Farewell to the Hawk

For the guitar, there is Segovia; for the cello, Casals; and for the tenor saxophone, there was Coleman Hawkins. Before him, the instrument was a straw among the winds, used only for nasal accents in the background of jazz bands. "Bean," as Hawkins' friends called him, transformed it into an expressive solo voice that could breathe lyrical long tones on ballads or erupt into flights of dazzling arpeggios. In a sense, it could be said that he created the tenor sax, and players from Ben Webster to Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane have acknowledged their debt to his inspiration and style. After a life that spanned three generations of jazz, Hawkins died last week at 64, of pneumonia.

Born in St. Joseph, Mo., Hawk began to play the piano at five, the cello at seven, and was fingering a sax at nine. While playing with Singer Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds on a Manhattan gig, Hawkins, then 19, was heard one night by Band Leader Fletcher Henderson, who signed him and kept him for eleven years. Hawk developed his particular sound--breathy, but also powerful and deep-grounded--in part, as he once said, "because I was trying to play over seven or eight other horns all the time." In 1939, while working with his own combo in New York City, he recorded a version of Body and Soul for RCA Victor's Bluebird label--one of the authentic masterpieces of jazz--a flight of improvised melody as carefully organized as variations on a fugue, a gravely sweet meditation on the hidden melodies within a commonplace tune.

Father Figure. Hawk reached his peak of popularity as a musicians' musician during the early '40s. But he kept abreast of later changes, from swing to bop to the cooler, lighter sound of the '50s. He also became something of a father figure to young players, whom he entertained in his Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park, talking music or baseball and cooking for them (he loved all kinds of beans--and popcorn). Almost always in the background there was the sound of classical music; Hawk loved Bach and Beethoven as much as a strong jazz solo.

In the last few months he ate little, drank too much and had a constant struggle with illness. When he did perform, he would come on the stand bearded and bowed, seemingly dwarfed by his big horn, smiling mischievously. The notes would stumble at first, and the tremolo might widen into an uncontrolled wobble of sound--but sooner or later Hawk would explode into a solo that recalled earlier days: warm, austere, unfailingly rhythmic even in the midst of a caressing ballad. Afterward he might laugh a little, as if sharing the private pleasure of self-rediscovery with his audience. "He put a lot of beauty into his playing," said Drummer Eddie Locke, a longtime friend. "He was full of music." So he did; so he was.

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