November 2020: It’s impossible to be anything but dismayed at the overall state of things. Approximately zero progress has been made on the pandemic; the institutions that should have protected, informed, and healed us have totally failed, and miserably so. The “election” was (and still is) an utter embarrassment. The two groups of people I regularly work with, kids and musicians, are both suffering as greatly as ever; the initial shock of the collapse has been replaced with a gurgling sense of dread accompanied by the withering-away of invaluable time.
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The first two gods of jazz tenor saxophone are Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Any jazz fan knows this and most are familiar with the narratively convenient dichotomy of their styles: Hawk, the bold, fiery lion; versus Prez, the cool, melancholic hipster. Seemingly every aspect of each man’s style is at odds with the other’s. Hawk’s sound is fat and fluffy in the low register, growly and rough in the middle register, and blasting in the relatively rare moments where he goes up high. Lester, on the other hand, is comfortable to hang in his silky high register, but will descend to his throaty middle register and occasionally to his whispery bottom notes. Pre-war Lester’s sound is buoyant, while post-war it’s brittle; early Hawk is bulbous and strong, and later he is rough, almost plasticky. Moreover, Hawk’s sense of harmony is remarkably advanced for a pre-bop improviser: his default harmonic statement is the arpeggio, but he liberally sprinkles in adjacent chromatic tones and chord substitutions, and hiding within his arpeggios is often a smoothly voice-led composite melody, like a tasty inner voice from a pianist or a big band. Lester’s harmony is less sophisticated; essentially everything he plays is diatonic or the blues, and he is generally unbothered by quickly moving harmony so long as he can find a note or two to milk while the band shifts underneath him. A dominant chord replaced with a spooky augmented triad is about as fancy as Lester gets.
If you need a refresher on Hawk vs. Prez, listen to the most famous, recognizable solo of each character: Coleman Hawkins playing “Body and Soul” in 1939, and Lester Young playing “Oh Lady Be Good” in 1936.
Like any two diametrically opposed forces, Hawk and Prez define a spectrum, on which one can locate every jazz saxophonist since. Indeed, there is no worthy player who is not a direct descendant of both giants, in one way or another. This is of course true for the saxophonists of the generation just after Hawk and Prez, and in particular for two of my personal gods: Sonny Rollins and Warne Marsh, born 1930 and 1927 respectively. At first glance, the ancestry seems clear cut: Rollins, a vocal devotee of Hawkins with a comparably muscular tone; Marsh, perhaps the only tenor player with an ever darker, featherier tone than Prez, who literally played Lester Young transcriptions on stage. Sonny is Hawk’s next evolution, and Warne is Lester’s, right?
Not so.
Before I make my case that Sonny is actually closer to Prez and Warne is actually closer to Hawk, I want to explain why I would spend time on these comparisons at all. The goal is to show a path towards piecing together one’s own personal style. You nor I will ever do anything truly original, but we can each come up with a unique cocktail of the features of the masters. Importantly, almost none of these features are incompatible with each other, even if they may seem so at first. With a creative, open mind, it’s possible to fuse and blend seemingly opposed musical attributes. You could play like Paul Desmond and Chris Potter at the same time. You could play like Gene Ammons and Mark Turner simultaneously with a spicy dose of Don Byas. You could play fast swing like Stan Getz but play ballads like John Coltrane. And so on. Though I do not yet have a convincing solution, I strongly believe that the best of my own personal style will emerge as a crossing of Rollins and Marsh, and later on I will outline an exercise I use to deliberately cross their streams.
Up front, I will admit that Sonny Rollins is the far superior artist to Warne Marsh. Sonny is, by all accounts, a deeply thoughtful, enlightened person, a continuously unsatisfied artist continuously reaching beyond his grasp, despite a vast and diverse career. Warne became almost instantly complacent due to the deadly combination of exceptional talent and self-destructive habits. The sad truth is that one could delete Warne Marsh from jazz history and it would be relatively undisturbed, but Sonny Rollins is an obviously foundational figure, the Saxophone Colossus indeed.
However! for listeners in the know, Warne is a dark and prickly yet delicious fruit and an alluring yet dangerous influence on saxophonists. And his lackluster career was not a foregone conclusion; Sonny’s illustrious career was not either, especially considering his addiction and imprisonment in his early twenties. Both men, in fact, blossomed early into promising if not downright artistic saxophonists, and the 1950s shaped each’s career and eventual legacy.
Therefore, it is fair to compare Rollins and Marsh at the crests of their 50s waves, when their talents were freshly honed and surely disarming to a hungry listener or fellow saxophonist.
Conveniently, both Rollins and Marsh recorded “I’ll Remember April” in trio formats, in 1957.
Sonny’s is a live recording from the immortal Blue Note album A Night at “The Village Vanguard” and Warne’s is from his self-titled Atlantic release (the title of the track is merely “Excerpt,” which likely allowed the dodging of licensing fees, made possible because Warne doesn’t play the melody). Both are masterful 5-star takes; the point is not to rank them but rather to analyze them and in particular trace the Hawk and Prez influences from a generation upstream. Let’s listen.
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First, consider Sonny. Listen at least until the trading. As with any saxophonist, Sonny makes his first impression through his sound. He blows hard and tongues even harder; even his most open notes fly straight out the end of the bell. The little bit of grit at the start of the accented notes creates an obvious transient; i.e. the beginning of the note, and therefore its placement with respect to the beat, is crystal clear. The aggressive tonguing itself comes more from Coleman Hawkins, who could really smack his high notes too, but musically, the pre-head intro is a two-note riff around which the time coalesces — that’s pure Lester Young.
Semi-side note: the way Sonny plays the melody is an exemplar of what makes him so special to me: every note, every phrase is articulated in a different way. From smooth legato to chirpy staccato, from beefy straight tone to wiggly vibrato, it’s all in there. Sonny’s advantage over all other saxophonists ever (except for perhaps Bird) is his gigantic toolbelt of articulation. His air, tongue, lips, and fingers can play the same “note” in a million different ways and his unsurpassed artistry is picking out the perfect one, every single time. (Lester had lots of articulations, too, though not quite as vast a palette. Hawk even less so: I hear his default tonguing style change and develop over his career, but I don’t hear the cornucopia of articulations within a single solo to the same degree as Sonny or Prez. Vibrato is another story for another missive...)
The solo is more or less what one expects from Sonny Rollins in 1957: incredibly swinging, serious bebop, perfectly nestled in the changes, juxtaposed with levity courtesy of cute melodic commentaries and quotations. A delightful, unassailable formula. Where does this performance lie on the Hawk-Prez spectrum? Neither of the two OGs ever really embraced bebop, so we must retrodict the 1937 analog of Sonny’s use of bop as his main vehicle in 1957. What “kind” of bebop is Sonny playing? I’d call it prime, uncontroversial bebop. Rhythmically, lots and lots of eighth notes plus the classic eight-note triplet arpeggios/turns, and the upbeats are heavily accented. Melodically, the lines are full of all the lovely twists that push and pull on the beat: inner groupings of both even and odd numbers of eighth notes, expressed through articulation differences and melodic contour. Harmonically, it’s on the conservative side, relishing the glory of bop that outlines the changes as they are. The most adventurous side-steps are brief octatonic moments that intensify dominant chords, but Sonny does not leave such moments unresolved. I’d argue that this style of high bebop is to 1957 what groovy diatonic playing is to 1937; viz. Lester Young. Yes, the rougher sound indicates Hawk, but the material actually being played strikes me as coming from Lester’s philosophy (if not his style): don’t mess with the changes; don’t be esoteric; don’t forget the sweet melodic moments; let your tonguing imbue the beat with bounce, variation, and energy. An ultimately rhythmic conception with a side dish of melodic sentimentality. Another point in the Prez column: what does Sonny do at 1:43, 2:29, and 3:52? Riffs, baby! Sonny doesn’t chill on the riffs for as long as Prez would have, but that device is as Youngian as it gets. Simple, repetitive riffs deepen the groove and charge up energy to be released in subsequent bursts of melody. That was never Hawk’s style; he was always overflowing with energy and wasted no time deploying his serpentine lines straight into the foreground.
In short, while Sonny’s aggressive tone reminds us of Coleman Hawkins, the contents of his solo, and even more so his overall approach to improvising, place him, in my view, much more on the Lester Young side of the spectrum.
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On to Warne Marsh. His rendition of “I’ll Remember April” is hardly a rendition at all — it is an incomplete performance, solely a tenor solo over the changes with no reference to the melody, and no beginning nor ending except for the briefest studio fade. Marsh fans are used to this sort of thing; arrangement and presentation were not skills Marsh or any of the Tristano people possessed. Perhaps bothersome for the listener who wants a bow on top of his improvisation, but not really a problem for a saxophonist investigating the craft or a collector amassing material.
In any case, the first impression of this take is strong, despite the non-beginning, because the bass and drums are swinging hard right out of the gate. If you listen closely, you’ll notice that Warne does not actually begin with the easy-to-hear A—F# descending third; in classic Marsh form, there is an almost-imperceptible blur of a few indistinct notes just before the beat, like a drag on a snare drum made of marshmallows. The dichotomy of clear(ish) notes and ghostly shadow notes is a hallmark of Warne’s style, in a certain sense a replacement for the drama he loses by basically never tonguing. It’s not even clear if the second phrase goes straight into the third or if there is a breath between them. Listen just before the ascending triplet arpeggio at about 0:04 — does the sound stop, or is he continuing to release the slightest drip of air as a gossamer thread between two helical phrases? The mystery is tantalizing and essential to his turn-on-a-dime style. This tiny example leads us to consider his articulation more broadly. In some ways, Warne’s way of playing is simpler than Sonny’s (I think it’s easier to emulate, though also a bad idea to emulate more than just a little bit — more on that another time). It’s simpler because Warne does not have nearly the arsenal of tonguings that Sonny does, and the way the notes come out is a result of the contour of the line, which is, in general, a spontaneous creation (Sonny, though certainly spontaneous himself, has more vocabulary and often plays things that he’s clearly worked out in advance). Another way of describing this is that Warne is a “fingers-first” player while Sonny is a “tongue-first” player: Warne’s fingers think the notes and he blows through them as they come out; Sonny articulates complete ideas, complete phrases, and his fingers follow, conforming to the scales/changes/quotes so that the story his tongue tells makes sense. (Indeed, I’d argue that Coleman Hawkins is more of a fingers player and Lester Young is more of a tongue player.) My theory of Warne Marsh-style articulation is based on a visual metaphor: a moving surface, perhaps of the ocean, through which notes can either breach or descend. Notes that are higher in register or blown harder pop out; lower/softer notes stay submerged. The net effect is like watching a dolphin leap out of and back into the water as it traverses the waves — you watch, in alternation, its majestic body but then just a watery shadow. A natural follow-up question is “how much of this effect is intentional?” My guess is that it is mostly a byproduct of the lines he plays, which is to say Marsh is not really choosing when to pass through the “surface;” the direction, jaggedness, and momentum of his lines (i.e. the choices of his fingers) push him above and below naturally. This is in direct contrast with Sonny, who could play the same piece of melodic material with totally different, specifically-chosen articulations, imbuing even the most familiar line with a twist. To finish on the subject of articulation, I want to argue a somewhat subtle point: although Warne’s notes can come out in wildly different ways in terms of timbre, volume, and emphasis, the technique behind them is rather homogeneous and is subordinate to his melodic, finger-led thinking. And despite his generally warbly sound that is at odds with the beefiness of Hawk, Warne’s overall approach, the order of operations to getting notes out of the horn, is more aligned with Hawk than with Lester.
With respect to harmony, Warne Marsh is almost inarguably more advanced and adventurous than Sonny Rollins, at least at this point in their careers. That is not a value judgment, though. There is certainly a glory to Sonny hitting all the right notes all the time and a satisfaction to reciting bebop vocabulary that Warne never gives. Nonetheless, Warne’s harmony is surprising, edgy, and utterly progressive for the 1950’s, and therefore a treat for any listener attuned to it. The whole solo is full of goodies, but listen to the chorus from about 0:54 to 1:45. He is juggling forbidden fruit the whole time but is nevertheless playing the changes. You can hear alterations of the basic chords, superimpositions of new chords, and delightful sidesteps into neighboring harmonies that swivel back home in a frankly sexy way. Without getting into pages of analysis, the fact of the matter is that Sonny did not play like that, and Lester Young even less so. However, Coleman Hawkins’ playing is full of comparable moments — tasteful flirtations with remote harmonies, gracefully packaged within lines that begin and end inside the changes. In fact, until Warne, there was not really a saxophonist as harmonically adventurous as Hawk, and there have been few since. Warne and Hawk are further connected by their reluctance to regurgitate. Neither player has characteristic licks; they improvise more on a note-to-note basis. Sonny and Lester, of course, were unafraid of vocabulary.
So, let’s tally up the final scorecard. Sonny’s burly tone — yes, more Hawk-like; Warne’s feathery, high-register-centric tone — yes, closer to Prez. But Sonny’s overall style: highly varied, well-curated articulation; conservative diatonic harmony; a mix of linear playing and melodic/riffy playing; and an ultimately rhythmic conception — that’s Lester Young. By contrast, Warne’s overall style: a finger-first approach with articulations as byproducts of the lines; progressive, adventurous harmony; a constant flow of abstract ideas without appealing to fossilized vocabulary — Coleman Hawkins, through and through. Perhaps not the initially expected result, but that’s the point — great players take lots of little things from other great players, and superficial influences need not box one into a narrow style.
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Frankly, it doesn’t really matter if Sonny/Warne is more like Hawk or more like Prez. It is not so hard to argue the opposite of what I said above (though I still think I’m right of course). My large-scale goal here is to prove that saxophone playing, and indeed any complex craft/artform, is built up from a large amount of small components, many of which are independent of each other. This is a deep fact because it shows that there can be a truly gigantic number of different styles even without coming up with something “truly original” (the originality, I’d argue, would come from the choice of how to combine these components). It also indicates how one might improve their playing. In my opinion, there is not really such a thing as “general improvement.” Rather, one can crank up individual skills a little at a time through exercise, then make an artistic judgment about how to compile them into a musical personality. Transcription is great, probably indispensable, but you must break apart what you transcribe into its pieces: pitch content, articulation, time feel, pacing, tone, etc. Otherwise you’re missing the full benefit and you’re doomed to merely amassing vocabulary. Not to mention it takes a little pressure off if you transcribe a solo for a purpose, say, to feel how Freddie Hubbard places his notes relative to the beat. In that case, it’s fine if you miss some notes or leave out the double time! Moreover, this way of thinking, factoring great players/solos/records into their components, can alleviate some of the anxiety of falling in love with seemingly incompatible styles. From the perspective of a young saxophonist in 1940, Lester and Hawk must have seemed incompatible, but every great saxophonist since has taken from both! A generation or two later, one might have felt that one had to choose between, say, Zoot Sims and Joe Henderson; nowadays, Chris Potter and Mark Turner, but no. There is no single choice to be made — follow the heart and cherrypick. It goes deeper: if you play jazz but you love to listen to Sting or Tchaikovsky or Umm Kulthum, figure out what small piece of those outside influences you can appropriate and coherently integrate into your jazz playing. Go beneath the surface. Don’t just copy — analyze, abstract, experiment. So much more is possible than any of us realize.
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Coda: I love the two “I’ll Remember April” cuts because the changes and the trio format act as a kind of scientific “control” relative to which one can experiment. A fun exercise is to play along. There are four basic ways to do this: play like Sonny with Sonny; play like Warne with Warne; play like Sonny with Warne; play like Warne with Sonny. And when I say “play like,” I mean “take some element of that player’s style and try to incorporate it;” the point is not to be a carbon copy. Articulation, time feel, harmonic approach: all good individual options. I usually start by playing like Sonny along with Sonny — the intro and melody make a good on-ramp and the solo is nice and long so you can take little breaks to listen then dive back in if need be. Once you get cooking and you feel your Sonny Rollins impression is at least passable, switch over immediately to the Warne recording and play along with him. As best as you can, keep the Sonny approach going, but keep your ears open to Warne at the same time. How do the eighth notes fit together? Can you compromise on the fly, find some novel mixture? What usually happens to me is Warne takes over my ears after a couple minutes and I start playing more and more like him. You could do another round of Warne-style over Warne, then switch to Sonny, and play like Warne over Sonny. And so on and so forth; it’s like alternately dunking in hot and cold baths. After five or six rounds (~20 minutes), I like to just play on my own, maybe with a metronome, and see what comes out. You’ll surprise yourself! Sometimes this particular combo comes out sounding kind of like Chris Cheek; sometimes it’s more like Joe Lovano; sometimes something totally weird. Most of all, it’s really fun and also challenging — the best kind of practice.
One can easily play this sort of game with Sonny and Trane using “Tenor Madness,” or with Stitt/Ammons, or with Miles/Cannonball/Coltrane. A slightly different game: play a single tune for a long time and try to “time travel.” Pick something easy — I like to start by playing Lester’s “Lady Be Good” solo verbatim — and try to move through the styles of various players as continuously as possible. I say continuously because the liminal spaces between styles is where you’ll discover the most exciting stuff. Start with Lester, then try to play some Hawk, then maybe jump to Bird, take a detour to Lee Konitz or Hank Mobley, then Sonny, or maybe go straight for Coltrane, then Joe Henderson, then Dewey Redman, then maybe tread back to Ornette, then Albert Ayler… Over the course of ten minutes, you’ll get a physical and mental workout, and also probably play things you’ve never played before.
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Bonus recommendations:
A Fire Across the Deep by Vernor Vinge: sci-fi novel that I have dragged my feet on but enjoyed nonetheless. The greatest strength is the world building and believable dialogue. Some of the political machinations of characters are pretty boring, and the plot doesn’t really begin until page 150 (also really slows down around p. 300), but it’s been a good read before bed and on the train.
Into the Breach by Subset Games (known for FTL: Faster Than Light): really excellent turn-based strategy game, less stressful than FTL but more to my taste. Chess-like in several ways but with tons of variation due to the various squads you can play as. Relatively small number of enemy types and missions but they mix in interesting ways and a two-hour playthrough can go by in the blink of an eye.
Duke Ellington: duh. Just particularly in the mood these days. I mean come on man.
Neil Luck, British composer: a brilliant madman I recently discovered. Thinks bigger than just the music, really fun and zany without coming across as gimmicky. This video got me hooked. Read some of his writing on a blog too and enjoyed that.