Chick Webb

Chick Webb embodied an extraordinary victory of will over physical adversity within both jazz and everyday existence. Despite a severely hunched back, diminutive frame bordering on dwarfism, oversized head, and powerfully built shoulders, he overcame a spinal condition present from birth—tuberculosis—to rank among the era’s most formidable drummers and ensemble directors. Elevated on a raised stage, he deployed specially fabricated foot pedals, curved gooseneck cymbal mounts, a twenty-eight-inch kick drum, and an extensive percussion array to generate thunderous, intricately layered solos whose force and intricacy directly shaped the approaches of Buddy Rich, an avid observer of Webb’s style, and Louie Bellson. Recording limitations at Decca, however, failed to convey the full breadth of his dynamic control and technical precision. Though unable to read notation, he committed every chart to memory with absolute accuracy. While the orchestra never attained the lasting stature of certain peers, its Savoy Ballroom contests rendered it a formidable presence in Harlem; one celebrated clash with Benny Goodman’s peak ensemble, Gene Krupa at the drums, left the visitors exhausted and bested.

William Henry Webb purchased his initial drum kit using proceeds from selling newspapers and soon performed aboard excursion vessels. Relocating to New York in 1925, he directed groups at multiple venues before establishing a prolonged residency at the Savoy that commenced in 1931. Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges appeared with the band in its formative phase, yet from the mid-thirties onward major improvising voices proved scarce; alto saxophonist Louis Jordan, after his departure, registered the strongest subsequent impact. The group compensated through its taut ensemble execution, Webb’s rigorously controlled yet explosive drumming displays, Taft Jordan’s evocations of Louis Armstrong on trumpet, and, above all, Edgar Sampson’s series of incisive originals and arrangements, among them “Blue Lou” and “Stomping at the Savoy.” In 1935 Webb engaged the adolescent Ella Fitzgerald following her Apollo Theater victory, assumed legal guardianship, and reoriented the presentation around her voice, which supplied his greatest commercial success with the 1938 release “A Tisket-A-Tasket.” Continued renown derived from the orchestra’s reputation for upending rivals at the Savoy and from an unbroken sequence of Decca 78s that included “T’aint What You Do (It’s the Way That You Do It)” together with the flip side “Liza.” Declining health necessitated major surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, after which Webb died; his final reported utterance was, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.” Fitzgerald subsequently directed the ensemble until its dissolution in 1942.