Big Ben Webster: Old Betsy [Pure DSD]

This is a Pure DSD - Analog Mixed album, transferred directly from the analog tape to DSD 128 by STS Digital. It is available in 2-channel Stereo up to DSD 512 only at NativeDSD.

Jazz saxophonist Ben Webster performs ten songs, including “Jeep Is Jumpin’,” “You Forgot to Remember,” and more, with bassist Spike Heatley, drummer Tony Crombie, pianist Dick Katz, and Alan Haven on Hammond organ.

The great box-like figure and slow-rolling walk of Ben Webster have become familiar sights in European cities since 1965, when he settled — gradually but apparently permanently — into life on this side of the Atlantic (at the time of writing, late 1967, he regards Amsterdam as his base). The sound of his tenor saxophone, though, sometimes hot and hoarse, increasingly often a stream of tuned puffs of wind, has been known to European jazz record collectors a good deal longer.

Ben Webster came to prominence, slipping out from the shadow of Coleman Hawkins, so to speak, during his comparatively short stay with Duke Ellington in 1939–43. He was in his early thirties then, and had already worked with Bennie Moten, Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, and many others. There had also been an intermittent association with the Ellington orchestra going back as far as 1935.

Ben’s particular contribution to the art of the tenor saxophone is — as hinted above — a curiously breathy attack, in which he seems to be blowing round the mouthpiece rather than through it, a sound that Humphrey Lyttelton, on BBC’s Jazz Scene one night, referred to as Ben’s “breathalyser technique.” You can get a very clear idea of this, and some of Ben Webster’s other characteristics, on this record, made in London in January 1967.

To back him on all but two of the tracks, Dick Katz — well known once to most listeners as a member of the Ray Allington Quartet — was dragged from behind his agency desk and sat at the piano, to produce splendid, rolling two-handed stuff of a kind we could do with more often. Spike Heatley, one of the best in Britain, is on bass, and Tony Crombie is on drums. “My One and Only Love,” “Where or When,” and “Remember” have the distinctive organ sound of Alan Haven.

As with almost any Ben Webster set you’re likely to encounter in the flesh, there’s a strong tincture of Ellington about the repertoire. “Just a Sittin’ and a Rockin’” was originally titled “See’pea,” Duke’s nickname for his late lieutenant Billy Strayhorn, when it was first recorded in 1941. “Jeep Is Jumpin’” is a reference to one of the many pet names for Johnny Hodges. “Solitude,” the tune of which was written in 1934, is possibly the most widely known of Duke’s compositions outside jazz circles.

Most of the rest of the material is made up of popular standards. The Jimmy McHugh–Dorothy Fields number “Exactly Like You” is from a 1930 New York show called International Revue. Of the two Irving Berlin tunes, “How Deep Is the Ocean” dates from 1925. Fats Waller and Andy Razaf wrote “Honeysuckle Rose” in 1929, since when it has quite possibly been played by more jazz musicians, of more various styles, than any other tune; in the middle and late thirties, no jam session sounded right without it. Richard Rodgers’ tune “Where or When,” with Lorenz Hart’s words, is from the 1937 musical Babes in Arms. Harry Barris (of the Rhythm Boys) and Ted Koehler wrote “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” which has one of the most yearning middle-eights of all popular songs, in 1931.

Review: “The sound quality is very good indeed. The instrument’s timbre is very accurate, the recording space is neatly distributed, and you can pinpoint where every musician is; the stereo image is wide and well distributed, with very detailed presence and transparency. The illusion of ‘being there’ is extremely realistic. I have the impression that this tape was meticulously mastered, and if so, it was a great mastering job. As a mastering engineer myself, I have found many nice recordings ruined by the mastering process. Not this one. Well, Fritz has been doing this since the ’70s, so he must know a thing or two about recording and sound quality...”

Ben Webster, tenor saxophone
Dick Katz, piano
Spike Heatley, bass
Tony Crombie, drums