Freddie Webster (June 8, 1916 – April 1, 1947) was a jazz trumpeter who, Dizzy Gillespie once said, "had the best sound on trumpet since the trumpet was invented--just alive and full of life." He is perhaps best known for being cited by

Miles Davis Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musi ...

as an early influence. Bebop figure Babs Gonzales recalled that "Freddie asthe best trumpet player I ever heard in my life. Until his death, Freddie was never understood; yet he was a great musician: Miles owes his sound to him." Webster was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He led his own band, which toured Ohio, before moving to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in the late 1930s. In New York City he worked with

Benny Carter Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career ...

, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines,

Jimmie Lunceford James Melvin Lunceford (June 6, 1902 – July 12, 1947) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era. Early life Lunceford was born on a farm in the Evergreen community, west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mi ...

Billy Eckstine, and others. He also accompanied singer Sarah Vaughan and did two versions of his own song "Reverse the Charges". He died of a heart attack in a room at

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

's Strode Hotel; a heroin overdose was suspected in his death. In his autobiography, ''Miles'', Davis stated his belief that Webster was the unwitting victim of a murder attempt on saxophonist Sonny Stitt. According to Davis, Stitt, who at that time was addicted to heroin, had "been beating everybody out of their money" eaning cheating them, not physically assaulting themin order to get money to support his habit. Davis believed that one of those people, out for revenge, had given Stitt heroin deliberately laced with something poisonous, possibly

battery acid Sulfuric acid (American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphuric acid ( Commonwealth spelling), known in antiquity as oil of vitriol, is a mineral acid composed of the elements sulfur, oxygen and hydrogen, with the molecular f ...

or strychnine, and then Stitt had unknowingly passed the poisoned heroin on to Webster.

Tributes

* Sonny Rollins's 1956 album ''

Saxophone Colossus ''Saxophone Colossus'' is the sixth studio album by American jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Perhaps Rollins's best-known album, it is often considered his breakthrough record. It was recorded monophonically on June 22, 1956, with producer Bob W ...

'' includes a song titled "Strode Rode", which is a reference to the hotel where Freddie Webster died.

External links

All Music AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

br>The Man Before Miles: Freddie Webster

References

Bebop trumpeters 1916 births American jazz trumpeters American male trumpeters Musicians from Cleveland 1947 deaths 20th-century American musicians 20th-century trumpeters Jazz musicians from Ohio 20th-century American male musicians American male jazz musicians {{US-jazz-trumpeter-stub