ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Near the end of a long tour, Louis Armstrong’s lip split open on stage. He was pushing for a high note and blood was running down his face. The musicians in the band were crying, but the drummer kept driving them until Armstrong hit the note and held it. The drummer was Chick Webb: four feet tall, crippled by spinal tuberculosis and in pain almost every night of his life.
Host Nate Wilcox talks with Jeff Kaufman, director, writer and producer of the documentary film “The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America,” in a conversation first released in 2022 and returning now as part of Let It Roll From the Beginning..., in which the whole Let It Roll archive is being re-cast in chronological order by topic. This is Harlem’s swing era at its peak, and the bandleader at its center who is now nearly forgotten.
Jeff starts in Baltimore. As a small boy Webb fell down a flight of stairs and broke his back. A doctor told him to play drums to build up his strength, and since the family couldn’t afford a kit, he practiced on garbage can lids with sticks he found in the street. He sold newspapers on a street corner, played on a segregated steamship with his lifelong friend, the guitarist John Trueheart, and came to New York at 17. There he won cutting contests against drummers who had laughed at him when he sat down. Duke Ellington handed him his first job as a bandleader, and he traded insults with Jelly Roll Morton on the sidewalk outside the clubs. At the Savoy Ballroom - two bandstands, room for 4,000 people, bouncers who threw troublemakers down the stairs - Black and white dancers could share the same floor, and Jeff calls it the first venue in America where that was true. Webb couldn’t read music, but he ran his band hard, and he hired a 17-year-old Brooklyn high-school kid named Van Alexander as an arranger. To pay him his first five dollars, Webb had to borrow the money.
Jeff calls Webb the Louis Armstrong of the drums, the first modern drummer, and says he was the first Black artist with a national network radio show. He tells how Bardu Ali brought Webb a teenager who had just won amateur night at the Apollo singing “Judy.” She was living on the street, and Webb’s wife Sally taught her how to dress and do her hair. Ella Fitzgerald credited Webb all her life for teaching her how to make a career last. Also in this episode: how Louis Jordan tried to lure Ella away and lost his job over it; the Savoy battles of the bands against Benny Goodman and Count Basie; touring the South in 1938, where a rope was strung down the middle of the dance floor; and Webb’s death at Johns Hopkins in 1939. Jeff also tells about the day he filmed at Webb’s grave, and about the funeral, where Ella sang “My Buddy” and her voice cracked halfway through.
Let It Roll is dedicated to the memory of Ed Ward, Russell Thomas and Danny Park.
MUSIC IN THIS EPISODE
* “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” Chick Webb and His Orchestra
* “Rock It for Me,” Chick Webb’s Orchestra featuring Ella Fitzgerald
* “Vote for Mr. Rhythm,” Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb
* “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” Ella Fitzgerald and the Chick Webb Orchestra
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