Ben Webster played the same tenor saxophone from 1938 until his death in 1973, then left strict instructions that no one could ever play it again; today it sits silent behind glass at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. This episode explores the mechanics of his sound and the chaos of his life. Born in Kansas City in 1909, he began on violin, learned blues piano from boogie-woogie giant Pete Johnson, and took saxophone lessons from Budd Johnson, translating a violinist's vocal vibrato and a pianist's percussive drive into the horn. After gigging with the Young family band alongside Lester Young and the Bennie Moten Orchestra with Count Basie, he joined Duke Ellington in 1940 as the first major featured tenor soloist, immortalized on Cotton Tail.

Inside the Ellington orchestra he shifted from a Coleman Hawkins model toward t ...