Freddie Webster, 1: His True Name, Birthplace and Birth Date
Trumpeter Freddie Webster is a kind of legendary figure in jazz, because Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, and others spoke highly of him. But often, such legends spring up because the person is undocumented. In Webster’s case there is substantial information about his life that has never been collected, and about an hour of recordings that require a closer listen. In this series of essays I’ll make a start at “demystifying” Freddie Webster.
Beginning with his life story, we find that his birth and death information are usually given incorrectly. Most print and web sources say that he was born in Cleveland in 1916. Several, including Wikipedia, say June 8, 1916. I don’t know where such a specific date came from, but it’s not right. (Most likely somebody found the wrong Webster in a database, and thought it was the trumpeter.) In fact, Freddie Webster was born in Selma, Alabama, on September 3, 1917 and his birth name was Morris Frederick Webster. There is not much of a “paper trail” on his family history and early years, but let’s follow what we can find:
His father, Fred D. Webster, was born in Selma on February 7, 1892 (from his draft registration, see below), and he died August 15, 1965 at his longtime residence, Twinsburg Heights, Ohio (more below). Fred’s parents (from a marriage record, below) were Will and Mary Webster, also born in Alabama. On October 27, 1915, Fred married Mary “Marie” Lee Bowden. (Her name is written as “Marie” in some records; b. March 29, 1896, Selma, Alabama; d. August 1992, Oakland, California. She had younger brothers, Sam, Erly (sic), and Luther.) Now, let’s see the Webster family’s information in the national census of 1930:
It’s hard to read, so I will tell you what it says: Morris (known to us as Freddie) was the first child of Fred and Mary Webster. When he was born in 1917, they were still living in Selma (as I will show). The family moved briefly to Kentucky, where Vivian was born in 1921, By 1923 they had settled in Twinsburg Heights, Ohio, in an unnumbered house on Richner Road (the street name is elsewhere on the page; subscriber Igor found that today it’s Hadden Road). Dorothy, Geneva, and the baby, Delores (looks like “Dolores” above, but family member Edith Callahan gave me the correct spelling), who was born in 1929 (she’s on the bottom part of the census excerpt above). Fred did plastering and Mary worked as a maid for a family. Twinsburg Heights, in Summit County, Ohio, is about a 30 minute drive southeast of Cleveland. Subscriber Igor found that it was first settled in the early 1920s by Black families from the South such as the Websters, and that even today it is home to only about 1,000 people, mostly Black and many below the poverty line.
Fred and Mary were divorced on June 26, 1931. (Mary apparently later married someone named Albert Doll.) On May 21, 1932, Fred married Josephine “Josie” Haines, who now went by “Smith,” her second husband’s surname. She had been married twice before and both husbands were deceased. All of this information, as well as her birthplace (Olmstead, Illinois), age (three years older than Fred), occupation (“laundress,” that is, washing clothes), parents’ names, and home address in Cleveland, are on this wedding record:
Ten years later, when Fred, the father of the trumpeter, provided information for his draft card on April 26, 1942, he and Josie were still living in Twinsburg. (Such cards were written out by a staff person at a military draft center. Because of the intensity of the war, there were several drafts, and by April 27, 1942 all men between the ages of 18 and 65 were required to register, even though the older ones would not be eligible to fight.) Fred was commuting to work at Thompson Products, a major business in Cleveland since December 1900, which made parts for automobiles and airplanes. Because mail service didn’t go to the few houses in his area, he picked up his mail at an RFD site in Hudson, about 5 miles away:
The other side of the card notes that he was 5’5” tall and weighed 144 pounds.
Now, I know you want to hear about the trumpeter! Well, at some point, young Morris became known by his middle name Fred and eventually as “Freddie”—which sounds like his father “Fred D.”—get it? Next time I will present his earliest newspaper records, which I am still researching. For now, here are two of his gigs from 1937. The first occurred on April 30, 1937. He directed the “swing” music for a dance at Cleveland’s Cotton Club (named after the famous club in N.Y.C.):
Webster, still only 19 years old, was already gigging regularly. A few weeks later, on May 22nd, he led the band (“orchestra”) at a N.A.A.C.P. youth event in Youngstown, Ohio. (This blurry copy is the best one available—sorry.):
Next time, I will backtrack to his earliest gigs, and in the following essays, I will present new information about his biography and the bands he played with. We will discuss the true cause of his death. After that, we will dig into his recordings.
All the best,
Lewis
Looking forward to this. Played Sarah Vaughn’s “If You Could See Me Now” on the air recently (for Dameron’s birthday) and noticed how big his sound was.
Oooh...!