A Quote by Coleman Hawkins
Some people say there was no jazz tenor before me. All I know is I just had a way of playing and I didn't think in terms of any other instrument but the tenor
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Some people say there was no jazz tenor before me. All I know is I just had a way of playing and I didn't think in terms of any other instrument but the tenor.
When I make films, I don't think of any other directors or their work in terms of the rhythm of the editing or the tenor of the performances.
I kinda always wanted to be a tenor player, but I'm a small guy, and tenor was just too big.
Switch to piano! No. Really, if you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. Of course, it would be best if you could actually sing with your own voice. The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. Therefore, the challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument or 'voice' that is outside of your body. I love that challenge and have for over forty-five years. As far as playing jazz, no other art form, other than conversation, can give the satisfaction of spontaneous interaction.
I was 16 when I came to New York. I had graduated to a tenor banjo in the school jazz band, and it was kind of boring - just chords, chords, chords. Then my father took me to a mountain music and dance festival in Asheville, North Carolina, and there I saw relatively uneducated people playing great music by ear.
Alto (saxophone) is just a very hard instrument; there's so few people that play it really well. I feel it's the best one, too, now. At first I didn't feel that way; I wanted to be a tenor player. It took a long time for me to feel that alto was the most expressive of the saxophones.
I spent five years, at least, working with Miles. Together, we recorded ESP, Nefertiti, Sorcerer -- and I can tell you; each of these albums instantly became jazz classics. Hey, we had Wayne Shorter playing tenor sax, Ron [Carter] on bass, Tony Williams played drums. That was great band we had.
I bought a tenor but I haven't dedicated the time to it, plus I haven't found a mouthpiece that I like as of yet. I've been doing a lot of mouthpiece searching for the alto in the last few years and now that that's cooled out maybe I can begin the search for a tenor mouthpiece. After doing it for the alto, I just haven't felt like looking for any more mouthpieces. You play both, right?
People had been so attached to the Diane [Cheers] character that audiences and producers found it difficult to think of me in any other terms. It took some time before people would consider me for other parts.
The saxophone is an imperfect instrument, especially the tenor and soprano, as far as intonation goes. The challenge is to sing on an imperfect instrument that is outside of your body.
My voice gets recognized before anything else. It's always gotten attention. In choruses at church and school, I started as a tenor, moved to a baritone and finally became a bass. I knew then that my voice would be my instrument. Now if I want to hide, I just keep my mouth shut.
My father was a jazz tenor sax player. He played in a lot of big bands. So I had that sound around me all the time. The first record that really caught my ear was Clifford Brown's 'Brownie Eyes.' I grew up listening to John Coltrane and Illinois Jacquet. This is where I come from... I love improvisational music.
I think it all comes back to the individual. My instrument's just a pile of metal and wood! If you listen to the way I speak I have a lot of rhythm, use a lot of accents. When I'm playing my instrument that concept comes through very clearly. In fact some people who've seen me play have noticed that I'm singing - but it's more that I'm actually speaking. So it's not really about the instrument. But for me, in my thinking, the music is all about the melody. When I compose, 99 percent of the time I start with the melody.
They would wake me up when I was sleeping, and say sing a song for our friends. I had a sweet voice, I had a nice little tenor voice. God knows what I sang, but my whole family would admire me.
The more I studied the Bible, however, I had to admit that the prosperity message did not line up with the tenor of Scripture. My heart was crushd to think that I led so many people astray. I was appalled that I could have been so wrong, and I was deeply grateful that God had not struck me dead as a false prophet.
I consider myself a logical person and, you know, a lot of people try to categorize me in one way or another. You know, there are some of the things that I say that probably would be considered very much non-conservative. But I don't think really conservative or liberal; I think: What makes sense? What's going to help the American people? What's going to give them what they need? Not only in health care but in terms of jobs, in terms of education, in terms of a whole host of issues.
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