while playing piano in a silent movie house in Amarillo, Tex. , in 1927 that Webster met Budd Johnson, who taught him the rudiments of the tenor. When a traveling road show known as the Young Family (including a teenage Lester Young) passed through, Webster joined as a saxophone player, although he later recalled, "I couldn't read and didn't own a sax. " Young's father, W. H. Young, provided lessons and an alto. The band traveled throughout the Southwest; in Albuquerque, N. Mex. , Webster was credited with saving the life of a drowning Lester Young in the fast-moving Rio Grande. Webster's jazz odyssey began when he joined drummer Eugene Coy's Happy Black Aces in 1930, and then played with the legendary Bennie Moten (his first well-known recordings are from this brief association and include the song "Moten Swing, " 1932). His style was part Coleman Hawkins, part Benny Carter. He traveled the "old Negro circuit" through the Southwest with such territory bands as Jap Allen, Andy Kirk, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Willie Bryant, and Teddy Wilson during the 1930's. The center of this musical renaissance was Kansas City, and the all-night jam sessions during the Prohibition era and years just after are jazz legends. As critic Nat Hentoff has written, Webster would "blow against the visiting jazzmen in fiercely contested battles usually humbling the more renowned musicians. " Tom Pendergast, boss of the Democratic party in Kansas City at the time, encouraged gambling and nightlife and during his reign Kansas City jazz flourished. Jazz greats who emerged from this fertile milieu included Count Basie, Coleman Hawkins, Chu Berry, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker. It was during these seminal Kansas City years that the Webster persona emerged; he "hung out on the streets of Kansas City and became a womanizer, an expert pool player and a horrendous combative drinker" according to critic Whitney Balliett. Webster joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra as its first permanent tenor sax player in 1939. During this association, several classic recordings were cut, including "C Jam Blues, " "Just a Sittin and a Rockin, " and "Cottontail, " all featuring Webster's big tenor sound. The celebrated ensemble chorus on "Cottontail" was written by Webster, and his solo, a variant of "I Got Rhythm, " continues to be an influence on jazz improvisation. Alto sax great Johnny Hodges, a fellow Ellingtonian, had significant influence on Webster's gradual stylistic maturity. Balliett noted that "[Webster's] early style stemmed directly from Hawkins but it went through a subtle reshaping during the three years spent with Ellington in the forties. He fell under the lyrical sway of Johnny Hodges, " learning dynamics control and legato lyricism. In 1943, Webster moved to New York City and emerged as a fixture on the famed Fifty-second Street scene for the next five years; these were halcyon days for noncommercial jazz, with wartime spending up and seven top clubs on the street. Webster was one of the first swing-era players sympathetic to bebop, the new jazz sound. He was also the first to understand and encourage a fellow Kansas City native (though from across the state line in Kansas), Charlie Parker. A celebrated jazz story has Webster grabbing Parker's tenor (Parker later played alto) at Monroe's Uptown House in Harlem shouting "that horn ain't 'sposed to sound that fast. " During the late 1940's and 1950's Webster recorded prolifically; he was consistently employed accompanying the top female jazz vocalists of the era: Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Carmen McCrae. A series of "Ben Webster Meets . " albums sold well for Verve Records, classic sides were recorded with the virtuoso blind pianist Art Tatum, and Webster toured widely with Norman Granz-organized Jazz at the Philharmonic in the 1950's. His direct influence was seen in younger tenor players such as Paul Gonsalves, Flip Philips, and Eddie ("Lockjaw") Davis (sometimes known as Little Ben). After moving to Los Angeles in the late 1950's to care for his aged mother and grandmother he was sporadically employed. Jazz styles changed, but Webster's did not. Upon the deaths of his mother and grandmother in 1964, tired of the racism he had long endured and of difficulties in finding steady work, Webster emigrated to Europe, where he joined the black American jazz expatriate community in a more racially tolerant society. Webster settled in Copenhagen and played with pickup rhythm sections all across the continent for the next decade. While in Europe he appeared in the documentary Big Ben (1967), and the film Quiet Days in Clichy (1969), based on the Henry Miller novel. He died of a cerebral thrombosis (possibly brought on by excessive alcohol consumption) in Amsterdam. Out of the public eye for several decades and in semiobscurity, his passing earned a scant two-inch obituary in the New York Times.

Achievements

• He is considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Ben Webster has a street named after him in southern Copenhagen, "Ben Websters Vej".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Ballads

    (Digitally remastered edition of this collection from the ...)

  • Complete Recordings: 1952-1959 (4CD Box Set)

    (BEN WEBSTER - 1952-59: COMPLETE RECORDINGS - 4 CD SET)

  • Gone With The Wind

  • book

  • Stormy Weather
  • Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson
  • King Of The Tenors
  • Ben Webster For Lovers
  • Music For Loving

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Stylistically, wrote critic and Duke Ellington's long-time trumpet player Rex Stewart, he "blew with unrestrained savagery, buzzing and growling through chord changes like a prehistoric monster challenging a foe. " This earned him the nickname "Brute. "
  
  Gary Giddins has remarked that "his mastery of dynamics, fragmentation of line, and tonal control came together stunningly in the 506, when Webster blossomed into one of the most evocative stylists the music has known. " He became a master of the ballad, "using an enormous tone, a breathy, enveloping vibrato, and terrific glissando, " according to Balliett.