"Hawk Returns" (Savoy) Personnel needed

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

well thank god the store i thought that had a copy still had it, for only 6 big ones to boot (one store got the lp in for 25 big ones, would of had to get that if the cd store failed me)-- anyways suprisingly, the cd lists only bean, and "boddy"? smith, drums-- and p, org, b, and vocals are unknown

are they still unknown, as of today, 3-5-07? or does anyone have the info? (brownie-chunks, im looking in your direction ;) )

[Stereojack]

well thank god the store i thought that had a copy still had it, for only 6 big ones to boot (one store got the lp in for 25 big ones, would of had to get that if the cd store failed me)-- anyways suprisingly, the cd lists only bean, and "boddy"? smith, drums-- and p, org, b, and vocals are unknown

are they still unknown, as of today, 3-5-07? or does anyone have the info? (brownie-chunks, im looking in your direction ;) )

I don't know that any new information has come to light since the publication of the Savoy discography. These sides were recorded for the Chicago-based Parrot label on May 27, 1954, and acquired by Savoy a couple of years later. The drummer is Buddy Smith, btw.

Hawk is in fine fettle on this date, even if the setting is less than ideal.

[brownie]

Nothing much is known about Bean's accompanying musicians on that one. Except for Buddy Smith being the drummer. The musicians were locals.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

so it was recorded in chicago?

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

The standard date for the Coleman Hawkins session is clearly wrong. Following all existing discographies, John Chilton's book The High and Mighty Hawk puts this session on May 27, 1954, while Hawk was headlining at the Beehive in Chicago. But the releases on Parrot 783 and 784 took place in September or October of 1953. And their matrix numbers are early in the 53100 series, sandwiched between a batch of sessions from August 10 and another bach of sessions from September. And the date wasn't May 27, 1953, either. Coleman Hawkins was pictured in the Chicago Defender of June 4, 1953, annoucing a gig at the Beehive slated to start on June 12 of that year (Hawk's contract for 4 weeks was accepted and filed by Local 208 on June 18). Hawk moved to the Toast of the Town after completing his Beehive engagement; members of his band on that job--Laurell Howell, Tom Phillips, and guitarist Leo Blevins--were hauled in front of the Board of Local 208 on August 20, 1953 because of some dispute arising out of Hawk's gig. (Unfortunately, Local 208's Secretary William Everett Samuels, who had a gift for taking down beefs using the speech patterns of the contending parties, was on vacation, and his stand-in didn't bother to describe what the dispute was about.) Our conclusion: Hawk's Parrot session took place in August, during the Toast of the Town engagement. The gig was over by the end of the month, judging from the fact that Leo Blevins next picked up a job as a leader at the Paris Club (contract posted September 3). (The matrix numbers 6994-7001 were affixed to these tracks after Savoy purchased them in 1956; Al Benson attached Parrot matrix numbers only to the four sides that he decided to release.)

Coleman Hawkins, the father of the jazz tenor saxophone, should need no introduction here. Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, on November 21, 1904, Hawk broke in with Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds in 1920. He began recording with Fletcher Henderson's big band in 1923 and by the middle of the decade was a star soloist. The 1950 - 1954 period was a down time for Hawk, who, like many other Swing-era stars, was having a tough time getting recorded; his 12 sides for Parrot are one of his biggest bodies of work from this period. Since Al Benson usually cut 4 sides to a session, and sometimes reduced his target to 2, he must have been thinking of putting out an LP on Hawk. But if that was the plan, nothing ever came of it. (Incidentally, Benson committed one of the all-time great bloopers when he rendered "I'll Follow My Secret Heart" as "I'll Follow My Sacred Heart"!)

The Hawk releases that we have heard back him with organ, piano, guitar, bass, and drums. We thought the organist was Lonnie Simmons, who was in the midst of a long-running gig at the Club DeLisa at the time, and would record his own session for Parrot in a couple of months. But Craig Browning notes that the organist sounds like the legendary Les Strand (who was credited, in an entry in Leonard Feather's encyclopedia, with making his debut on a Coleman Hawkins recording for "Peacock"). Comparing these sides with Les Strand's 1957 LP for Fantasy, and Lonnie Simmons' own session for Parrot, Browning says that Simmons "plays with more block chords and heavier vibrato than does Les Strand" (email, December 21, 2004). The guitarist solos on "Blue Blue Days"; he appears to be Leo Blevins, who was on Hawk's Toast of the Town gig. On "What a Difference a Day Made" Hawk's accompaniment swells to include a rather square choir, though unlike their counterparts on Charlie Parker's "Old Folks," they sing nothing but scat syllables. The choir, still restricted to nonwords, resurfaces on the second ballad, "I'll Follow My Secret Heart." The pianist gets a solo on this number. "I'll See You Later" is a straightahead jazz performance. Strand clogs the texture a bit, and his solo is definitely pre-Jimmy Smith, but Hawk keeps the number aloft.

To complicate matters, Browning suggests that the tracks that were given matrix numbers 6994 through 6999 by Savoy later on came from a different session than those later numbered 7000 through 7003 (including all 4 sides that Parrot issued at the time). The piano is out of tune on 6994 through 6999, in tune on the 7000's.

Hawk is the dominant figure, soloing eloquently on his Parrot sessions. We just think Al Benson would have done better musically--and saved on session expenses--by sticking to four rhythm, and losing the choir that he included on the ballads. Hawk would soon rebound from this period of lowered exposure; in his fifties, he would record extensively, often working with modernists like Thelonious Monk, Randy Weston, and Max Roach. He died in New York City, on May 19, 1969.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

[brownie]

Interesting! What's your source for this, chewy?

Edited to add:

Our good friend Anatol Schenker says about the same in his liner notes to the recently released Chronological Classics Hawkins 1953-1954 CD.

Should have checked this first.

The liner notes indicate Les Strand on organ, piano and guitar, Leo Blevins on bass and Buddy Smith on drums!

Edited March 6, 2007 by brownie

[Big Beat Steve]

Brownie, the source quoted by Chewy is this:

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/parrot.html

Great site, great info on a HUGE number of R&B artists!

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

parrot was just like crown- it reissued other labels material, such as chess and checker. thats why it was called parrot, beacuse thats what parrots do: emulate or reissue the sound that the human makes, dig?

and re: the pic--- why aren't all records on coloured vinyl. why didnt blue note make their lps blue: that would of been so cool

[Big Beat Steve]

Not true, chewy.

Parrot did record and issue a LOT of their own material (see the label story under the link above). However, Parrot followed an older label - Old Swingmaster - where the same persons (including DJ Al Benson) were involved. So they took over some of the leftovers of that one. And they certainly weren't the only indie label of that time that made use of masters from other (even smaller) indies that had gone bust. At the same time they leased some of their own masters to other labels that may have had better distribution. And after Parrot went OOB a lot of their leftovers went to Chess that had leased recordings from them before (so it's actually the other way round from what you wrote). Not a copycat practice but normal procedures at that time.

As for Crown, they were a cheapo offshoot of the Modern/RPM label group (run by the Bihari brothers). So obviously they reissued that material again. But it all remained within the same company. It's a bit like reissue or budget sublabels with the majors, such as the Wing subsidiary of Mercury/EmArcy, etc.