Great Players Ben Webster/Harry Carney

[Kingsleyhk]

I just received Ben Webster's Music for Loving - i.e Webster with strings. However, on some tracks there's a baritone lead and there's a suggestion that there may be a mix-up and that the tracks are actually Harry Carney, not Ben Webster.

Can anyone enlighten me, please?

 

[kevgermany]

I'd be interested to know as well - I've just bought the same cd.

 

[Kingsleyhk]

I'd be interested to know as well - I've just bought the same cd.

Lovely stuff - I thought I'd discovered the rare Ben Webster plays baritone CDs!

 

[rhysonsax]

I've got that album and it is Harry Carney on four of the tracks:

• Ghost of a Chance
• We're in Love Again
• Chalumeau
• Moonlight on the Ganges

Although I love Harry Carney's playing and his great sound on clarinet as well as baritone, I remember these performances as being a bit saccharine, the arrangements are very commercial in style.

Rhys

 

[kevgermany]

thanks Rhys. guess it is a touch that way, but the playing is good.

 

[Kingsleyhk]

I agree Rhys - much more so than for example Parker with strings, but you could level that criticism at a lot of Webster's ballad work. I really do think he was fantastic though - and of course he could swing with the best - you only have to listen to Cottontail with the Duke.

Thanks for the info about the four Carney tracks.

 

[Young Col]

It's not an album I've got but I would have been surprised to find Ben Webster playing bari or clarinet. However, a quick look at the version for sale on Amazon has mp3 clips that are listed as Harry Carney leading. I did listen to a couple of the Ben Webster clips and I'm with Rhys. Ben's playing stands out on its own and the strings don't add anything (other than commercialism). The same goes, in my view, for others "with strings" - Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker.

Ben Webster started on violin and moved to piano before taking up the sax. There are some examples of his piano playing on the cd version of his quintet album Soulville.

While on Ben Webster, I recently bought the complete Ben Webster/Harry Edison/Billie Holiday cd set. It contains a beautiful version of "We'll Be Together Again", which is also listed on the Music For Loving album. In his own way, Ben Webster was amost as perfect a foil for Billie Holiday in the 1950s as Lester Young was in the 1930s.

YC

 

[Kingsleyhk]

I just read that the Beach Boys have made an album using Auto-tune. If Ben Webster and Johnny Hodges had done that - they'd sound like Kenny G.