©
- Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected;
all rights reserved.
The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has long
wanted to have a piece on the site in honor of the memory of Coleman
Hawkins, the man most responsible for
bringing Jazz to the tenor saxophone.
And what better way to do this for the man who was affectionately known
to his peers as “Bean,” than with more of the writing of Whitney Balliett, this
time from his anthology entitled Dinosaurs in the Morning: 41 Pieces on Jazz [Philiadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott, 1962].
At the conclusion of Mr. Balliett’s essay,
you will find a video tribute to Coleman Hawkins made with the assistance of
the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD . The audio track is Frank Foster’s
“Juggin’ Around” on which Frank is joined on tenor saxophone by Gene Ammons and
Frank Wess, along with Nat Adderley on cornet, Bennie Green on trombone and a
rhythm section of Tommy Flanagan, Ed Jones and Albert “Tootie” Heath on piano,
bass and drums, respectively. All three tenor saxophonists were heavily influenced by Bean.
©
- Whitney Balliet, copyright protected;
all rights reserved.
“IMPROVISATION, the seat of jazz, is a remorseless art
that demands of the performer no less than this: that, night after night, he
spontaneously invent original music by balancing‑with the speed of light ‑emotion
and intelligence, form and content, and tone and attack, all of which must both
charge and entertain the spirit of the listener. Improvisation comes in various
shapes. There is the melodic embellishment of Louis Armstrong and Vic
Dickenson; the similar but more complex thematic improvisation of Lester Young;
the improvisation upon chords, as practiced by Coleman Hawkins and Charlie
Parker, and the rhythmic-thematic convolutions now being put forward by
Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. There are, too, the collective
improvisations, such as, the defunct New Orleans
Hawkins, in fact, is a kind of super jazz musician,
for he has been a bold originator, a masterly improviser, a shepherd of new
movements, and a steadily developing performer. A trim, contained man, whose
rare smiles have the effect of a lamp suddenly going on within, he was the
first to prove that jazz could be played on the saxophone, which bad been
largely a purveyor of treacle. He did this with such conviction and imagination
that by the early thirties he had founded one of the two great schools of
saxophone playing. In 1939, Hawkins set down, as an afterthought at a recording
session, a version of "Body and Soul" that achieves the impossible -
perfect art. A few years later, he repeated this success with "Sweet
Lorraine" and "The Man I Love." Unlike many other jazz
musicians, who are apt to regard anything new with defensive animosity, Hawkins
has always kept an ear to the ground for originality, and as a result he led
the first official bebop recording session, which involved Dizzy Gillespie, Max
Roach, and the late Clyde Hart. Soon afterward, he used the largely unknown
Thelonious Monk in some important recordings. Then his playing inexplicably
began to falter and he went into semi-eclipse, from which he rocketed up,
without warning, in the early fifties, landing on his feet with a brand-new
style (his third), whose occasional febrility suggests a man several decades
younger.
Hawkins's early style was rough and aggressive. His
tone tended to be harsh and bamboo-like, and he used a great many staccato,
slap-tongued notes. But these mannerisms eventually vanished, and by the
mid-thirties he had entered his second and most famous phase. His heavy vibrato
suggested the wing beats of a big bird and his tone halls hung with dark velvet
and lit by huge fires. His technique had become infallible. He never fluffed a
note, his tone never shrank or overflowed-as did Chu
Berry
Hawkins would often begin such a number by playing one
chorus of the melody, as if he were testing it. He would stuff its fabric with
tone to see how much it would take, eliminate certain notes, sustain others,
slur still others, and add new ones. Then, satisfied, he would shut his eyes,
as if blinded by what he was about to play, and launch into improvisation with
a concentration that pinned one down. (Hawkins's total lack of tentativeness ‑
the exhilarating, blind man tentativeness of Pee Wee Russell or Roy Eldridge ‑
suggested that he had written out and memorized his solos long before playing
them.) He would construct‑out of phrases crowded with single notes, glissandos,
abrupt stops, and his corrugated vibrato‑long, hilly figures that sometimes
lasted until his breath gave out. Refilling his lungs with wind‑tunnel
ferocity, he would be off again‑bending notes, dropping in little runs like
steep, crooked staircases, adding decorative, almost calligraphic flourishes,
emphasizing an occasional phrase by allowing it to escape into puffs of breath.
He often closed these solos with roomy codas, into which he would squeeze fresh
and frequently fancy ideas that bad simply been crowded out of his earlier
ruminations. If another soloist followed him, he might terminate his own
statement with an abrupt ascending figure that neatly catapulted his successor.
When Hawkins had finished, his solo, anchored directly and emphatically to the
beat, had been worked into an elaborate version of the original melody, as
though be had fitted a Victorian mansion over a modern ranch house. At fast tempos,
Hawkins merely forced the same amount of music into a smaller space. There
seemed to be no pause between phrases or choruses, and this produced an
intensity that thickened the beat and whose vehemence was occasionally
indicated by sustained growls. Yet for all this enthusiasm, Hawkins' playing
during this period often left the listener vaguely dissatisfied. Perhaps it was
because his style had an unceasing - and, for that time, unusual - intellectual
quality, with the glint of perfection and a viselike unwillingness to let any
emotion out, lest it spoil the finish on his work. One kept waiting for the
passion beneath the surface to burst through, but it never did-until five years
ago.
Hawkins can now be volcanic. His present style is
marked primarily by a slight tightening of tone, which sometimes resembles the
sound he achieved at the outset of his career; the use of certain harsh notes
and phrases that, not surprisingly, suggest Charlie Parker and Sonny Rollins;
and an almost dismaying display of emotion. This exuberance has been costly. In
his pursuit of pure flame, Hawkins sometimes misses notes or plays them badly,
and he falls back, perhaps out of fatigue, on stock phrases of his own, such as
a series of abrupt, descending triplets. When everything is in mesh, however,
the results are formidable. …”
Click on the "X" to close out of the advertisements should they appear while you are viewing the video.
Click on the "X" to close out of the advertisements should they appear while you are viewing the video.
