Jazz Articles about Ben Webster

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Ben Webster: At The Renaissance

by Richard J Salvucci
December 29, 2024

When tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton first came up in the 1980s, his style was so, well, unusual, that a live audience would sometimes tentatively ask “Ben Webster?" Whether Hamilton regarded that as a compliment--it was--or the musicological equivalent of “Play Melancholy Baby for me" only Hamilton could have said. But the comment also acknowledged that the saxophone had gone through a convulsive period in which honks, shrieks, fragments and semitones had become the norm. Yes, there were melodic players, like ...

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The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts: January 1943

by Chuck Lenatti
November 20, 2024

Duke Ellington was one of the most popular and successful jazz musicians of the first half of the 20th century and according to composer Gunther Schuller and musicologist and historian Barry Kernfeld, “the most significant composer of the genre." Radio broadcasts from his residency at New York's Cotton Club beginning in 1927 extended Ellington's orchestra's national exposure and a parade of hit records, from “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" in 1926 to “C Jam Blues" in 1942, among many ...

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Transparency: Ben Webster Meets Pinot Noir

by Kristen Lee Sergeant
March 26, 2022

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Transparency: Pinot Noir Meets Ben Webster

by Kristen Lee Sergeant
March 4, 2022

Welcome back to Jazz & Juice--after last month's venture into the opulent, it's a perfect time to venture into the idea of less being more. Transparency When something is transparent, we see beyond it. In a way, transparency gives us another dimension of appreciation; we not only experience the object or the work that we are seeing through, but also what is behind it. Seeing, or hearing, through something means experiencing its causes and influences, whether that be ...

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Ben Webster: Ben Webster's First Concert in Denmark

by Chris Mosey
March 4, 2019

This is a small piece of jazz history. In January 1965, Ben Webster, newly arrived in Europe from America, was working out where to settle down. This concert shows why he decided on Copenhagen. The album starts with Webster making a point about the playing of his former boss Duke Ellington's “In A Mellotone." Webster argues his case on piano, an instrument he played well, while brusquely growling instructions to producer Børge Roger Henrichsen. There is a ...

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Ben Webster: In Norway

by Chris Mosey
September 10, 2013

Ben Webster refused to fly. When he visited Norway from Denmark, his adopted homeland, he went by boat and when he got there would blame his somewhat uncertain gait on his “sea legs," rather than the large amounts of alcohol he had consumed in the vessel's bar. Sometimes his “sea legs" were so bad, initial concerts had to be rescheduled. However, by 1970, when this date was recorded, Webster was 61 and slowing down just a little. ...

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Tenor Sax Legend: Live and Intimate

by Michael Steinman
April 10, 2010

Ben Webster Tenor Sax Legend: Live and Intimate Shanachie 2009

Although he looked like a frog or a bullmastiff (hence his nicknames Frog and The Brute), saxophonist Ben Webster was splendidly photogenic, his emotions nakedly on his face. This DVD brings together three concert performances and one documentary from his last decade in Europe. He purrs, snarls and moans with a rhythm trio, a big band, a string section, in a casual ...