, Username: I thought, my god, what an amazing story. By the early 30's, Chick's band regularly played the Savoy and Roseland ballrooms. In 1935, he hired the then unknown singer Ella Fitzgerald, which further cemented his nationwide popularity (she was discovered by Webb sideman Bardu Ali at an amateur contest at the Harlem Opera House). Please enable JavaScript to experience Vimeo in all of its glory. For their lives, it was nothing. It often took six, nine months. . I read a biography of Benny Goodman, and there was about one paragraph about Chick Webb – how this little, black, hunchbacked dwarf bandleader faced Benny Goodman in a battle of the bands with 5,000 people inside and 5,000 people outside and mopped the floor with Goodman’s orchestra. When music fuels dance, and it brings people together from all sorts of backgrounds and breaks down barriers, it can be transformative. Movie. An Introduction to Chick Webb 1929-1939. Plus. Movie. Those are themes that I really care about, and one ends up bringing the themes you care about into almost whatever project you do, inevitably. Chick Webb’s early death has tended to obscure the status he enjoyed among his peers during his lifetime. ∙ ; 2004. The Complete Decca Singles Vol. Never fully healthy, he refused to back off a tireless schedule of touring and playing and died in 1939 at either 30 or 34 (accounts differ). He donated money to flood victims and raised money for flood victims. You got an amazing cast. Writer/director Jeff Kaufman with Bill Cosby, the star voice in jazz documentary The Savoy King. Chick Webb was a legendary drummer from the 30's & 40's who was handicapped but still reached the pinnacle of his time. So it became a film not just about little Chick Webb overcoming obstacles, but really about, without trying to sound pompous, America’s evolving character, and the dues paid by earlier generations, and what we have to remember [so] we don’t slip back into past experiences. A documentary on Chick Webb (probably my all-time favorite band to dance to, I know this thanks to a night where Kyle Smith played nothing but Chick Webb for an hour) called The Savoy King is in post production, and I recently stumbled across these rough-cut selections from it on YouTube. He died on June 16, 1939 in Baltimore. Dealing with people at that level must take a lot of time in sheer terms of nailing it down – will you do it, when can you do it, when can we book the studio. That wouldn’t work in the film, and obviously Bill Cosby doesn’t have that voice, but he has this amazing emotional quality in his read that’s just great. He was a hunchback dwarf and sat on a bar stool to properly reach his drums. Even though some critics of Chick Webb accused him of going after commercial success once Ella Fitzgerald joined the band, he was a black artist who wasn’t afraid to take on political causes, maybe at the risk of commercial success, because of some inner beliefs. How were you able to corral people like Billy Crystal and Bill Cosby and Charlie Watts? Figuratively speaking, at least – childhood spinal tuberculosis left Webb standing four feet tall with a humped back. We have 20 or 30 photos of Chick and Ella that have never been seen before. She was so focused on getting it right. Chick Webb and His Orchestra. Posts. I think music is often the very best of who we are as people. That whole exploration of finding one person leading to another was an incredibly healing experience – it was during the Bush administration. I also found out how political Chick was, and that’s something I really respond to. The film skips through Fitzgerald’s evolution as a singer and performer from her early post-Apollo days when she sang under the baton of bandleader Chick Webb, to brilliantly segueing into bop, improvising, as British singer Laura Mvula marvels in the film, to the point that Fitzgerald “could solo using her voice to the same level, with the same ease that a trumpeter or a saxophonist could.” Sign in to like videos, comment, and subscribe. He was, in his day, one of the giants of jazz. Chick Webb: Chick Webb represented the triumph of the human spirit in jazz and life. He adopted Ella Fitzgerald when she was 9 years old from an orphanage and trained her to sing with his band, eventually moving up to a huge career as top female vocalist on the American music … 153 talking about this. Webb had a national radio show, refined swing … I really loved, among others, Benny Goodman. 16. Album ∙ Dec 17, 1996. Listen on Spotify: Music from the fifth episode of the new documentary series. I know their voices aren’t real matches. Pint-sized jazz legend Chick Webb is profiled in the music documentary The Savoy King. Born poor in Baltimore, Chick Webb broke his back as a boy and faced life as hunchback dwarf afflicted with Spinal Tuberculosis. In the meantime, Kaufman shared with us some details of his own trip into the life and times of the big band era’s little giant. DRUMMERWORLD Facebook Group. Is that all down to the fact that he died so young? 1: 1935-1939. Reflections On A Little Giant. 1929-1934. Did they do this on their own time, their own dime, because they wanted to be part of the project? : A Musical Change at Christmas. How did you approach this as a filmmaker knowing there was so little actual material on your subject? I started looking around for more about Chick and it was always the same paragraph – nothing else. I'm Just A Jitterbug . When I came back to music I started listening to jazz. What does that phrase mean to you in the context of this story? Remember me, © Copyright 2021 MusicFilmWeb LLC. Following a June premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival, The Savoy King screens next month at the New York Film Festival. I tried to find someone who had an emotional link to the person involved. See All. He was a champion of [black newspaper] the Pittsburgh Courier’s effort to desegregate the US military in the 1930s. We did make some wonderful discoveries. Showcasing Stompin At The Savoy popularized by Chick Webb and Ella Fitzgerald,; Sing Sing Sing! The Complete Decca Singles Vol. Sadly, Chick Webb died of tuberculosis in 1939, and Fitzgerald lost her friend and father figure. It was her turn to take the lead at just 22. Renamed Ella and Her Famous Orchestra, the group went on to record 150 songs before disbanding in 1941, per the National World War II Museum New Orleans. Filmmaker Jeff Kaufman sets out to rectify that gap in the record with The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America. Not just Ella Fitzgerald and the rise of female vocalists in jazz bands. He was among the first to introduce Cuban music to the United States by bringing Cuban musical styles to the New York City jazz scene. They did it for what I would call Kleenex money. And it was through Chick that Mario met Dizzy Gillespie, and that’s how Dizzy Gillespie found out about Afro-Cuban music, and think of what Dizzy did with that. 00:24 Ella Fitzgerald. He moved to New York at the age of seventeen and was soon leading his own band. For instance, he got involved in the Scottsboro Boys defense fund and raised money for them. Watch Queue Queue. "THE SAVOY KING: Chick Webb & The Music That Changed America" A feature documentary on Swing-era drummer-bandleader Chick Webb… I think that’s a large part of it. Chick Webb And His Orchestra. Robert Trujillo: Into the Groove with Jaco Pastori... ICYMI: ‘Amy’ Team Prepping Oasis Doc, ... Do You Own the Dancefloor? Especially at the beginning – we didn’t have any footage to show, just an idea. After his death, Ella Fitzgerald led the Chick Webb band until she left to focus on her solo career in 1942 and caused the band to break up. Art Blakey and Duke Ellington both credited Webb with influencing their music.

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