FROM LOWDOWN TO HOEDOWN: THE AMERICAN INSTRUMENTAL BREAK, 1924-2024
I’ve been kicking around this music book idea for years; now that I’m plugging away at fiction outside of substack, I think it’s time to start posting material here from this gargantuan work in progress.
The concept: the audience for popular music mostly focuses on singers and songs. Singers and songs are important, of course; I’m a singer, and I write songs, but ultimately I deal with the musical line. There are many musical lines you will never hear from a singer, and the idea that all significant music flows through the human voice is a pernicious canard, not any more defensible than the idea that all cuisine flows through the vessel of the sandwich.
I’m fascinated by the artists who played instrumental breaks on records for the century beginning in the 1920s, and I have a vast collection of recordings featuring instrumental breaks that have been mostly unheard and unappreciated even by people who love music. Many genres are represented. I’m writing a book to shed light on this largely hidden world.
I’ll be posting material from this work in progress. I’ll be experimenting here with format and approach, and I encourage readers to comment. Your feedback will help me shape the book, which is currently sprawling like a continent in my head.
BEN WEBSTER, tenor saxophone
Ben’s career can be divided into four distinct periods:
Early (1930s)
This is the period I’m focused on in this installment. I’ve included one cut with Duke’s orchestra in 1940 to make sure people don’t scurry away before I’ve really begun. If this version of “Star Dust” doesn’t hook you, you may not be hookable.
Ben worked as a freelancer, but was often employed by bandleaders for some period of months. (Ex. Teddy Wilson, Benny Carter, etc.)
Duke Ellington w. Jimmy Blanton on bass (40-42)
Ben was with Duke for a few years, and much of his finest work happened during this time. He grew as a player, with Duke, and brought what he’d learned with Ellington to his work for the rest of his life.
This band made legendary, often astounding recordings. The greatest big band of the swing era, to my ears. In coloristic terms, I suspect these are the greatest recordings of any American ensemble in any style of music. If I’m not already gushing way too gratuitously, I would argue that the finest examples from this period of Duke’s career are as good a choice as any for quintessential example of the fine arts— or any arts— in American history.
After Duke (40s/50s)
Excellent small group jazz work, plus some r&b sessions. Webster played a lot of nice solos in the 30s, but this was the period where he was consistently solid on every released recording. I prefer his 40s recordings to the 50s period, generally, but that’s largely because I like the way jazz records sounded in the 40s. Older players weren’t always well served by 50s recording; you don’t want the microphones to improve just in time to document the period where you start coasting, consolidating what you’ve been doing the last 20 years. Webster did keep developing, and there’s much to discover in his post-40s work— I’m not trying to dismiss that— but still, the 40s are my preference.
Europe (60s/early 70s)
Ben continued to mature and develop, even through his old age expatriate period. He developed a characteristic approach to airstream and sound that now really was well served by improved recording quality. (I’m oversimplifying quite a bit with these generalizations about each period, which I hope is obvious.) He played small group gigs as a leader, and sometimes worked as a freelancer combined with other great players (ex. Dexter Gordon).
Ben was one of the pre-bebop tenor masters, part of the holy trinity with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. But the dramatic opposition between the styles of those two tends to distract people from the reason Webster is on their level. Some people rate him the highest of the three, and in some ways he was.
I’ve chosen this first excerpt because it’s one of my favorite jazz solos from any era. The trappings of early jazz turn a lot of people off, and this post is going to feature some pretty old-fashioned material, so I offer this one to plant a flag before anyone gets scared away.
Webster is heard here on a famous Duke Ellington live recording from a 1940 “dance date” in Fargo, North Dakota. The saxophonist is rhapsodizing on “Star Dust,” a famous tune you wouldn’t normally associate with Ellington. (This wasn’t a concert hall performance; this was a working dance band. It’s amazing to picture people dancing to this.) Ben is more or less in the mode of Coleman Hawkins on his classic “Body and Soul,” a then-recent recording that changed jazz improvisation forever.
The eternal paradox of Webster can be heard here.
Hawkins is arguably at his best in his baroque ballad mode, and generally much diminished in both expressiveness and invention on blues and show-off tempos. Lester’s real medium is time rather than genre or tempo, so he comes alive in all sorts of pieces, as long as he’s healthy that day and not being encouraged to grandstand.
But Webster— is he a ballad player, or a rhythm and blues exhibitionist? The question doesn’t work with him, because his blues language is primal and raw, though subtle moments occur too— while his ballad playing is both tender and full-throated. This song has nothing to do with the blues, but Ben squeezes some in anyway. When Ben was struggling to find work in the 1950s, he got hired to play on some r&b sessions, and he fit into that atmosphere better than his two colleagues would have.
His previous work had a huge influence on the style and its movement towards wilder and more uninhibited emotive color— when he got an r&b session, he was essentially fitting in with a genre he had helped create. I would argue that Webster was the jazz soloist who had the greatest influence on rhythm and blues. He’s also arguably the jazz soloist who merged blues language and ballad playing the most seamlessly.
By contrast, Hawk’s playing often sounds forced in a blues setting, and Lester deeply understood the feeling and genre, but tended to soften it and Lesterize it, as it were. On a bad day, the blues made Lester sound more ordinary.
Some readers may hear this Webster feature as old-fashioned, and it is that, but it’s old-fashioned like Shakespeare and Beethoven.
Stardust, live with Duke Ellington, 1940
St. James Infirmary, 1940 with a Jack Teagarden all star group.
Here’s Ben in a more overtly bluesy setting. It’s definitely jazz, though; check out the complexity of dissonance and rhythmic language. This cut, with Jack Teagarden and a heavyweight ensemble, is another one of my ten favorite jazz recordings. Everybody plays great, and Teagarden demonstrates once again why I can’t get enough of his singing, even though I generally avoid jazz vocalists. (Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong are some other big exceptions for me.)
Dream Lullaby, 1934, with the underrated Benny Carter. Carter was a brilliant musician who had the misfortune of being in his prime during a period where Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young were walking the earth. He wasn’t quite as brilliant as they were, but he was definitely one of the most advanced saxophonists around before Parker.
Carter wrote this tune and gave Webster the opportunity to cut his first serious ballad recording. Like Johnny Hodges, Carter rubbed off on both Webster (directly) and Bird. Carter was sort of the Coleman Hawkins of the alto.
Truckin— Ben briefly guested with Duke for a few weeks in 1935. Duke gave him this perfect feature for the bubbling style he often used then.
In A Jam, 1936, Webster is an invited guest on an Ellington session.
Ben was hired by Duke to play on this session in 36. The first excerpt is Johnny Hodges trading two-bar breaks with cornetist Rex Stewart.
Hodges and Rex
Next we hear Ben, later in the cut, in a vein similar to what Hodges had just played, with the subtle vibrato and projection. Webster was perhaps Hawkins’ greatest disciple, and sometimes he took some ribbing about being a little too much like the older master. One way Ben dealt with this was by borrowing from other players and mixing their styles with his Hawk thing. Hodges would rub off on Ben quite a bit when they had to blend together for years, night after night, after Ben joined Ellington for real.
In The Mood, 1940, with Teddy Wilson.
An early 1940 example of his trademark growl, achieved by overblowing. Putting this much pressure on a sax reed gave you a distorted sound, sort of like electric guitar amp distortion before that was a thing.
Voice Of Old Man River, 1935 with Willie Bryant.
Bandleader Willie Bryant introduces Ben, using his nickname “Frog.” Webster is already playing an interesting figure as he approaches the microphone.
His main nickname “The Brute” had to do with his sometimes aggressive behavior and personality. He earned this other one by looking like a frog.
In my opinion, this artist exaggerated Webster’s froglike qualities. In real life, he didn’t really look this much like a frog.
Uptempo trifles like VOOMR were a staple of 1930s jazz. I wouldn’t argue that pieces like this need to come back— it’s hard to argue that most of these recordings are as good as the finest jazz we have— but you can find in them many enjoyable breaks like Ben’s here. And while I would not claim that this sort of playing was Webster at his best, it’s an important part of his storytelling art, certainly. He is working pretty hard on this cut, and kicking up a lot of dust. (We always hear that Charlie Parker was influenced by Lester Young, but I think that connection gets exaggerated by critics who are presumably just repeating something they read somewhere. I wonder if Bird heard this Webster record, or other similar ones— Bird liked the sort of subtle heat of Lester’s work, but Webster could get relaxed while still retaining virtuosity and a hip use of chromaticism Lester mostly avoided. In some ways, this performance is a more obvious model for the mysterious combination of elements Bird eventually assembled, a few years later.)
Ellington did this kind of piece beautifully, as did some other masters of the era, and pieces with this pellmell feeling and effective moments like this Webster break are a very special alternative to the slicker sort of big band era recordings we’re much more likely to hear today.
When this sort of jazz left, it didn’t come back. When musicians ape early jazz sounds, they tend to do stylized versions of other types of jazz, often picking the most conventional types or the ones that resonate the most with a modern audience. Thus, a lot of people think jazz in the 1930s all sounded like Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.
Most of these horserace tunes were arguably not profound, but they were definitely odd, and had appealingly rough edges I’ve never heard on any retro “big band era” radio show. And there are some pretty inventive ones, too, for sure.
Exactly Like You, 1939, live transcription with Teddy Wilson.
Webster is now getting very close to the kind of playing he would do with Ellington, unbuttoned but with lots of interesting details.
The Man I Love, 1939, live transcription with Wilson.
This isn’t really a “break,” as it’s the melody statement. But Webster certainly shoved in a lot of asides, and detours, and flourishes. Very inventive example of saxophone lead.
71, 1940, with Wilson.
I like finishing with this one, because it doesn’t stand out in any particular way. It’s just more excellent Ben Webster. Almost any Webster recording reminds us that jazz didn’t begin as an opportunity for douchebags to sneer at people who weren’t huge jazz fans already, to the point where no one unacquainted with jazz would have any reason to suspect there had ever been anything “fun” about it. Thanks, hipsters!
Me too. I’ll buy the book straight away. Love Ben Webster & I’d love to read more of your thoughts.
Reading you is a delight and an education, every time.