Coleman Hawkins - "How Deep Is The Ocean" - An Analysis

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I came across the following analysis of what made the late tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins [1904-1969] such a brilliant improvisor when I was researching my three-part blog feature on How The Rhythm Section got its name in Jerry Coker’s How To Listen To Jazz 

Jerry Coker, himself a teacher, composer/arranger, and noted saxophonist, has annotated every aspect of The Hawk’s performance on the 3.26 version of How Deep Is The Ocean which appears in the following video.

I have interspersed the video at several points in Jerry’s explanation of what’s going on in Coleman’s performance to make it easier for you to stop and start the video as you are reading the annotation.

Of course, Coleman’s renown for his 1939 solo on Body and Soul but he employs some similar techniques on How Deep Is The Ocean which was recorded in 1943 around the time that Bebop was coming into existence at Minton’s Playhouse and Clark Monroe’s Uptown House in NYC. And although Coleman is not playing in the bebop style per se what he is playing sounds very “modern” and in that sense almost timeless - like a solo that could have been recorded today.

It’s no accident that Coleman hired some of the early beboppers in his bands and that the beboppers held him in high esteem both because he took a chance on employing them and because he took chances in his own approach to the music.

Here’s how Jerry explains the elements that make Coleman’s solo on How Deep Is The Ocean so unique.

COLEMAN HAWKINS on "How Deep Is the Ocean"

vehicle type:    Standard (ballad) formal structure:    A(8)-B(8)-A(8)-BA(8)

arrangement:    4-measure piano solo introduction loosely placed melody chorus by tenor saxophone, with rhythm accompaniment, improvised chorus by tenor saxophone, with soft horns and rhythm section accompaniment improvised cadenza by tenor, followed by chord

Analysis/Annotations

Coleman Hawkins was an extraordinary improviser of ballads. He also played the blues and fast tempos commend-ably, but great ballad players are rare, and it was his classic  solo on "Body And Soul" (1939) that established his reputation for inspired mastery of the ballad. Three of his ballad solos were under consideration: "Body And Soul," "Say It Isn't So," and "How Deep Is the Ocean." The last was chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, because it contains a slightly greater number of Hawkinesque elements.

1.   Note the progression, which has both slow and fast harmonic rhythms and contains chord sequences that descend in semitones (chromatic). It also uses an interesting device in the first four measures of the A sections; the chord is the same for all four of the measures, but the bass line descends chromatically, producing a change of scale without actually changing the chord. Listen carefully and you can hear this device taking place in Hawkins' solo at many points in both choruses. Often it will sound as though he is playing the descending bass notes, but adding many other notes in between each of the longer, emphasized bass notes. The progression to the entire selection would have been apparent, in sound, even if there had been no accompaniment other than  Hawkins's self-accompanying phrases.

2.   Listen to the vibrato of his opening phrase and at the end of the selection. He is sometimes identified by that vibrato, though it is deeper and more pronounced than on perhaps any of his recordings.

3.   Listen to the manner in which Hawkins phrases the melody in the first A section (his first entrance). Because he is loosely rendering the melody and because he is implying the progression between the melody phrases, it would be helpful to listen to a recording of the tune by a group or player playing the given melody in its purest, simplest form, so that the listener will know which of Hawkins' notes are from the given melody and which are not.

4.   Hawkins decorated the melody so heavily in the next two sections (B and A) that the given melody is mostly implied, and in the last eight measures of his first chorus (BA) he has virtually abandoned the given melody altogether. Jazz players in general were beginning to adopt such practices to allow more time for creative improvisation. This became unnecessary with the invention of the long-playing (33-1/3 RPM) record.

5.   The harmonic device mentioned in # 1, in which the first four measures of the A sections have only one chord but in which a descending bass line causes changes in scale, produces an interesting scale in the second measure of those four measure sections, called the whole-tone scale. The name derives from the fact that only whole steps (two semitones equal a whole step) are used in constructing the scale, causing the scale to have a distinctive sound. Listen to what Hawkins played the second measure of his second chorus, where he used the whole-tone scale, not in a way that sounds like a scale, but like descending chord patterns. In the eighteenth measure of the second chorus (which is also the second measure of an A section), he plays a nearly identical pattern. As mentioned in Chapter 4, improvisers often hear (in their mind's ear) the same pattern against the same chord repeatedly.

6.   Another example of the association between pattern and chord was supplied by "Hawk" in the twenty-first measure of the first chorus, the fifth measure of the second chorus, and the twenty-first measure of the second chorus. Each of the three locations are identical, harmonically, all being the fifth measure of an A section, and he treated each of these places with the same improvised melody (which has an arresting double-time feeling).

7.   Notice the density of notes in the sixth measure of the second chorus, where he played six notes per beat, deftly. The density level is noticeably greater throughout the second chorus, which, along with the entrance of the horn background, served to raise the intensity level.

8.  The third time he played the double-time idea mentioned in #6, he repeated the idea sequentially through the chords of the twenty-second measure (of the second chorus), leading into the highly intricate, embellished  sequences of the twenty-third and twenty-fourth measures. "Hawk" finally got finger-tied on the last one of those embellishments (going into the twenty-fifth measure), unfortunately, but it is doubtful that anyone else could have executed it as well, much less conceived such a phrase. Hawkins' sequential phrases and fancy embellishments can be found on nearly all of his recorded solos.

9. Like Louis, "Hawk" sometimes speared relatively high notes suddenly after subdued phrases, as a preacher might employ the device to regain the attention of his audience. This trait is evident in many other solos, including "Body and Soul." In "How Deep Is the Ocean," he used the device twice, on nearly identical phrases, in the twenty-sixth measure of both choruses.

10. The tempo stops on the thirty-first measure of the second chorus, where Hawkins played his virtuosic cadenza, again creating the sound of chord motion without relying upon accompaniment.