[Dixielandjazz] Coleman Hawkins's wrong move

[Bert]

I can see the point about Hawk's wrong move...... if you are a fan of novelty music.
Quite often when Hawk was doing bass sax, it was in duet with Don Redman.They developped a lot of tricks together, where Redman might play goofus, or funny short complicated breaks, where each of them may play a few notes of a line, followed by the other in a totally different register. Actually they were doing many things like this before Armstrong arrived and they were still only with two reeds.Almost at the same time as when Armstrong came a third reed was added, Buster Bailey, and Hawk was doubting whether a third player wouldn't disturb their little games. But after all Hawk was happy, since Bailey, being a clarinet soloist was no competition on sax, and fitted nicely in the section.Much of these Redman/Hawkins duets/tricks were without a doubt inspired by Rudy Wiedoeft's huge succes, but never in the same class. 

It is in fact fascinating to realise how many white examples the entire Henderson outfit took, before Armstrong , but even after he left.
- Fletcher was billed as the Paul Whiteman of the race. (May not sound very funny in 2015, but was at the time used for promotion)- Hawk imitating Rollini on bass sax- Novelty influences from Wiedoeft and six brown brothers- Many tunes recorded earlier by the ODJB- Quite a few tunes that were big records from Beiderbecke allready, where Rex Stewart (who loved Bix) tried to copy the Bix solos note by note. - Benny Carter claiming that he was very much inspired by the clean, well in tune lead work Trumbauer was delivering. 
If you see this list, it is actually not such a big surprise after all, that when Armstrong joined in 1924, with all his bagage of real blues, N.O. and Chicago experiences it was a kind of shock for the musicians based in New York.
Kind regards,
Bert Brandsma



> I do remember a long time ago Humphrey Lyttelton found a quotation to the effect that Coleman Hawkins had made a serious mistake going for tenor saxophone rather than his true instrument, the BASS saxophone. 
> 
> This -- propounded seriously by someone -- was not a heresy with many adherents.  
> More mould than fig.
> 
> Robert R. Calder 
> _______________________________________________
> To unsubscribe or change your e-mail preferences for the Dixieland Jazz Mailing list, or to find the online archives, please visit:
> 
> http://ml.islandnet.com/mailman/listinfo/dixielandjazz
> 
> 
> 
> Dixielandjazz mailing list
> Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com