Fifty years ago, on the 9th April 1959, the fifty year old Ben Webster, and a bunch of old chums, went into the Nola Recording Studios on 111w,57th Street, New York City, to record (for the Verve label) Ben Webster And Associates, an album that has become over the years a bench-mark of jazz perfection played by some of the very best in the business.The producer was the legendary Norman Granz, who, in this gorgeous recording, created a beautifully crisp, open and expansive sound that shows everybody off to their best, not least Ben himself, whose tenor work on that April day was at a pinnacle of artistic fulfilment, either in the breathy Time After Time, or his biting, thrusting version of Duke Ellington's In A Mellow Tone, which opens this superb album.
Ben's bunch of chums are Roy Eldridge (trumpet), Coleman Hawkins and Budd Johnson (tenor saxophones), Jimmy Jones (piano), Les Spann (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), and Count Basie's power house, Jo Jones, on drums. A formiddable bunch indeed, who are so obviously in tune with one another that I doubt if there were any rehearsals at all, just an agreement on the numbers to be played, and the keys, and that would have been it, apart from Granz giving the thumbs up.
And it's the three tenor line-up that gives this one-off group its fulsome, meaty sound, with Coleman Hawkins' playing here (and he put the tenor sax into jazz) another masterful treat of his passionate, yet hard edged, playing that compliments the almost vibrato free playing of Ben, and the big-heartedness of Budd Johnson.
The rich meat that is Webster, Hawkins and Johnson is complimented wonderfully by the hot horseradish playing of Roy Eldridge who, whether open or muted, cuts a delicious line through the proceedings, with the rock steady bass, guitar, piano and drums seemingly able to go on forever. You are simply left marvelling at the professionalism and ease with wich it all seems to be done.
I once briefly met Ben Webster back in the 1960s at the Birmingham International Jazz Festival. He'd just finished playing a two hour set with a pick-up group, and was wandering around the audience filming with his Super 8 cine camera. His response to my request for an autograph was very gracious, as is his playing on Ben Webster And Associates.
