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About Ben Webster
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Ben Webster
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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
Texas Tenors and the Big Beat
by Marshall Bowden
This article first appeared on All About Jazz in July 2002. Texas is a miniature of the cultural and musical melting pot that is American music. Texas shares a border with Louisiana, inheriting some of that state's French and Caribbean roots, and when it comes to the blues, Texas has its own style. Texas ...
The Discreet Charm of Tete Montoliu
by Con Chapman
In 1947 tenor saxophonist Don Byas, a transplant from America following a tour of Europe, joined a society orchestra--complete with strings--to play dates in Spain. After their ballroom engagement was over, Byas and the band's rhythm section would jam until the early morning hours when they would be forced to quit “either because the police burst ...
Introducing Saxophonist Jacob Chung
by Sanford Josephson
Growing up in Toronto, Jacob Chung was introduced to jazz by his grandfather. “He had a record player," Chung recalled, “and he had Dave Brubeck's Time Out album. He also liked Duke Ellington and Ben Webster." Chung was playing classical piano when he entered middle school, “and they started giving you wind instruments. I ...
Percy France: Live from the West End
by Daniel Gould
If you know Percy France, most likely you are a fan of “greasy" organ jazz, particularly on Blue Note Records during their classic era. He was an integral part of Jimmy Smith's Home Cookin' (1959) and Freddie Roach's Down to Earth (1962). Or perhaps you came to jazz through r&b acts like the Bill Doggett combo. The ...
Take Five with Clarinetist Davide Sgarra
by AAJ Staff
Meet Davide SgarraDavide Sgarra is an Italian jazz clarinetist and saxophonist based in Brooklyn, New York. Born and raised near Varese in northern Italy, he went on to earn his Bachelor of Music from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague in the Netherlands and his Master of Music from Manhattan School of Music in New York ...
Yusef Lateef: Alight Upon the Lake: Live at the Jazz Showcase
by Troy Dostert
One of the legendary figures of Detroit jazz, Yusef Lateef experienced a truly distinctive path of artistic development, with a trajectory which took him from swing, bebop and R&B in the 1940s and 1950s through a deep immersion in world music, funk and classical idioms during the 1960s and beyond. Somehow incorporating all of these disparate ...
Bennie Wallace: French Postcard
by Dan McClenaghan
In 2001, saxophonist Bennie Wallace released a breakout album, Moodsville (Groove Note). It was Wallace in the quartet setting, with Mulgrew Miller on piano, Peter Washington on bass, and Lewis Nash on drums--an all-star cast. What was striking about the sound was its immediacy, its authenticity. It was a bunch of time-tested Great American Songbook tunes ...
Cab Calloway & The Nicholas Brothers: Jumpin' Jive
by Ian Patterson
Born on Christmas Day 1907 in Rochester, New York, bandleader Cab Calloway enjoyed a brilliant career that spanned the 1920s to the 1990s. He made his name at the helm of the Cab Calloway Orchestra between 1930-1948, a period that included a four-residency at the Cotton Club. At various times his swing orchestra included musicians of ...
Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas Sauce: Adding Spice to Charlie Brown Vanilla
by Arthur R George
It's not simply that pianist Vince Guaraldi slipped jazz past the unsuspecting in composing A Charlie Brown Christmas, the evergreen “Peanuts" animation and soundtrack that has become inescapably part of the holiday. First broadcast in 1965, going on to six decades ago, A Charlie Brown Christmas is a tradition unto itself. It returns to television through ...
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