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9. Freddie Webster 9. Freddie Webster is virtuoso solo on the Webster blowing riffs with the 1942 Jimmie Lunceford marching band. While still in HOrchestra recording of high school, he quickly made a "Yesterdays" is enough to name for himself playing with establish native Clevelander local jazz groups. Freddie Webster as one of the Trombonist Bernard Simms outstanding trumpeters in jazz remembered, "I was walking history. More than 50 years down Cedar Avenue with later, Dizzy Gillespie said Freddie, going to rehearsal, and Webster "probably had the best Freddie said all he wanted to do sound of the trumpet since the was play trumpet so loud and trumpet was invented, a sound have a tone so big that the that was alive, just alive and full whole world could hear him." of life!" After high school, Webster Others also lavishly praised formed his own l4-piece band the trumpet work of Webster. which toured Northern Ohio in Critic Leonard Feather called 1938 and 1939. Chaikin the Clevelander "one of the remembered that band and said, most soulful performers among "Webster was a little guy who modern jazz trumpeters." could play fast and had a Miles Davis said Webster beautiful tone." Webster was the trumpeter he tried to Freddie Webster persuaded his Central High imitate when he was growing up. School friend Tadd Dameron to Benny Bailey, who also grew up in Cleveland play piano in the band. Dameron later said Webster was playing trumpet a few years later, said it was difficult to the person responsible for starting him on a career injazz. tell from Webster's records 'just how beautiful his Webster also played with the popular Marion Sears sound was." According to Bailey, "Webster had the Orchestra at Cedar Gardens, the popular nightclub at East most wonderful sound of any trumpet player I've ever 97th and Cedar. At Cedar Gardens, saxophonist Andy heard. Itwas sheer beauty which no one can ever know Anderson remembered Webster' s tone "was big as a unless they heard him play in person." During an house!" Anderson said, "He also had the touch and interview at the 1992 Tri-C JazzFest, Bailey told me, feeling for the music." "Freddie always had a big vibrato. But the attack and the way Freddie played chords! Nobody else played like On the road him. He played in a different way from everybody. He When he was only 21 years old (in 1938) Webster didn't play like Louis Annstrong, Dizzy Gillespie or left Cleveland and took his big, full tone and feeling for anybody else. He had his own style." the music on the road with a series of important bands. Unfortunately, Webster died atthe age of30 in 1947 His first job outside of Cleveland was with Earl and did not leave a generous collection of recordings. "Fatha" Hines' swinging big band. Another trumpeter But there were some 78s, most ofwhich were never re­ from Cleveland, Harry "Pee Wee" Jackson, was with the released on LP or compact disc. Hines band and persuaded Earl to hire Webster. Bailey said, "Pee Wee and Freddie were like that. One Early years in Cleveland wouldn't accept a job unless they hired the other one. The future trumpet virtuoso grew up in the mid­ One would quit ifthey didn't hire the other one." 1930s in a very religious home on East 72nd Street near In 1941, Webster went to New York where he met Cedar Avenue. Drummer Lawrence "Jacktown" Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Bud Powell, trumpeter Benny Jackson recalled when he first came to Cleveland with Harris and others. They frequently got together in the Pete Diggs Orchestra, he lived for a period at Dizzy's apartment on 7th Avenue or at the Dewey Webster's home. "His mother and the whole family Square Hotel in Harlem and spent hours talking and were very religious," said Jacktown. "Every morning, playing. Historian Feather later pointed to these she'd have the three fellows who lived with them sessions as the first tentative steps toward a new form of singing church songs before breakfast." jazz called bebop. Webster played in the Central High School band. Later in 1941, Webster rejoined the Earl Hines band Veteran Cleveland pianist Chick Chaikin recalled which, at the time, included Charlie Parker (who was 102 Cleveland Jazz History playing tenor then, not alto), Gillespie, Ray Nance, Billy Cleveland. He was buried at Highland Park Cemetery Eckstine and Sarah Vaughan. This was the legendary on Chagrin Boulevard. Hines band that was called "The Incubator of Bop." When family members went to New York to collect Unfortunately, because ofa long strike by the musicians' his possessions, they discovered his apartment had been union against the recording companies, this orchestra, broken into and ransacked. Among the missing items with so much rich young talent, never recorded. was Charlie Christian's historic guitar amplifier. Jamming at Minton's Recording in New York After playing gigs with the Hines Orchestra, sidemen In 1941, Webster began recording with a variety of Gillespie, Parker, Webster and others often slipped off bands and jazz groups. He played with Louis Jordan's to a club in Harlem called Minton' s Playhouse where legendary Tympani Five on such 1941 recordings as "St. they jammed for hours. Vitus Dance," "Brotherly Love," "Boogie Woogie Came Gillespie later recalled, to Town," and "Saxa-Woogie." "There were always some cats In 1942, Webster was playing with the band ofSonny showing up there who couldn't Boy Williams. They recorded a number of sides blow at all." One was a tenor including Webster's composition "Reverse the Charges." player they called "Demon" who tried to dominate the jam Touring with Jimmie Lunceford sessions. Dizzy called him In April of 1942, Webster rejoined his old Cleveland "The first freedom player-free friend, Pee Wee Jackson, in the nationally popular Jimmie ofharmony, free ofrhythm, free Lunceford Orchestra, a band that had begun playing of everything!" One night, professionally in Cleveland nine years earlier. After when Demon was playing hearing Webster's trumpet for the first time, critic George chorus after chorus, Teddy Hill, Teddy Hill Simon wrote in Metronome magazine, "There is a the manager ofMinton's, stood brilliant youngtrumpeternamed Freddie Webster playing in front of the bandstand with his arms folded and with the Lunceford Orchestra." yelled, "Demon, get off my bandstand!" While traveling with the Lunceford band, Webster met Gillespie said, "We began to work out some complex a young aspiring trumpeter named Miles Davis in St. variations on chords and we used them to scare away Louis. They became close friends and Davis later said, those no-talent guys." "My real main man during those first days was Freddie As they explored those variations that they had Webster. He had a big, singing sound, a big warm, experimented with at Gillespie' Sapartment, they began to mellow sound. I used to try to play like him." shape what was to become bebop. Ofcourse, it wasn't as Benny Bailey said Webster "practically taught Davis. simple as Gillespie described it, but Miles Davis, in his I know that because Miles told me," said Bailey. "They autobiography, said, "We was all trying to get our masters were living together in New York and were very close. In degrees and PhDs from Minton's University of Bebop fact, there's a solo on a very early Charlie Parker record. under the tutelage ofProfessors Bird and Diz." Miles played Freddie Webster's solo, note for note." With Parker, Gillespie, pianist Thelonious Monk, It was during this period with Lunceford that Webster drummer Kenny Clarke and guitarist Charlie Christian, recorded live his monumental version of"Yesterdays." Cleveland's Freddie Webster was one of the early When the Lunceford band, with Webster and Jackson pioneers of the new form. Christian, who was playing in the trumpet section, came to Cleveland to play for a with the Benny Goodman Orchestra at the time, lugged dance at Ferguson's Ballroom, a group of young his guitar amplifier uptown to Harlem for the jam sessions. Sometimes he left it with Manager Hill. Hill had become manager of Minton's after playing with Louis Armstrong and leading his own swing band in the 1930s. Gillespie made his first records with Hill's band in 1937 when Dizzy was 20 years old. Hill continued to manage Minton's until 1969. In 1976, he moved quietly to Cleveland to live with his daughter, Gwendolyn Hill Basket, in Warrensville Heights. Doctors discovered he was suffering from colon cancer. Seven months later (May 19, 1977), Hill, Webster (second from left) playing who had played an important role in jazz history, died in with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra in 1942 Freddie Webster 103 musicians from Central High School went to hear them. Drummer Chink McKinney remembered, "All the kids from school were there, down in front, listening. And every time Webster and Pee Wee Jackson stood up, we cheered our old Cleveland heroes. They did the most beautifuJjob I ever heard in my life. Boy, they played the job of their lives!" Four years later, Webster would be playing in a band with some of those young admirers. Bailey, who was eight years younger than Webster, Webster (third from left in the back row) playing remembered one time when Freddie came home to with the Sabby Lewis Orchestra in 1944 Cleveland. "He gathered me and a couple other trumpet players over at Richard "Big Foot" Kennedy's house," the Sabby Lewis Orchestra. With Lewis he recorded said Bailey. "We couldn't play in the house because we Tadd Dameron's arrangement of "Embraceable You." dido 't want to disturb the neighbors.
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