"It’s hard to find words to describe his sound, yet they could fill volumes. The gruff-to-tender tone he produced from his saxophone 'Betsy' was with him all of his life; it was his domain and his palette – majestic, sumptuous, roomy, sensuous, a slab of mahogany wrapped in velvet. At medium tempos, it billowed, furled and swayed like a huge sail in the wind. On ballads it purred, whispered and caressed, sometimes fading to a mere breathy exhalation....

Webster’s command of his sound – and his vibrato and dynamics – was absolute and shaped his playing. The sheer luxurious mass of it allowed him to play very simply and slowly; with a sound like this he couldn’t play very fast, nor did he need to. His focus on tone colour allowed him to work in broad strokes and handle big matters. His solos were oratorical, a series of dramatic pronouncements, melodic statements and shapes rather than lines, with large swatches of space and silence left between these. He didn’t generate time so much as he filled it, straddling the rhythm section underneath him, floating on top of their beat like the absurdly tiny hats he wore perched atop his massive head....

His rich menu of sound constantly served the conveyance of emotion, which is what his playing is all about. He felt things very deeply – tenderness, rage, nostalgia, joy, yearning, loneliness, absent friends, homesickness – and these feelings were never far from the surface of his music... I pity anyone trying to transcribe one of his solos, because he rarely played a ‘straight’ note, his were often bent or suffused with a whole range of inflection. They were more like sounds than notes – and in these sounds lie his emotional transparency, his openness. His playing acquired the properties of language, of human speech. Other saxophonists offered virtuosity and musical thought, fast, complex lines full of harmonic and rhythmic brinkmanship. They played ideas, whereas Ben seemed to play the shapes of feelings, tone-syllables which talk directly to us...

Such emotional directness cannot become dated, because feelings are essentially what humans have experienced each and every day, forever. Who among us has not known the longing for lost friends, the joy of Christmas morning as a child, the thrill of first love, the heartbreak of romantic rejection, the self-doubt of failure, the ache of loneliness, the despair of ageing? How can these be irrelevant? But while Webster speaks to all of these feelings and more, he doesn’t wallow in them; his playing offers sentiment, but is never sentimental...

Ben Webster’s playing is timeless because it’s so human, so honest and moving, but I think he’s remained one of the most treasured of jazz musicians because above all, his playing tells us that he loves us. It’s a simple but very powerful message. Because, at the end of the day….we all want to be loved."
--Steve Wallace, jazz blogger

During this festive season I've revisited some early Ultravox and Japan albums from the late 70's and early 80's new romantic era. I thought David Sylvian, the latter bands lead singer was quite dishy back in the day, his crooning sound on their 'Quiet Life' and 'Gentlemen take Polaroids' albums still sounds great today for me.