Coleman Hawkins – 1927-1939 BBC

Coleman Hawkins holds a secure place in Jazz history as the first great exponent of the tenor-sax, whose creative genius has been an inspiration for Jazzmen and a delight to audiences, from the 1920s up to the present day. His brilliant and expressive improvisations were captured on records from the mid 1920s, and here we present a cross-section of important examples, demonstrating the evolution of his style up to the year 1939. The selection should also be of particular interest to students of British and European jazz — featuring the complete 1934 session with Stanley Black, Albert Harris and Tiny Winters; the complete All-Star Jam Band session recorded in Paris in 1937; and the Jack Hylton sides from 1939 — all heard for the first time in new digital stereo-impressions of the original 78 rpm discs.

Robert Parker

As a person Coleman Hawkins was something of an enigma: He had few close friends, confided little about himself and was notoriously cryptic in many ways. But there was nothing mysterious about his music: Almost single-handedly, Hawkins had taken the saxophone, an outcast among musical instruments, and turned it into a definitive evocative solo voice in jazz. Until the mid-twenties, when Hawkins (and Sidney Bechet on soprano saxophone) showed the most effective way it could work, the saxophone — a half-brass half-reed hybrid struck up by Frenchman Adolphe Sax half a century earlier — was little more than a musical novelty that convulsed music hall audiences with moaning, squealing, laughing, cackling sounds. “The funnier the noise,” Hawkins recalled, “the better the playing.”

Hawkins changed all that, though it took him some time. But, using an unusually wide mouthpiece and a stiff reed on his tenor — “a brute practically no other musician could play” according to a colleague — he had by 1933 developed a tone and style that, blending fire and beauty, body and soul, turned the musical world on its ear. Coleman Hawkins, said Lester Young, his chief rival in later years, was “the person who woke you up and let you know there was a tenor saxophone.” There was no one else quite like him.

Hawkins’ involvement with music was total and it lasted his lifetime. Born in St Joseph, Missouri around 1901, he was taught piano at age five by his mother, an organist, and cello at seven — one reason perhaps for the sonorous cello-like tone Hawkins loved to evoke later, on his tenor. At nine, he got his first saxophone as a birthday present and had mastered it sufficiently by the time he was twelve to play for school dances.

The tenor saxophone was a pretty crudely played instrument at the time, only tentatively used in jazz. Hawkins finishing his musical training in Topeka, Kansas, heard such pioneers on the tenor as Prince Robinson, Happy Cauldwell and Stump Evans. He copied Evans’ rough slap-tongue style in his early gigs, mainly on the road (and recording) with blues singer Mamie Smith’s Jazz Hounds in 1922–3.

By the time he joined Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in New York in 1924 — and under the magical influence of Louis Armstrong, who galvanized the band for a short spell with his advanced ideas of swing — Hawkins had polished his style somewhat, making it smoother and a whole lot hotter.

In the decade with the Henderson band, Hawkins brought his rich rococo sound to full fruition, becoming in the process a key component of his band’s renowned driving stomping and later swinging force. This development can be traced handily in scores of recordings Hawk made with the band and more vividly with sideline groups like the Mound City Blue Blowers, on whose recording of ONE HOUR we get first glimpse of the famous — and much imitated — Hawkins ballad style. Climaxing it, were some fearsome sides made with trumpeter-stylist Henry ‘Red’ Allen that established Hawkins as the premier tenorist in jazz and one of its most awesome masters.

Throughout it all Hawkins lived and dressed in style, driving the fastest cars, consuming legendary quantities of food and liquor, but never bragging. The high-flying Hawk (or Bean as he was also called — because he loved cooking beans) let his music speak for itself.

In 1934, after plans for the Henderson band to tour Europe fell through, Hawkins crossed the Atlantic alone to join Jack Hylton’s band in London and conquer new worlds. When the band, touring Germany, was banned by the Nazis from featuring Hawkins because of his colour, Hylton let him go. It was the best thing that could have happened to Hawkins — and all jazz.

Free to do as he pleased and already famous for his records, Hawkins was greeted like the king he was, becoming a key influence on the European jazz scene. With assorted groups — the Ramblers in Holland, The Berries in Switzerland, Stanley Black in London and others — Hawkins emerged as superstar soloist, hot jazzman and above all master balladeer, with the musicians (Europe’s finest) merely supporting players. With Benny Carter (his friend from the Henderson band) and Belgian guitar wizard Django Reinhardt, Hawkins cut some epic sides in Paris that are among the most exciting jazz records ever made.

But the clouds of war — and perhaps anticipated battles of another kind — brought the Hawk back home. He had been away five years.

Hawkins’ return to New York was cause enough for celebration: “It was like God was coming home,” recalled bassist Milt Hinton. But the young lions who had sharpened their talents in his absence and coveted his crown, were waiting to tear the Hawk apart. He let them roar, in afterhours cutting contests, biding his time. When, one night, Lester Young was introduced by singer Billie Holiday as “the worlds greatest tenor saxophonist,” Hawk jumped in.

According to trumpeter Rex Stewart, who was present, Hawk then proceeded to out-blow the opposition with “an avalanche of virtuosity” that left them stunned. Stewart heard tenorist Dick Wilson, one of the players, comment: “Well, that’s that. Coleman is still the boss, and when you tangle with him, you’d better know what you’re doing or you’d better ask somebody.”

Hawkins clinched his supremacy a short while later by recording his live performance show-stopper BODY AND SOUL for RCA Victor, reportedly as an afterthought, because the producer needed an extra side. Hawkins more than anyone else was surprised when BODY AND SOUL, nearly one hundred percent impromptu improvisation, became a hit — and an alltime jazz classic, forever identified with Hawk.

In the 1940s, Hawkins stayed on top with a busy round of tours, gigs and recordings with his own band and smaller groups, focusing on New York’s 52nd Street. By now a new wave of musicians was taking jazz into dizzying dimensions from bebop to beyond and Hawkins, always ahead of the game, jumped right into the forefront: He not only hired trailblazing pianist Thelonious Monk in his band and made the first bebop records with Dizzy Gillespie, he appeared and recorded with such new wave nabobs as Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, besides teaming a touch more harmoniously with close disciples like Ben Webster, and Don Byas well into the 1960s.

It is difficult to pinpoint when Hawkins began to decline or what disaster mix brought him down. But by 1969 the Hawk was a shell of his old magisterial self, a frail bearded figure wracked by alcohol and starvation (ironically he had lost all interest in food). He could barely hold his horn and was liable to collapse on stage — though he continued to produce majestic music.

I last saw Hawkins live at the Fillmore East, an antique Yiddish theatre turned rock emporium. Its hip promotors, in some odd way, had booked the antique (to them) Hawkins apparently to amuse its generally stoned-out tone-deaf audience. Nothing much happened until Hawkins appeared, a gaunt bewhiskered figure dimly discernible through the heavy marijuana fog like some Norse wraith rising from the dead. With a pause for effect or to gather his strength, Hawk hefted his shiny new saxophone and proceeded to blow three sonorous choruses, their deep organ notes ringing through the theatre’s distant balcony to rouse its juvenile habitués out of drug-induced stupor. There was even some applause — the Hawk had made another conquest, of sorts.

One afternoon shortly after, on 23 May 1969, I attended the funeral service for Coleman Hawkins at mid-Manhattan’s old stone St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, since demolished for an eyesore skyscraper. Hawk lay in his bronze casket like an Egyptian satrap, his beard shaved clean, his face full in repose — something like the old debonair Bean. Old colleagues paid last respects — Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Shavers, Johnny Hodges; Ray Nance played a funereal Body and Soul on violin, evoking tears; trumpeter Thad Jones blew a last hurrah . . . The Hawk was gone. But not forgotten, as the peerless performances on record and several hundred others will attest. They are his memorial, and one couldn’t ask for any more memorable. Body and Soul.

© Al Van Starrex

SIDE 1

1 SENSATION

In 1927 when this record was made the talent-studded Fletcher Henderson orchestra was the top black band in the country and Coleman Hawkins had graduated from multi-purpose hornman (he played all the saxes, clarinet even tuba) to become its highest paid star. (Hawk was reportedly paid $125 a week, the others about $80—not high by white band standards.) Louis Armstrong had come and gone leaving an indelible mark—he taught the band and Hawkins how to swing. Don Redman’s arrangements gave the band a sophisticated polish (he got $25 extra for each arrangement). But although the band made scores of records it never had a really big hit, leading Henderson to ransack other sources, such as the Original Dixieland Jazz Band which pioneered jazz recording a decade earlier. Additional horns and higher calibre musicians including Hawkins plus tuba-cushioned rhythm gave the rinky-dink dixieland rag SENSATION, one of five ODJB titles cut in four months, a decidedly Hendersonian stomp stamp. Only clarinettist Bailey sounds appropriately squeaky. Hawk’s bounding aggressive solo, sandwiched between contrasting trumpeters Smith and Ladnier, shows some of the mastery he was to develop over the next few years. The ODJB titles sold well but the music was all wrong for a band of such accomplished talents.

2 HELLO LOLA

Hawkins by 1929 had become the acknowledged master of the tenor saxophone mainly on the strength of his work with the Henderson band but nowhere was his virtuosity better demonstrated than on two recordings that November with a pickup group The Mound City Blue Blowers. Led by Red McKenzie, an ex-jockey who played jazz on a comb wrapped in tissue paper, it featured imposing jazz talents like clarinettist Pee Wee Russell and trombonist (and future bandleader) Glenn Miller. Even so, Hawkins stood out, proclaiming his saxophone mastery in dazzling fashion. Preceded by Russell’s rasping clarinet and McKenzie’s bizarre trumpet like comb, Hawk opens up HELLO LOLA with a staccato attack full of passionate fire and smoking propulsion. This is no mere show of instrumental virtuosity, with Hawk sometimes breaking out of the confines of jazz to expand the saxophone’s limitations as no one had done before, but a statement of great emotional power that leaves one breathless. Inspired by Hawkins’ emotional outburst, Glenn Miller horns in with one of the few hot solos of his career, then joins Hawkins and the others in a final free-for-all, backed by Krupa’s drums and Al Morgan’s pounding bass.

3 ONE HOUR

On the sharply contrasting ONE HOUR we get a first glimpse of Hawkins the ballad master—that aspect of the great tenorist’s artistry for which he was best known and most imitated. With this keynote recording Hawkins opened the world to jazz improvisation based more on harmony than on restrictive melody; by removing the shackles of melody he was able to explore a slow-moving ballad like this one (the lachrymose If I Could Be With You Just One Hour Tonight which Louis Armstrong made into his big hit that same year) from an entirely new perspective, adding or omitting notes as he pleased. Hawkins cannot wait to show how far it can be done, bursting right at the start with a four-bar fanfare, then after McKenzie’s rasping comb statement, launching full-throttle into a 16-bar chorus. As his solo unfolds, Hawkins juggles the elements of the song, reinventing it in his own creative image. Although Miller, Russell and McKenzie all contribute effective solos, ONE HOUR was, for the time, Hawkins’ finest hour.

4 SUGAR FOOT STOMP

SUGAR FOOT STOMP, King Oliver’s classic Dippermouth Blues which Louis Armstrong bequeathed to the Fletcher Henderson band in 1924, is one of three versions the band was to record within days for different labels in 1931. In Henderson’s refurbishing of the old Don Redman arrangement, Bobby Stark, much underrated trumpeter, takes the celebrated Louis Armstrong three-chorus splurge with blazing open horn, instead of Rex Stewart who played it muted (like Louis/Oliver) in the other 1931 remakes. Hawk’s 22 bar solo is a throwback on his earlier staccato attacks but with more depth, in keeping with the band’s stodgy tuba-anchored rhythm that gives the whole performance its somewhat dated air—the stomping Henderson band of old instead of the pioneer swinging outfit it would become soon.

5 HOW COME YOU DO ME LIKE YOU DO

Recording British composer-bandleader Patrick ‘Spike’ Hughes’ complex Ellington-styled music was tough sledding, so the all-star band that producer John Hammond organized for the purpose in New York in the spring of 1933 stretched out at the end of each session with lighter more swinging fare. On the lazy-paced HOW COME, Hawkins can be compared with the man who sounded most like him—the young saxophone sensation Leon ‘Chu’ Berry, and according to Hughes “the presence of one inspired the other to play even better than usual!”. Both are outstanding, Hawk’s notes oozing out warm and syrupy, Berry’s hoarse with emotion. Trombonist Dicky Wells solos full of arching swoops and glides and Henry Allen, in one of his earliest pop vocals, sings close to the Armstrong style, then rides out the ensembles with two fiery trumpet breaks absolutely Allen.

6 THE DAY YOU CAME ALONG

The day in September 1933 John Hammond brought Coleman Hawkins and Henry Allen together for a record date—one of a series he was producing for a jazz-hungry Britain—was a memorable one for Hawk. It was his first such session under his own name and all the players, from the Fletcher Henderson orchestra, were primed to excel. THE DAY YOU CAME ALONG, one of Bing Crosby’s earliest hits (from the movie Too Much Harmony) gave Hawkins a showcase to display his Gothic ballad powers in full flower. His long solo chorus, floating out of the ensemble statement led by Hilton Jefferson’s plaintive clarinet and Higginbotham’s sonorous trombone bridge, is full of rhapsodic beauty, bursting with imagination. In the style he pioneered, Hawkins skirts the melody and goes for the song’s harmonic jugular, giving him more room to improvise. Not to be outdone, Allen sails in with a tasteful 8-bar bridge before Hawk takes it out in a haunting coda that echoes long after it’s gone.

7 JAMAICA SHOUT

JAMAICA SHOUT, from the same date, proves that swing was here long before Benny Goodman (with Fletcher Henderson’s arrangements) parlayed it into a national fad. Breaks by Bernard Addison, Allen and Hawkins lay down the theme of this jaunty Horace Henderson air. Hawkins takes a short snappy chorus allowing Allen time to show off his own swinging trumpet style—far ahead of the competition, with Higginbotham stoutly manning the bridge. Hawkins comes in for a full 32-bar chorus, opening aggressively then settling down to a hypnotic pattern of alternating currents of sound, majestic and swinging in turn, a master at his best. After a series of breaks by the hornmen, Hawkins has the last word—he always did in time to come.

8 LULLABY

In 1934, with his future in the near-bankrupt Henderson band at stake, Hawkins joined Jack Hylton’s band in London. His debut that spring at the famous Palladium, backed by an orchestra led by Hylton’s wife Ennis, was a smashing success (although he was listed on the call board as ‘Coleman and Hawkins’ presumably because someone thought he was a song and dance team). Hawkins’ first recordings in London, however, were under his own name with pianist Stanley Black and a rhythm section that bent over backward to make the tenor giant feel at home. LULLABY in fact is Black’s own tune and Hawkins, an accomplished pianist, who worked out some of his own ideas on piano—his first instrument—and was a lover of classics (Beethoven, Brahms, Verdi, Puccini, Ravel were his favourites) probably appreciated what Black was trying to do. He caresses the melody in glowing tones that hint of the grandeur of his European performances in the months to come. Black’s interlude is relatively unobtrusive—with an interesting thematic bridge—and the rhythm section takes the title too literally to keep fully awake.

9 LADY BE GOOD

Hawkins was on more familiar turf here—it was the first of his many explorations of the Gershwin tune (his later Rifftide hit was based on its changes). Aside from a pleasant piano-guitar bridge it’s all Hawk, slipping and sliding, twisting and turning round the Lady’s fancy harmonic underpinnings, trying out new ideas—like dropping one beat in four on his second chorus—making the tune all his. Yet somehow one gets the impression Hawkins was merely warming up for his European championship season, close at hand.

Al Van Starrex is a writer for CODA, Jazz Times and other publications specializing in jazz. He broadcast the first all-jazz programmes in South East Asia via Radio Ceylon; was a reporter, foreign correspondent for the New York Times and publicist for several Hollywood films before moving to New York where he met and interviewed many of the musicians in this series.

Robert Parker is an Australian Sound Engineer and Broadcaster, internationally acclaimed for his development of a unique system for extracting high quality stereo sound from early mono 78 rpm records.