Someone to Watch Over Me: The Life and Music of Ben Webster

3. From Kansas City to New York (1931-1934)

From Kansas City to New York (1931–1934) Blanche Calloway (1902–1978) was a singer, dancer, and bandleader. Her career in show business began in local revues in her hometown, Baltimore . Upon her arrival in New York in 1921, she joined the cast of Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s musical Shuf›e Along with Josephine Baker and Paul Robeson. Like her more famous little brother Cab, she was more of an entertainer than musician, but her stage presence won the hearts of the black population. In 1931 an advertisement announced that in Chicago she had performed at the Regal Theatre for three years, the longest engagement there of any performer.1 In early 1931 she played the Pearl Theatre in Philadelphia with Andy Kirk’s Twelve Clouds of Joy. The Pearl’s manager, Sam Steiffel, tried to persuade several of Kirk’s musicians to join a permanent backing band for her, but when Kirk heard of the plans, he quickly accepted an offer back in Kansas City. All of Kirk’s musicians followed him with the exception of trumpeters Clarence Smith and Edgar Battle, nicknamed “Puddinghead ,” who had contacted six musicians from Jap Allen’s band and enticed them to join up with Calloway. Other musicians were hired, and in March, Steiffel was able to book Calloway accompanied by a band in which Ben became a member. Of his time with Calloway Ben remembered that “we more or less played for her to sing. We played both for dances and in theatres.”2 Apparently Ben’s solo opportunities were slim, but Cozy Cole gives us the following description of the music and of Calloway, drawing an accurate picture of the circumstances and the ensuing musical con›icts of interest: 3. 18 We had a fairly nice band, a good band, but it wasn’t a standard good band like McKinney’s Cotton Pickers or Chick Webb or something like that. All we had was about three or four arrangements that we played. The rest were heads, you know, and we enjoyed it. We were young and enjoyed playing. I think our best arrangement was on Trees. Clyde Hart made the arrangement of that. Blanche would be in front of the band dancing. If Ben had a solo or any one of the musicians had a solo to play, Blanche would still be out there dancing, selling the band. Well, while she’s dancing and kicking her legs up in the air, I had to catch her on the cymbals. Well, that’s very unprofessional with Ben Webster taking a solo and you’re up there trying to catch Blanche Calloway when she’s kicking her legs up in the air on the cymbal. You know, that was one of the troubles. Ben couldn’t do anything about it, because it was Blanche’s band.3 Ben’s musical development on the tenor saxophone can be traced fairly accurately through his recordings, as he started recording quite early, on his twenty-second birthday, after only two years on the instrument . It would have been interesting to hear his piano playing at this time, but the ‹rst recordings of him on this instrument were not made until ten years later. On March 27, May 8, and June 11, 1931, he recorded with Blanche Calloway’s Orchestra. Rhythmically, his playing is ‹ne, but his tone is rough and amateurish, and most of his solos are much too staccato and primitively articulated, marred by rigid phrasing. However, the staccato playing was the style of the day. Prince Robinson’s solos with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers on Crying and Sighing, Will You, Won’t You Be My Baby, Talk to Me and Okay, Baby, and Coleman Hawkins’s solos with Fletcher Henderson on King Porter Stomp, Oh Baby! Feelin’ Good, Hop Off, and Blazin’ are all played in the same staccato manner, and they both produce a likewise uncultivated and rough sound. Of the four songs from the ‹rst session, Ben is heard on three, but his sixteen-bar solo on I’m Getting Myself Ready for You is the only solo 19 From Kansas City to New York that can be categorized as actual improvisation. On Just a Crazy Song, he performs the A-parts of the theme in call-and-response with a trumpet. He is even out of tune here and there, and the same can be said of...