Benny Golson, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing on July 25, said he was profoundly affected by the experience of seeing Lionel Hampton’s Orchestra with Arnett Cobb at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia in 1943. Benny was a 14-year-old piano prodigy at the time, and the experience touched him so deeply that he decided then and there that the tenor saxophone was a truer instrument for him.
In his new memoir, Whisper Not: The Autobiography of Benny Golson, he says of the experience, “[I felt like] I was at the center of the universe…My breathing quickened….Hamp’s ferocious aggregation…melded into one great moment of erotic musical excitement…and its ecstatic, self-confident vibe was an emotional eruption. We were all, for the moment, suddenly free.”
For the irrepressible bandleader, that was only a beginning. “Hamp whipped his band into a frenzy,” Golson writes, “and segued into an interlude that seemed destined to lead to something significant. Arnett Cobb then rose from his seat with smooth aplomb and took the microphone…I’ll never forget that pregnant moment. The band made a two-bar break and left a memorable interval of silence for Cobb to fill as he chose. Cobb played one note. He started well below the pitch, then slid soulfully up, with a moan that defied sound or speech. When he hit that first note of his solo and plunged into the famous tenor solo on ‘Flying Home,’ the theater exploded with deafening screams…If I had not exercised real self control, I would have cried shamelessly with joy.”
Today is Cobb’s 98th birthday anniversary. Here he plays a deep, relaxed blues with pianist Ellis Marsalis, bassist Chris Severin, and drummer Johnny Vidachovich in New Orleans in 1982.