Coleman Hawkins - tritone substitutions

Addition to the previous entry about how Coleman Hawkins came to learn the tritone substitutions.



While reading Hawkins' book The Song Of The Hawk I have come over nice story, which tells us probably how Coleman Hawkins learned about the possibility of tritone substitutions, in words of Albert Bettonville, recalling a night out in Ostend in 1937:

"We went to an Hungarian nightclub to hear a tzigane violinist playing and also improvising with maestria. Hawk was extremely interested  and talked a lot with him about harmony. When I met Hawk again after the war I congratulated him for his superb 'Body and Soul'. He only said - Do you remember that Hungarian violinist?"

Hawk is also talking about its acceptance, in one interview: 

"You know when the record first came out, everybody including Chu Berry said I was playing wrong notes on it. They just weren't making these changes. But the changes I made on 'Body and Soul' are the only changes to make. They thought I was wrong. But at that time you make some type of a D change going into D flat and that was wrong. At that time you had to make an A flat 7th (they didn't know, that was relative chord to D anyway) to go into D flat. They heard that D and it had to be: 'Oh, that's terrible.' It became common after that, but it certainly wasn't common before I made 'Body and Soul', I can tell you that."

What a brave, fearless, adventurous man it was, the great Coleman Hawkins.

Coleman Hawkins solo - She's Funny That Way

This recording was made on October 11, 1939. This date should be well known to every jazz fan, as this is the same date, on which Hawk recorded the famous Body And Soul, which laid the fundamentals of  bebop harmonic playing.
Having in mind my last transcription of Coleman Hawkins, from 1944, this solo from 1939 is to me clearly showing the way, how Hawk came to utilizing the tritone substitutions in his playing. We can see his use of diminished chord (anticipating dominant F7b9 chord to the tonic Bb major), freely floating from Bb major scale through the diminished chord (mostly descending -> f# eb c a) back to the home Bb major.
Changing one tone in the diminished (c to b natural) shows us exactly the way I think Hawk discovered the possible use of tritone substitutive chords for playing out of key (Imaj, I#7, Imaj) or playing through ii-V-I changes by using ii-I#7-I. In this so to say "early" solo he mostly doesn't yet use the full tritone substitution (he still holds on to the "c" tone in the diminished chord), but we can see some patterns, where only changing one tone would lead exactly to the harmonic progressions present in later Rainbow Mist solo (for example the 1st measure of the solo on the last bar Hawk plays f# eb c a, changing c to h would give us the substitution progression).

I am very glad to be able to examine recordings by the great jazz artists and finding out on my own, how they came to their style of playing. These moments of finding such clear (at least to me) evidence of Hawk's continual development make me feel that even my journey of jazz has a purpose.
I can't explain it, I just feel it.
Here is the solo, enjoy. But going through the notes, don't forget to still focus on the most important - swing!
Coleman Hawkins - She's Funny That Way