Someone to Watch Over Me

Tells the complete story of Ben Webster's brilliant and troubled career. The author presents a story of how a man beloved for his gentleness and feared for his brutality, came to produce some of the most beautiful ballads. He studies every known Webster recording and film, including many private recordings from Webster's home collection.

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One of the "big three" of swing tenors - along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young - Ben Webster was one of the best known and most popular saxophonists from the 1930s through the 1970s. Early in his career, Webster worked with many of the greatest orchestras of the time, including those led by Willie Bryant, Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Andy Kirk, Bennie Moten, and Teddy Wilson. In 1940, Ben Webster became Duke Ellington's first major tenor soloist, and during the next three years, as his sound and his style matured, he played on many famous recordings, including "Cotton Tail." "Someone to Watch Over Me" tells, for the first time, the complete story of Ben Webster's brilliant and troubled career. It is the story of how a man beloved for his gentleness and feared for his brutality came to produce some of the most tenderly beautiful ballads in all of jazz. For this comprehensive study, Buchmann-Moller interviewed more than fifty of Webster's friends and fellow musicians in the U.S. and Europe, and he includes numerous translated excerpts from European periodicals and newspapers, none previously available in English.
In addition, the author studies every known Webster recording and film, including many private recordings from Webster's home collection not available to the public. Exhaustively researched, this is a much needed and long overdue study of the life and music of one of jazz's most important artists.