It's surprising that a musician with his knowledge and experience should take time out to listen to younger musicians, but then his thinking isn't limited by the past. Lockjaw Davis was talking about Coleman Hawkins, a senior he holds in high regard. And he doesn't just listen to saxophones. He listens to all instruments. He always retains his personal flavor, but you find young musicians on his dates, and he's just as comfortable with them as with the older guys. Hawkins' perennial freshness is echoed by Johnny Hodges: The older he gets, the better he gets. If ever you think he's through, you find he's just gone right on ahead again.
Paul Gonsalves, himself one of the formidable technicians of the tenor saxophone, never hesitates to express admiration.
Coleman Hawkins is more than a stylist. He is a great stylist, of course, but he is also a very, very good musician. He plays jazz, and he also plays the instrument the way it should be played. I'm sure he could take a place among symphony musicians and command their respect. You might say that the secret of his success has been that he had a natural gift and that he took trouble to develop it, just like Duke. You can't rely on natural talent alone in today's competitive music world. There certainly aren't many guys around with talent like Hawk's, and there are even fewer with what I'd call the humility to recognize any need for developing that talent.
The subject of these perceptive comments is a jazz phenomenon. In terms of durable artistic accomplishment and growth, the only parallel to Hawkins' career is provided by that of Duke Ellington. Hawkins has been challenged by different stylists several times in his long career, but his supremacy has soon been reasserted. Basic to this, and to his ability to go on adding creatively, is his sound.
Discussing the wide range of tonal approaches to the tenor saxophone in The Book of Jazz, Leonard Feather refers to the manly sonorities of a Coleman Hawkins. There have been many approaches, but for the majority of musicians and listeners, the Hawkins tone has consistently represented the ultimate. The tones of some others have been appealing, permissible deviations, though they often have suggested loyalties split between alto and tenor. Others again have sought to match Hawkins tone, but they have never quite attained its full, rounded power and authority.
Despite his strong convictions about tone, Hawkins' appreciation of another musician's ideas is unaffected by a different tonal approach.
I like most music unless it's wrong, he said. I liked Lester Young the first time I heard him, and I always got along very well with him. We were on a lot of tours together, and I spent a lot of time with him, talking and drinking, in hotel rooms and places like that. People forget that Chu Berry's sound wasn't like mine, either.
As for mine, sometimes when people think I'm blowing harder or softer, I'm really blowing with just the same power, but the difference is due to the reed. I like my reed to speak. It's supposed to sound just like a voice. On records, the engineering can do things, too make the sound harder or sharper. I dropped the buzz a long time ago and just play with a clear tone now.
His attitude toward contemporary activities is unambiguous.
I've got all that current scene, he said. If I play with you, I've got you. Coltrane, Lockjaw, Charlie Rouse, Paul Gonsalves, Johnny Griffin-I hear what they're doing, and I've played with all of them. And...I nearly forgot Sonny Rollins. He's a favorite of mine.
He kids the members of the quintet he and Roy Eldridge lead jointly: Last night you had Coltrane. Tonight you're going to get plenty of Ornette!
On his nocturnal rounds and in record studios he hears plenty of jazz, but at home the records he plays are almost entirely classical.
I love all the operas, he said. I like Stravinsky when I'm listening to Stravinsky, Bach when I'm listening to Bach
