1965 · Album
There Is No Greater Love
Recorded 1965 · Impulse! · Produced by Bob Thiele
Webster's Warm Tone, No Apologies
Webster at his most relaxed — rich, unhurried, and completely in control of the room.
There Is No Greater Love is a 1965 Impulse! session that finds Ben Webster doing what he had spent two decades perfecting: playing standards at his own pace, with the kind of tone that made you forget anyone else had ever played the tenor saxophone. Recorded with a sympathetic rhythm section, this isn't a concept record or a statement. It's a working musician in a recording studio, choosing good songs and playing them honestly.
Webster's sound by the mid-1960s had become something singular — wide, warm, slightly husky on the slow tunes, surprisingly light when he wanted it to be. The title track is a good example: he takes the melody seriously, doesn't rush it, and lets the slight raspiness in his tone carry the emotion without sentimentality. Roger Kellaway on piano understands the assignment, comping with enough harmonic intelligence to give Webster something to respond to without getting in the way.
If you already know Webster from his Norgran and Verve recordings of the 1950s, this will feel continuous with that work — the same approach, the same conviction, a voice that had only deepened with time. It's not his most celebrated record, but it holds up well as a document of one of jazz's great tenor voices in his mature period.
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