Someone to Watch Over Me: The Life and Music of Ben Webster (Jazz Perspectives)
Language: English
Pages: 400
ISBN: 0472033603
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Early in his career, Webster worked with many of the greatest orchestras of the time, including those led by Willie Bryant, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Andy Kirk, Bennie Moten, and Teddy Wilson. In 1940 Webster became Duke Ellington's first major tenor soloist, and during the next three years he played on many famous recordings, including "Cotton Tail."
Someone to Watch Over Me tells, for the first time, the complete story of Ben Webster's brilliant and troubled career. For this comprehensive study of Webster, author Frank Büchmann-Møller interviewed more than fifty people in the United States and Europe, and he includes numerous translated excerpts from European periodicals and newspapers, none previously available in English. In addition, the author studies every known Webster recording and film, including many private recordings from Webster's home collection not available to the public.
Exhaustively researched, this is a much needed and long overdue study of the life and music of one of jazz's most important artists.
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popular dances of the day. The arrangement integrates the soloists with the ensemble in an outstanding manner, and the orchestra plays with great drive and commitment in the up-tempo tune. Ben solos over a whole chorus, and does so with authority and con‹dence, including the frisky break in the last two bars of the B-part. The solo is structured well; after a soft start with a phrase nestling nicely on the ninth of the chord, he plays more outwardly in the second A-part, playing repetitive ‹gures
solo. It is not far from being just as outstanding as the Stardust recording from Fargo. The way Ben plays over the harmonic structure and creates an inner logic, we never miss the accompaniment. His sound is exquisite and soft, and he never becomes overly emotional. He paraphrases the ‹rst two A-parts, and begins improvising from the B-part. In the transition between the ‹rst and second choruses, he plays Hawkins-inspired chromatic ‹gures, then continues in long lines. The conclusion of the next
who lived on the second ›oor for a while, who discovered his talent. “I was taking piano lessons, and Ben would annoy me all the time,” she recalled. Sometimes he even walked across the piano keys to keep me from playing. So I said to myself that the best thing to do is to start teaching him how to play the piano so he wouldn’t annoy me. So I learned him how to play C, B, D, F, you know, and for some reason he had a keen ear for music. He listened to the radio, and he came back and picked the
eight o’clock, there’s a knock on the door, and this chick’s come around. “You’d better go up there and get Ben. I’ll kill that son of a bitch. He’s got my shoes, and I can’t ‹nd my shoes, and I’ve got to go home.” She’s been out on the street hustling, and she’s got a pimp that she’s supposed to have a certain amount of money for, and if she shows up by nine or ten o’clock in the morning with no money, this pimp is going to kill her. So here she’s screaming, “Tell that son of a bitch to ‹nd my
people. So, he hired a lot of jazz musicians. He had these guys on the band. Charlie Shavers and Ben Webster I gravitated to because they were Black, because they were giant jazz musicians, because I loved their music. As a matter of fact, when Charlie Shavers and Ben Webster put together a quintet in the Three Deuces I was the drummer.18 At the time radio stations would not hire blacks as regular orchestra members, but Scott jumped this obstacle by hiring his musicians for a week at a time. Ben
