Listening to Prestige 291: Coleman Hawkins

This recording shows how jazz can transcend generations, bringing together two performers in their twenties (Kenny Burrell and Ray Bryant), two pushing forty (Wendell Marshall and Osie Johnson),and one of the grand old men of American music, Coleman Hawkins, born in 1904.

There are all kinds of grand old men in jazz. Louis Armstrong revolutionized American music, and still remains the greatest artist, any medium, that America has ever produced. And he continued to be great, although not breaking new ground. Wendell Marshall and Osie Johnson could have played in his group, and could have fit in--in fact, Johnson did play with Armstrong cohort Earl Hines.. Kenny Burrell, not so much. Benny Goodman was intrigued by the new music, and even put

together a bebop group, but his audiences wouldn't stand for it, so he went back to doing what he did best.

Coleman Hawkins very nearly transcended time. He was the first important tenor saxophone player in jazz. He actually played with Armstrong in Fletcher Henderson's band, and he played with Goodman, and he even played with Glenn Miller (not in the famous orchestra; this was Miller's first known recording, with the Mound City Blowers). And he goes back farther than that, to Mamie Smith, whose 1920 "Crazy Blues" is credited with being the first blues record.

And he led a group with Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Pettiford in Max Roach in what is generally considered to have been the first bebop recording, in 1944. So wherever jazz was at, whoever the young Turks were who were making it, Coleman Hawkins could make the scene.

He played with nearly everybody, and he recorded on nearly every label, from majors like RCA Victor and Decca (his breakthrough recording, "Body and Soul," was for Victor's Bluebird subsidiary) to tiny obscure ones. The 1950s saw him on a Cook's tour of the finest independent jazz labels in the East, from Savoy to Riverside to Verve to Atlantic and thence to Prestige, where the Hawk would alight for a few years and a few albums.

I mentioned that he and Shirley Scott, recording two weeks earlier, shared a tune in common: "Until the Real Thing Comes Along." They are two wonderful recordings, and in spite of jazz's reputation

for merciless cutting contests at jam sessions, this is a musical form with many wonders and many approaches, and "who's better?" doesn't enter into it. One thing that both versions have in common is that they're star turns. Scott on the one and Hawkins on the other take pretty much all of the solo space.

Well..."who's better" doesn't enter into it, but...this is Coleman Hawkins. Everyone stopped and listened to him.

If "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" is all Hawkins, that is not the case with the rest of the session.
The ageless titan and the young Turk meet on equal ground, trade solos, and do some really remarkable ensemble playing. The blues are always a good meeting ground between styles and generations, as are familiar ballads, and we have all of that here: two standards ("I Hadn't Anyone Till You" and "Until the Real Thing Comes Along"), two originals by Hawkins ("Soul Blues" and "Sweetnin'") and two by Burrell ("Groovin'" and "Sunday Mornin'"). And an ancient traditional ballad, "Greensleeves," that may or may not have been written by Henry VIII.

Burrell and Hawkins play the melody pretty straight on this one. If you mixed it in with your Robert Shaw Chorale numbers on your Christmas tape no one would freak out, and yet it's some very tasty jazz playing. I'll always associate playing the melody of a very old tune with Thelonious Monk's "Abide With Me," and this has the same feeling, and gives the same pleasure.

Perhaps they were using "Greensleeves" to warm up. It's their second tune of the day, after "I Hadn't Anyone Till You," and then they shed their minuet shoes and get down and dirty. You can tell they're getting down and dirty from the fact that they drop G's at the end of their titles. You can also tell from the playing.

Soul music dates from around the turn of the decade, with some placing its first use in 1961. According to Solomon Burke, he is personally responsible. He was signed to Atlantic when they lost Ray Charles, and they told him he would be their next rhythm and blues star. Nope, he said. His mama was a good church-going woman, and he had promised her he would never sing rhythm and blues. This was a potential problem, but for the time being they ignored it, and they brought him into the studio. Everyone was pleased with the results, and Atlantic brass were predicting it would climb up the rhythm and blues charts. Nope again. He had promised his mama, and she was a good church going woman. It wasn't rhythm and blues. So...what to call it? What's a name for the music that won't upset Solomon's mama? It needs to be a good church going name, something that speaks from the soul...that's it!

Well, if Henry VIII can write "Greensleeves," and Robert Johnson can find his genius in a midnight deal at the crossroads, Solomon Burke can invent soul music. I'll buy all of it. This is jazz, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Soul jazz would seem to be a linguistic subset of soul music, but in fact it seems to have come first. The term was at least sufficiently floating around by the late 1950s that Riverside Records would attach it to the promotions for its 1959 release, The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco, a promotional gambit that did not entirely thrill Adderley. He told jazz historian Roy Carr:

We were pressured quite heavily by Riverside Records when they discovered there was a word called 'soul'. We became, from an image point of view, soul jazz artists. They kept promoting us that way and I kept deliberately fighting it, to the extent that it became a game.

This Coleman Hawkins release must have been one of the first to put "Soul" in the title of a jazz album, though not quite the first. The earliest I've found belongs to one of the other members of the Holy Trinity of jazz tenormen, Ben Webster (Lester Young being the third). Verve put out a Webster album called Soulville in 1957, and another called The Soul of Ben Webster in 1958. Both Webster and Hawkins had soul to burn, and neither of them could be called "soul jazz" artists, as both of them defied categorization.

He also put "Soul" into the title of one of his originals, pairing it with blues, and this one has everything you could ask for. It's got soul, it's got blues, it's got great contributions from everyone in the group, it's got Burrell at his bluesiest, and it's got Hawkins as delectable as you could ask. So "Listen to One" becomes two today, "Until the Real Thing Comes Along" as promised, and "Soul Blues" because it's impossible to resist.

Soul was the name of the album, and "Soul Blues" was a two-sided 45. Also on 45, "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" / "Greensleeves."




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Listening to Prestige Vol. 2, 1954-1956 is here! You can order your signed copy or copies through the link above.

Tad Richards will strike a nerve with all of us who were privileged to have lived thru the beginnings of bebop, and with those who have since fallen under the spell of this American phenomenon…a one-of-a-kind reference book, that will surely take its place in the history of this music.

                                                                                                                                                --Dave Grusin

An important reference book of all the Prestige recordings during the time period. Furthermore, Each song chosen is a brilliant representation of the artist which leaves the listener free to explore further. The stories behind the making of each track are incredibly informative and give a glimpse deeper into the artists at work.

                                                                                                                --Murali Coryell