[2] Bebop figure Babs Gonzales recalled that "Freddie [was] the best trumpet player I ever heard in my life.
In New York City he worked with Benny Carter, Cab Calloway, Earl Hines, Jimmie Lunceford Billy Eckstine, and others.
He died of a heart attack in a room at Chicago's Strode Hotel; a heroin overdose was suspected in his death.
In his autobiography, Miles, Davis stated his belief that Webster was the unwitting victim of a murder attempt on saxophonist Sonny Stitt.
Davis believed that one of those people, out for revenge, had given Stitt heroin deliberately laced with something poisonous, possibly battery acid or strychnine, and then Stitt had unknowingly passed the poisoned heroin on to Webster.