Thou Swell

Back in the dark days of the pandemic, like many others I found myself with more time on my hands than usual, so decided to do some transcribing. I'd transcribed a lot when I was a student both as a way of working on my aural skills and also developing my vocabulary, and although I often still work out individual phrases from solos, I hadn't transcribed complete solos for quite a while. For the 2-5-1 jazz podcast I present with Simon Whiteside we had planned to do an in-depth study of pianist Hampton Hawes (still to be completed!) so I thought it was a good opportunity to transcribe some of his solos, as he's always been one of my favourite players.

When I transcribe I never slow the recordings down. This is just a personal choice, as a large part of the reason I transcribe stuff is to use it as an 'ear' training exercise. Obviously this entails a lot of rewinding and repeating certain sections to figure out the notes, but I find after a while I start to hear things clearer and the whole process takes less time. It also gives me more of an excuse for all the inevitable mistakes!

The first solo I chose was Hawes's solo on Thou Swell from the album 'Four' from 1958 with Barney Kessel on guitar, Red Mitchell on bass and Shelley Mann on drums. I've included the track and my transcription below after which I'll give a short analysis of the solo. Solo starts at 1:10.

One interesting thing to note about this performance is the way that Barney Kessel plays four-to-the-bar chords in the style of Basie's guitar player Freddie Green, which gives the whole track a more Swing like feel, even though the improvising language used by Hawes is definitely bebop derived. Hawes is often associated with the 'West Coast' jazz scene (as are the other members of the quartet) and this school sometimes drew on influences from earlier jazz whilst combining them with more progressive elements.

With regard to the solo itself, one thing that strikes me is how much Hawes varies the quaver feel. From the very 'triplety' quavers he uses for the sequence starting at bar 11 to the long phrase beginning at bar 43 where the quavers are almost straight. This gives the solo a very dynamic quality, and Hawes combines this shifting quaver feel with strong offbeat accents to create a really bouncy swing feel.

There is a lot of rhythmic variety in the solo, and Hawes very rarely plays long strings of quavers. He is always breaking the line up with triplets, semi-quavers and even occasionally crotchets. Even when he repeats melodic ideas - like the descending sequence he repeats at bars 10 to 12, 26 to 28, 74 to 76 and 90 to 92, he varies the rhythm each time.

In terms of the improvising language Hawes's main influence here is almost certainly Bud Powell. Along with Charlie Parker Powell did perhaps more than any other figure to lay the groundwork for the way modern jazz would develop over subsequent years. Hawes simplifies Powell's language but keeps the basic architecture, and adds more of a blues element. This would be the approach adopted by many of the Hard-Bop/West Coast pianists in the fifties and sixties. Typical Powell phrases are the ii V I phrase in bars 29 to 30 which makes use of a chromatic line which descends from the tonic of the ii chord through the major 7th to the flattened 7th and which then becomes the 3rd of the V chord (in this key A, G#,G,F#). Hawes uses this idea a number of times (eg bars 61 to 62 and bars 93 to 94) always varying the actual line whilst using the same melodic idea. Hawes also makes heavy use of enclosure which is another inheritance from Powell. Hawes's favourite descending pattern mentioned above basically encloses the third of each of the dominant 7th chords.

An interesting section is the one beginning at bar 86 when Hawes plays three developing phrases but changes the rhythmic values each time, going from semi-quavers to triplet quavers and then triplet crotchets giving the effect of the line slowing down. The loose way Hawes phrases those final three triplet crotchets only underlines to me once again how totally inadequate Western notation is for recording improvised jazz!