Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster

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Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster
Coleman Hawkins studio album

Publication
(s)

1959

Label (s) Verve Records

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

jazz

Title (number)

6th

occupation

production

Norman Granz

Studio (s)

los Angeles

chronology
The Hawk Flies High (1957) Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster The Genius of Coleman Hawkins (1959)
Coleman Hawkins at the Spotlite Club, circa September 1947. Photograph by William P. Gottlieb

Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster is a jazz album by Coleman Hawkins , recorded on October 16, 1957 and released in 1959 on the Verve label.

Prehistory of the album

Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster is in the context of the Ben Webster album Soulville, which was also recorded the day before for Verve , in almost identical line-up, and the album The Genius of Coleman Hawkins , also with the Oscar Peterson Quartet as an accompanying group. The Encounters album is one of a series of jazz albums in which Norman Granz used the Oscar Peterson quartet as a backing band for numerous successful recordings, such as Roy Eldridge's album Roy and Diz in 1954, Stan Getz and the Oscar Peterson Trio in 1957, and Lester Young's Laughin to Keep from Cryin 1958 and Ben Webster Meets Oscar Peterson 1959, which today belong to the classic albums of mainstream jazz .

1957-tenor Swing Hawkins was for a good year in February created a Capitol album with string accompaniment ( The Gilded Hawk ), in March he took with Jay Jay Johnson , Idrees Sulieman and Hank Jones The Hawk Flies High for Prestige on , followed by sessions with artists as diverse as Henry "Red" Allen or Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane ("Monk's Music") in June. In October the recordings for Norman Granz 'young Verve label were made. a. the Encounters album has been recorded. Hawk then took part in a reunion session of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra; in December, Hawkins appeared on television on The Sound of Jazz series. Hawkins also toured for Jazz at the Philharmonic ; in this context, live recordings were also made in October ( Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge at the Opera House ).

“It was an indirect teacher-student relationship” that had linked Hawkins and Webster since the days when Webster took his place in the Fletcher-Henderson Band: “Because where the story of the tenor saxophone began with Hawkins, there Webster was the first to continue to creatively write them, and so it was more than just one of the ... "This and that meets this and that" sessions, as the sensitive lyric poet and the sometimes fire-breathing dragon on October 16, 1957 finally went to the studio together for the first time. "

Edition history

The album was released under the numbers Verve MGV 8377 and 2304169. The first CD edition (823 120-2) contained the original album; the later reissue, published in 1997, also includes the canceled takes of "Blues for Yolande", in which one can watch the development of the title. Two other tracks recorded during this session, "Maria" and "Cocktails for Two", were initially released on CD on various Hawkins compilations such as "Compact Jazz" or "Verve Jazz Masters" and on the album Hawkins and Confrères (Verve 835255-2 ), coupled with recordings made in 1958 by Hawks with trumpeter Roy Eldridge .

title

  1. "Blues for Yolande" (C. Hawkins)
  2. "It Never Entered My Mind" ( Rodgers and Hart )
  3. "La Rosita" (Haenecken and O'Keefe)
  4. " You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To " ( Cole Porter )
  5. "Prisoner of Love" ( Columbo / Gaskill / Robin )
  6. "Tangerine" ( Mercer and Schertzinger )
  7. "Shine On, Harvest Moon" ( Norworth and Bayes )

Musical analysis and evaluation of the album

Digby Fairweather in the "Jazz Rough Guide" describes the Encounters album as "the classic musical meeting of two former giants"; Ralf Dombrowski rates it as an unspectacular and charming "highlight of the swinging old school". For the Hawkins biographer Teddy Doering , the album is “a great moment not only for Hawk, but also for Webster. Both tenorists share almost all the solos, and the Peterson Quartet sees itself in the role of a perfectly playing accompaniment ”. Hawkins and Webster have known each other since the 1930s; and so this session is “characterized by mutual admiration, but also by respect and closeness. This is always clear when one takes over the solo from the other, or better continues. With two exceptions, Hawk has the first solo, Ben has time to listen, and when it is his turn he goes into what has been played before. “In Never Entered My Mind and You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To Webster opened with the first solo. “Both put their fluency aside and concentrated on shining through tone, line design and solo dramaturgy .” Except for the first track on the record, a blues composition by Hawkins, they chose pieces from the Great American Songbook .

"Blues for Yolande" is their unsurpassed masterpiece; After Peterson's rolling, blues-emphasized introduction, only Hawkins has three choruses , in which he increases step by step, up to that screeching climax at the beginning of the third chorus. Then Webster comes, initially very cautious, in order to undertake an increase in his turn, but not in terms of the tone like Hawk, but with the phrasing. "

Webster “simply blows his mentor Coleman Hawkins against the wall,” said Bob Blumenthal, jazz writer for the “Boston Phoenix” among others, in his review, “for me it was the period in which Webster was at the height of his Expressiveness. ” Richard Cook and Brian Morton gave the album the highest rating in the Penguin Guide to Jazz . In a BBC audience poll, the album was voted 32nd among the 100 best jazz records of all time. In the "Rolling Stone Record Guide" the album received the highest rating with five stars.

Literature / sources

Web links

Remarks

  1. Ben Webster was accompanied by Barney Kessel , Herb Ellis, Ray Brown, JC Heard, and Stan Lewey .
  2. There are contradicting statements about the recording date of the "Genius" album: While Doering assumes October 24, 1957, the Bielefeld catalog assumes October 16, ie at the same time as the "Encounters" session.
  3. a b Jörg Alisch Ben Webster: Of soft sound and hard fate ( Memento of the original from December 1, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / alisch.trilithium.de
  4. a b Ralf Dombrowski Basis-Diskothek Jazz , Stuttgart 2005, p. 105ff.
  5. a b cf. Doering p. 179
  6. cit. n. J. Alisch, Ben Webster: Of soft sound and hard fate