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

Notes

NOTES CHAPTER 1 1. Where no other source is stated, all information on Ben Webster’s family relations is taken from the census of 1930 and from Jeroen de Valk, Ben Webster: His Life and Music (Berkeley, Calif.: Berkeley Hills Books, 2001), originally published in Dutch in 1992. The Dutch version contains a useful family tree that unfortunately is not included in the English translation. De Valk had access to ‹rsthand information from Ben’s grand-cousin, Joyce Cockrell (1897–) and cousin Harley W. Robinson Jr. (1919–2001)—son of Blanche and Harley W. Robinson Sr. Both of them lived with Ben’s family in Kansas City for separate periods; Joyce during Ben’s childhood, and Harley from 1932 to 1937. 2. Mary Lou Williams, interview by John S. Wilson, 1973, Jazz Oral History Project, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, N.J. 3. From the documentary The Brute and the Beautiful by John Jeremy, 1989. 4. Mary Lou Williams, interview. Williams might be right about the social status of Ben’s family, but it has been impossible to con‹rm who were doctors and lawyers. 5. Jeremy, The Brute and the Beautiful. 6. Ibid. The ‹lm includes a photograph of Ben at the age of seven with his mother and stepfather. Information on his stepfather is from the census of 1930. 7. Henrik Iversen, “Big Ben,” Jazz Special 45 (1999): 47. 8. Harley W. Robinson Jr. told de Valk that Agnes was one of the founders of the church, a fact that is hard to believe since the church dates back to the 1870s. However, Agnes may well have been on the board that rebuilt and modernized the church in the 1890s. 9. Tad Hershorn, ed., “The Conversational and Otherwise Art of Jimmy Rowles,” unpublished manuscript, 28. 10. Whitney Balliett, “Fauntleroy and the Brute,” New Yorker, August 15, 1983. 11. Jeremy, The Brute and the Beautiful. 12. Ben Webster, interview by Per Møller Hansen, 1971; used in part in the documentary Big Ben, shown on Danish television, November 1, 1971, and February 20, 1972. 13. Ben Webster, interview by Henrik Wolsgaard-Iversen, 1969. The interview was broadcast on Danish Radio in three parts on December 4 and 26, 1969, and January 4, 1970. 327 14. Hans J. Mauerer, ed., The Pete Johnson Story (Bremen: Humbug, 1965), 20. 15. Pete Johnson, letter to C. Q. Nägeli, Switzerland, June 1963. (Copy in authors possession.) 16. De Valk, Ben Webster, 13. 17. Stanley Dance, The World of Duke Ellington (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), 232. 18. Linda Dahl, Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (New York: Pantheon, 1999), 42. 19. Webster, interview by Wolsgaard-Iversen. 20. Birgit Nordtorp, interview by the author, October 18, 2002. 21. Ibid. 22. Bent Kauling, interview by the author, October 16, 2002. 23. Mary Lou Williams, interview. 24. De Valk, Ben Webster, 13–14. 25. Bert Vuijsje, Jazzportretten (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1983), 9. The postcard reads, “To my Former Pupil Bennie Webster from his former H.S. Teacher, A.T. Edwards ‘Coach.’” The postcard states that Sumner was a senior high school and junior college with twelve hundred pupils and two music rooms. 26. Horace Henderson, interview by Tom McClusky, 1975, Jazz Oral History Project, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, N.J. 27. Walter C. Allen, Hendersonia (Highland Park, N.J.: Walter C. Allen, 1973), 184. 28. Max Jones, Talking Jazz (London, Papermac, 1990), 80. 29. Rex Stewart, “The Frog and Me,” Down Beat, June 1, 1967, 21; reprinted in Rex Stewart, Jazz Masters of the Thirties (New York: Macmillan, 1972). 30. Count Basie, Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as Told to Albert Murray (New York: Random House, 1985), 86. 31. Webster, interview by Wolsgaard-Iversen. 32. Kauling, interview, October 16, 2002. Basie told the story to Kauling after Ben’s death. CHAPTER 2 1. Ross Russell, Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973), 238; Stewart, “The Frog and Me,” 21. 2. Webster, interview by Wolsgaard-Iversen. In interviews, Ben often spoke of his grandmother rather than his aunt, causing some confusion, but of course he was referring to Mom. 3. Vuijsje, Jazzportretten, 10. 4. Walter Barnes Jr., “Hittin’ High Notes,” Chicago Defender, September 26, 1931, 7. 5. Interview with Albert “Budd” Johnson, 1975, Jazz Oral History Project, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, Newark, N.J. 6. Webster, interview by Hansen. 7. Webster, interview...