Chick Webb

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William Henry "Chick" Webb (born February 10, 1905 in Baltimore , Maryland , † June 16, 1939 ibid) was an American drummer .

Live and act

He is considered a role model for all the great drummers after him, such as Gene Krupa , Jo Jones and Buddy Rich , although he was only 1.30 m tall himself. As a big band leader, he was the recognized “King of Savoy” (quoted from Mary Lou Williams, “ King ” since 1931), as he used to win any band battle with other famous big bands with his orchestra in the famous Savoy Ballroom in Harlem . At the time, they included Fletcher Henderson , Count Basie and Duke Ellington , the latter a serious competitor. Every new band coming to New York had to compete with his through the mediation of Charlie Buchanan. He ensured the enthusiasm of his audience with special interludes and perfectly practiced new arrangements. Benny Carter arranged for the band in 1931 and Edgar Sampson from 1933 . In the “Battles” the band seems to have distinguished itself rhythmically above all compared to the other bands. Chick Webb was always on the lookout for new talent. In June 1934 Webb had the first two of a total of 18 hits on the Billboard charts with "I Can't Dance (I Got Ants in My Pants)" and the Donaldson / Kahn composition "Stompin 'at the Savoy" ; his band belonged at this time to a. Mario Bauzá , Reunald Jones , Sandy Williams , Edgar Sampson and John Kirby .

In 1934 Ella Fitzgerald became a star with him, in his band she had the hit "A-Tisket, A-Tasket" . Webb's announcements had entertainer quality, his playing impressed with drive, innovative hi-hat use and precision in drum rolls, his big band combined the qualities of rhythmic black and precise white big bands. The engineering technology involved in recording was very limited at the time and was only able to adequately record the drums when Chick Webb was already suffering from bone tuberculosis , which could explain his relative ignorance compared to the other bands.

Life

Chick Webb's illness and deformity were offset by his attractive, cheerful personality.

As a newsboy he could only afford a rudimentary set of drums, which he then played on the sidewalks of Baltimore. His obvious talent with the mallets caught the attention of Brown and Terry's Jazzola Boys, one of the city's early free improvising live bands, and Webb likely joined them in 1922.

He developed a lifelong friendship with the older Jazzola banjo player John Truehart, with whom he played in dance bands on excursion boats on weekends. In 1924 both men left Baltimore, attracted by fantastic stories from the sprouting Harlem nightlife. In Harlem , Webb first had short-lived jobs, was always jam sessions , and he told long stories before the Addington Major's Band Box. "Spinning the Webb" describes his entertainer qualities. The band Box was a forerunner of the famous rhythm club. The Band Box was a place where ideas and information were exchanged. There the already more successful Duke Ellington became aware of him and gave him an engagement in the Black Bottom Club, which Ellington had rejected, until the end of summer 1925. By the end of the year Webb played with a band in the Paddock Club on the ground floor of the Earl Carrol Theater.

In January 1927, Webb's "Harlem Stompers" were hired to take turns playing with the Savoy Bearcats and Fess Williams in the Savoy Ballroom. The first recordings were made for Brunswick . The Harlem Stompers has had to put Webb back together several times over the years. When Webb decided to expand his band in the fall, the Savoy fired him and he had to make do with a few short appearances.

Future stars like Johnny Hodges , Bobby Stark , Benny Morton , Cootie Williams , Hilton Jefferson and Ward Pinkett all graced Webb's bands in the late twenties, but without permanent work, he lost them all to the more established bands like those of Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington. These losses sparked Webb's ambition and desire to one day have a band that would match them.

For varying lengths of time over the next several years, Chick Webb worked on West 125th Street, then an all-white neighborhood in Rose Danceland. In 1929 he took up again for Brunswick under the name Jungle Band, which can be easily recognized by his piercing cymbals or the wild trumpet of Ward Pinkett or Elmer Williams' plaintive saxophone. Extensive TOBA tours through the vaudevilles took place, all of which ended financially quite disastrous. Tours with the Revue Hot Chocolates also took place during this period . A repeated stay in the Savoy in 1930 was underpaid because this venue tried to recover from financial setbacks in 1930 and often played bands with reduced pay to get out of the consequences of the Depression .

Webb's star rose dramatically in March 1931 when his band replaced Fletcher Henderson's in the Roseland Ballroom, a coveted downtown job. Webb also managed to get Benny Carter and Jimmy Harrison out of Henderson's band, in return he left him Russell Procope and Benny Morton. The timing was perfect as Brunswick brought Webb back into the recording studios and recorded three of Carter's excellent scores. The good solo work on it did Louis Bacon with a trumpet solo as well as with vocals and Jimmy Harrisons with a final solo. Elmer Williams was Don Kirkpatrick on tenor saxophone and piano . One of the pieces, Soft and Sweet , had been written by Edgar Sampson, but Carter had worked it out because the author could not arrange it at the time. Carter also had to sell his own play " Blues in my heart " to publisher Irving Mills - who was co-authored - for only $ 25.

Webb's euphoria was short-lived: he lost his job at Roseland to Claude Hopkins in June 1931 , and since Harrison couldn't play much during that time, he left the band and went back up town to the Savoy Ballroom for a much lower salary. Benny Carter left in August to take over McKinney's Cotton Pickers .

Webb was back on tour, and it wasn't until late 1932 that he regained public acclaim when Louis Armstrong used his band to do some performances for RCA. Charlie Green was on the trumpet now. Armstrong had broken up his own band earlier and then went on a solo tour to England.

Webb came back to 125th Street for a job in the new Dixie Ballroom on the site of old Rose Danceland. He now had Tommy Ladnier on trumpet, but the ballroom had to close after only three months. Ladnier soon left town in disgust.

In the fall, the Savoy was back in business, and the owner Moe Gale decided to make Webb's band one of the main attractions and set up a booking agency for out-of-town jobs. Webb rebuilt his band and found his own personal style by hiring alto saxophonist Edgar Sampson as saxophonist, arranger and composer, whose scores had made Rex Stewart's short-lived big band shimmer downstairs at the Empire Ballrom. The flexible and sought-after trumpeter Reunald Jones replaced Ladnier.

Sandy Williams became a valued trombone star after spending a year with Fletcher Henderson, and one-off band leader Joe Stelle was solo piano. For Webb, 18-year-old Taft Jordan seemed like an opportunity for success. Jordan had worked with the former double bass player from Webb's band Leon Englund at the Radium Club and sang and played in a clear broad tone just like his idol Louis Armstrong, as far as he could at this age. Armstrong had gone overseas in the spring, where he stayed for 18 months. Jordan's imitations were well received by the Savoy audience.

The musicians Taft Jordan (t), Sandy Williams (trombone), Edgar Sampson (as), Reunald Jones (t), Bobby Stark (t), Elmer Williams (ts) stand out on Chick Webb instrumental pieces.

The Carter arrangement, e.g. B. Darktown Strutter Ball, stands out in its lively manner from the lightly swinging sampson arrangements at medium-fast pace.

In 1934 the famous Stompin 'at the Savoy was recorded, which Webb had composed with Sampson.

Most of the recordings for Columbia and Okeh during this period were overseen by John Hammond . Those companies went bust during the Depression, and Webb had no choice but to return to the Kapps who now ran a record label, the British-funded Decca company . Almost seven months would pass after these first two Decca recordings until the next date in 1935 introduces Ella Fitzgerald, and whose popularity from now on decides the fate of the band.

music

Chick Webb could play eddies on the bass drum and had a wonderful conception in his playing, as Cozy Cole attests to him. Drive and precision, slow and fast eddies, which are hardly captured on records because the “single recordings” only offered around 3½ minutes, were further characteristics; he played no mess. Explosive press vortices, of which you can still get an idea with Art Blakey and Buddy Rich , and bass drum attacka, like Louie Bellson and Gene Krupa , were further components. Ellington attested that he was one of those musicians who are also dancers. Chick painted dances on his drums.

Webb was a precision fanatic, which is why, after initial head arrangements, he surpassed other bands in perfectly voiced typesetting with black quality, e.g. B. Goodman's Band.

CD collection

literature

  • Jim Haskins: Ella Fitzgerald - First Lady Of Jazz. Heyne, Munich 1994
  • Simon, George T .: The Big Bands . With a foreword by Frank Sinatra. 3rd revised edition. New York City, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co and London: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1974, pp. 440-444.
  • Carlo Bohländer , Karl Heinz Holler, Christian Pfarr: Reclam's Jazz Guide . 3rd, revised and expanded edition. Reclam, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-010355-X .

Remarks

  1. ↑ Eric Borgman found the family with their five-year-old son William entered in the 1910 census (William Webb, Jefferson Street, Baltimore; archive link ( memento of the original from January 19, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet Checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ). 1909 is also often given, as entered on Webb's death certificate, but a 1907 was overwritten. The date 1902 can also be found in the literature, e.g. B. in Bohländer u. a. Reclam's Jazz Guide 1989. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jazz.com
  2. ↑ a b Brunswick, Okeh, Columbia, Capitol, Decca, Meritt and Damon are some of the less well-known record labels of this time. They were mostly owned by whites, were heavily market-oriented, and often worked with African American stereotypes.
  3. ↑ Chick Webb, Rhythm Man, HEP records, liner Notes by Frank Driggs
  4. ↑ Martin Kunzler : Jazz Lexicon. Rowohlt, ISBN 3-499-16317-9

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Webb, chick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Webb, William Henry (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American musician
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Baltimore , Maryland
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 1939
Place of death Baltimore , Maryland