Coleman Hawkins

1974 Words4 Pages

Coleman Hawkins

“I think he was the most interesting jazz musician I’ve ever seen in my life. He just looked so authoritative . . . I said, ‘Well, that’s what I want to do when I grow up.’”(DeVeaux, 35) Cannonball Adderley said these words when he first saw Coleman Hawkins with the Fletcher Henderson band at the City Auditorium in Tampa, Florida. Just as Hawkins influenced one of the greatest alto players in history, he has influenced many people to become phenomenal saxophone players. Lester Young and Sonny Rollins both give tribute to Coleman Hawkins as being the “‘proliferator’ of the tenor saxophone as a jazz instrument.”(Kernfeld, 506) Hawkins, unfortunately, is labeled as a swing musician though; and while he did begin his career during the swing era playing with such greats as Louie Armstrong, Fletcher Henderson, Wilbur Sweatman, and Ginger Jones, he continued his career later in life with players like Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Milt Jackson – some of the best bop and modern jazz artists known to date.(Kernfeld, 505) This paper is devoted to the truthful portrayal of Coleman Hawkins, his life, his playing, and the art he helped create known as jazz.

Coleman Hawkins, also affectionately known as “Bean” and/or “Hawk”, was born November 21st, 1904 in St. Joseph, Missouri. The nick-name “Bean” came about due to his knowledge of music. Budd Johnson explained:

We called him Bean . . . because he was so intelligent about music and the way he could play and the way he could think and the way his chord progressions run. We’d call him Bean, instead of ‘Egghead,’ you know.(DeVeaux,65)

He began music at the age of five, having been taught piano by his mother – a school teacher and church organist. By a...

... middle of paper ...

...d, cultural memory begins with death: the death of the creator. The search for meaning is left up to the survivors. It is up to us to decide how to tell the story, how best to represent the struggle and achievement of artists whose lives belong to the past but whose music continues to live in the present. In the process, we will decide what “jazz” will mean in the century ahead.

Bibliography:

DeVeaux, Scott. Birth of Bebop, The.

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 1997

http://www.la.psu.edu/~jselzer/burke/hawk1.html

2/18/00

http://www.ponyexpress.net/~colehawkins/abouthawk.html

2/18/00

Kernfeld, Berry. New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, The. Vol. II

London: The MacMillan Company, 1988

Sadie, Stanley. New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The. Vol. II

New York: The MacMillan Company, 1928

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