‘Big Ben’ by Peter Gardner

In January 1967 Ben Webster was playing a short season at Ronnie Scott’s Cub in London.  As often happened back then, star soloists who were playing at Ronnie Scott’s would play some out of town gigs.  That was how, a few months earlier, I had heard Johnny Griffin in Coventry’s Leofric Hotel. Griffin, ‘The Little Giant’, ‘The Fastest Tenor in the West’, had left his audience enthralled and somewhat drained by his astonishing speed, unquenchable imagination and stamina.

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