Background
Coleman Hawkins was born on November 21, 1904, in St. Joseph, Missouri.
((Artist Transcriptions). One of the founding fathers of j...)
(Artist Transcriptions). One of the founding fathers of jazz sax, Coleman Hawkins blazed the trail for future generations of saxophonists. This collection features note-for-note tenor sax transcriptions for 16 highlights from Hawkins' vast repertoire, including: April in Paris * Body and Soul * Flyin' Hawk * Honeysuckle Rose * The Man I Love * Mood Indigo * Picasso * Rifftide * Self Portrait (Of the Bean) * Stuffy * You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To * and more. Features a bio and a newly updated discography, complete with notes about the recordings (date, location, players, original issue info, etc.).
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0634065734/?tag=2022091-20
(An enormous presence in jazz across five decades, Coleman...)
An enormous presence in jazz across five decades, Coleman Hawkins provided huge influence for generations of jazz saxophonists who were inspired to pick up their instrument of choice following exposure to Hawkins work. Having begun his career participating in late night Harlem jam sessions, Hawkins quickly rose to fame following his recording of Body And Soul on 11th October 1939 - a tune considered by many to be among the finest jazz numbers ever. From then on, his relentless recording and touring schedules along with the pure quality of his work made him a central figure on the international jazz stage, a reputation he maintained for the rest of his life and beyond. Although by 1960 Hawkins had been in the business for nearly four decades, his contributions to some of the most important albums in modern jazz continued. His playing featured on the song Driva Man on Max Roach s legendary We Insist! (Candid, 1960) - a bold composition in support of the Civil Rights Movement and he performed too on vocalist Abbey Lincoln s Straight Ahead (Candid, 1961), on which he appeared alongside Roach, Eric Dolphy, Mal Waldron and Booker Little. Hawkins made many more notable appearances alongside other important names during the early 1960s, including Duke Ellington, Bud Powell, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke, Nate Adderley, Howard McGhee and Lester Young. However, it would be on the albums featuring Hawkins as leader on which the sax man s star shone brightest. Always keen to promote new talent , 1960 s Coleman Hawkins And His Orchestra (Crown) and Coleman Hawkins All Stars (Swingville) brought together a pool of young players, including drummer Osie Johnson, trumpeter Thad Jones and pianists Tommy Flanagan and Eddie Costa - although the latter was tragically killed in a car accident two years later. The following year would see the release of two of Hawkins most highly-regarded late period albums: Night Hawk (Swingville, 1961) - which featured a pairing with fellow tenor saxophonist Eddie Lockjaw Davis - and The Hawk Relaxes (Moodsville, 1961), which boasted appearances from pianist Ronnie Bright, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Ron Carter on bass and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Hawkins would also pay tribute to many of the popular standards that had formed the foundation of his career on Good Old Broadway and Make Someone Happy (both Moodsville, 1962). Sadly, by this point, Hawkins was drinking heavily and his recording output has begun to wane, although he still had time to appear alongside Sonny Rollins on Sonny Meets Hawk! (RCA Victor, 1963), and with an impressiveline-up of jazz legends on The Greatest Jazz Concert In The World (Pablo, 1975 - recorded 1967), including Oscar Peterson, Clark Terry, Benny Carter, Zoot Sims, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and T-Bone Walker. Old age and failing health finally caught up with the Hawk, however, and following a battle with liver disease he passed away aged 64 on 19th May 1969. This four disc set commemorates the last great period of Coleman Hawkins career. Containing over four hours of music from eight complete albums, originally released across the period 1960 to 1962, this collection is a fitting testament to a hugely accomplished musician who was arguably the greatest tenor saxophonist of the entire jazz spectrum.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01G5C9W1Y/?tag=2022091-20
Coleman Hawkins was born on November 21, 1904, in St. Joseph, Missouri.
His mother, an organist, taught him piano when he was 5; at 7, he studied cello; and for his 9th birthday he received a tenor saxophone. By the age of 12 he was performing professionally at school dances; he attended high school in Chicago, then studied harmony and composition for two years at Washburn College in Topeka, Kansas.
His first regular job, in 1921, was with singer Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds, and he made his first recording with them in 1922. Based in Kansas City, the band played the major midwestern and eastern cities, including New York, where in 1923 he guest recorded with the famous Fletcher Henderson Band. A year later he officially joined Henderson's band and remained with it until 1934. The first half of his tenure with Henderson served as a valuable apprenticeship, and by 1929, inspired by Louis Armstrong's improvisational concepts, Hawkins had developed the hallmarks of his mature style-a very large tone, a heavy vibrato, and a swaggering attack. Hitherto the tenor saxophone had been regarded as a novelty instrument serving chiefly for rhythmic emphasis (achieved by a slap-tonguing technique) or for bottoming out a chord in the ensemble, but not as a serious instrument and certainly not as a serious solo instrument. Hawkins' artistry singlehandedly altered its status. Fame on Two Continents The Henderson band played primarily in New York's Roseland Ballroom, but also in Harlem's famous Savoy Ballroom, and made frequent junkets to New England and the Midwest. As a result, Hawkins' fame grew as much from public appearances as from his showcase features on Henderson's recordings. When he finally left the band, he was a star. From 1934 to 1939 Hawkins lived in Europe. He was guest soloist with the celebrated Jack Hylton Band in England, free-lanced on the Continent, and participated in a number of all-star recording sessions, the most famous of which was a 1937 get-together with the legendary Belgian gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and the great American trumpeter-alto saxophonist Benny Carter. In a move very likely prompted by the imminence of war, Hawkins in 1939 returned to the United States, where he formed a nonet and played a long engagement at Kelly's Stables on New York's jazz-famed 52nd Street. The highlight of that year, however, was his recording of "Body and Soul, " illustrating in three masterful choruses his consummate melodic and harmonic command-a stunning performance that had the jazz world buzzing. That year Down Beat voted him #1 on tenor saxophone, the first of many such honors. Late in 1939 Hawkins formed his own big band, which debuted at New York's Arcadia Ballroom and played at such other locales as the Golden Gate Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the Savoy Ballroom. In 1941 Hawkins disbanded and reverted to small groups, including in 1943 a racially mixed sextet (a rarity in that era), which toured primarily in the Midwest. Most of Hawkins' contemporaries bitterly resisted the mid-1940 bebop revolution, with its harmonic and rhythmic innovations, but Hawkins not only encouraged the upstart music but also performed frequently with its chief practitioners. As early as 1944 with modernists Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Oscar Pettiford he recorded "Woody'n You, " probably the first bop recording ever. In 1945, a watershed year for the new music, he performed and recorded in California with modern trumpeter Howard McGhee. His long tenure, begun in 1946, with the Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) tour brought him inevitably into musical contact with virtually all the top-flight younger players. Also, as a leader on his own American and European engagements in the late 1940 and early 1950 he enlisted the talents of such outstanding young musicians as trumpeters Fats Navarro and Miles Davis, trombonist J. J. Johnson, and vibraphonist Milt Jackson. Hawkins' democratic acceptance of the newer jazz idiom is admirable and somewhat surprising considering the difficulties he had in adapting his own sharply-defined style to it. There is frequently a rhythmic stiffness in his attempts to integrate his sound with theirs, and he thrived best in that period when he collaborated with his fellow swing era stalwarts, playing more traditional material. In the 1950 Hawkins teamed often, both in and out of JATP, with swing era trumpet giant Roy Eldridge. He made television appearances on "The Tonight Show" (1955) and on the most celebrated of all television jazz shows, "The Sound of Jazz" (1957). His working quartet in the 1960 consisted of the great pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Major Holley, and drummer Eddie Locke, but his finest recording of the decade was a collaboration with a small Duke Ellington unit in 1962. In 1968, on a European tour with the Oscar Peterson Quartet, ill health forced the cancellation of the Denmark leg of the tour. Despite failing health, he continued to work regularly until a few weeks before his death. He appeared on a Chicago television show with Roy Eldridge early in 1969, and his last concert appearance was on April 20, 1969, at Chicago's North Park Hotel. He died of bronchial pneumonia, complicated by a diseased liver, at New York's Wickersham Hospital on May 19, 1969. Hawkins is perhaps overly identified with "Body and Soul. " Masterwork though it certainly is, it is only one of a great number of sublime performances. A partial listing of his best work would include: "Out of Nowhere" (1937, Hawk in Holland); "When Day Is Done" (c. 1940, Coleman Hawkins Orchestra); "I Surrender, Dear" and "I Can't Believe That You're in Love with Me" (1940, The Tenor Sax: Coleman Hawkins and Frank Wess); "I Only Have Eyes for You, " "'S Wonderful, " "Under a Blanket of Blue, " "I'm Yours, " and "I'm in the Mood for Love" with Roy Eldridge equally featured (1944, Coleman Hawkins and the Trumpet Kings); "April in Paris, " "What Is There to Say?" and "I'm Through with Love" (1945, Hollywood Stampede); "Say It Isn't So" (1946), "Angel Face" (1947), and "The Day You Came Along" (1956, Body and Soul); "La Rosita" and "Tangerine" in tandem with tenor great Ben Webster (1957, Tenor Giants ); "Mood Indigo" and "Self Portrait of the Bean" (1962, Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins); and "Slowly" and "Me and Some Drums" (1962, Shelly Manne: 2, 3, 4).
(An enormous presence in jazz across five decades, Coleman...)
((Artist Transcriptions). One of the founding fathers of j...)
(CD)
Quotations:
"Music should always be an adventure. "
"If you don't make mistakes, you aren't really trying. "
"If they think they are doing something new, they ought to do what I do every day - spend at least two hours every day listening to Johann Sebastian Bach and, man, it's all there. If they want to improvise around a theme, which is the essence of jazz, they should learn from the master. He never wastes a note, and he knows where every note is going and when to bring it back. Some of these cats go way out and forget where they began or what they started to do. Bach will clear it up for them. "
"I don't think about music as being new or modern. I just play. "
"Some of my biggest moments have been in jam sessions, but I don't want to talk about them. There were always other people involved. "
"I made the tenor sax - there's nobody plays like me and I don't play like anybody else. "
"If you don't make mistakes you are not really trying. "
"You can separate the men from the boys and ballads. "
"There's no such thing as bop music, but there's such a thing as progress. "
"I honestly can't characterize my style in words. It seems that whatever comes to me naturally, I play. "
"Some people say there was no jazz tenor before me. All I know is I just had a way of playing and I didn't think in terms of any other instrument but the tenor. "
By the late 1960 Hawkins' chronic alcoholism had resulted in a deterioration of his health. He collapsed in 1967 while playing in Toronto and again a few months later at a JATP concert. Hawkins, despite the snappy nicknames "Hawk" and "Bean, " was a private, taciturn man, and an attentive listener to all kinds of music: among his favorite recordings were those of opera singers, whose rhapsodic quality he captured in his own fiercely passionate playing. Hawkins' consumption of alcohol seemed to be his only vice.
Coleman Hawkins was married and had three children.