"I am no more optimistic about the future of jazz, as I am about the future of life, because, life is jazz." -Sonny Rollins-

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

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.

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