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Great Encounters
The Lester Young/Coleman Hawkins Kansas City battle...
Excerpted from
Lester
Leaps In:
The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young
by
Douglas Henry Daniels
(Lester) Young earned recognition for being not only
a stylist but a saxophone "freak" - not a pejorative term at all but rather
a comment on his unparalleled virtuosity. He "could make a note anywhere"
on his instrument. Certain notes were usually produced by depressing specific
keys or combinations of keys on the saxophone (or valves on the trumpet and
cornet), but "freaks" found ways to defy convention and orthodoxy by means
of "false fingerings" and adjustments of the mouth and lips, or embouchure.
The trombonist-guitarist Eddie Durham explained that "Coleman Hawkins and
Chu Berry and those guys, they fingered it correctly with what they were
doing. Lester and those guys (e.g. Herschel Evans) didn't." Furthermore,
Young and Evans "could do anything they wanted to do with a horn, anywhere."
It is against this background, then, that we should
reinterpret accounts of the most famous saxophone cutting contest in the
history of jazz. Legend has it that Young proved his worth in competition
with Coleman Hawkins, bandleader Fletcher Henderson's biggest star, at the
Cherry Blossom at 1822 Vine Street in Kansas City, Missouri. Mary Lou Williams,
the pianist and arranger with Andy Kirk's band, was one of the first to tell
the story of the local tenor men - Dick Wilson, Herschel Evans, Herman Walder,
Ben Webster, and Young - triumphing over Coleman Hawkins, who lingered so
long trying to get the best of the Kansas City stalwarts that he blew the
engine on his new Cadillac while racing to the next Henderson date in St.
Louis. In Williams's words, "Hawkins was king until he met those crazy Kansas
City tenor men." Gene Ramey, from Austin, Texas, maintained that Young "tore
Hawkins so bad…Seemed like the longer Pres played, the longer they had
that head-cuttin' session…the better Pres go." The drummer Jo Jones
and other musicians also related the tale, but few claimed actually to have
been there to witness the dethronement.
It is difficult to verify the date of the battle
or, as we shall see, whether it even occurred the way Williams and Jones
recalled it, because though it was often recited as fact, it was witnessed
by only a few people who left records of their recollections. In 1934, only
about four months after the alleged cutting contest, the Chicago
Defender not only praised Young as "one of the most celebrated
tenor sax players in the music world" but also noted that he was "rated by
many to be the equal of the old master (Coleman Hawkins)." The article made
no mention of the Kansas City battle.
Perhaps the much-discussed event occurred after
a "Night Club Party" advertised in the Kansas City Call
in December 1933, shortly before Prohibition officially ended. As a matter
of course, newspapers would not have documented a jam session, but
Hendersonia, the definitive survey of the band's activities,
did list a December 1933 date in Kansas City. Then, too, the St. Louis portion
of the story is corroborated by ads in the St. Louis
Argus announcing that Fletcher Henderson and His Roseland Orchestra
would play a December 1933 date at the People's Finance Ballroom.
Noteworthy among the problems of verifying the
battle royal is the fact that no less a personage than Count Basie himself
challenged the actual story, maintaining, "I really don't remember that anybody
thought it was such a big deal at the time." Basie admitted to having been
in the Cherry Blossom and having witnessed the jam session among the city's
tenor players, but he insisted, "I don't remember it the way a lot of people
seem to and in all honesty I must also say that some of the stories I have
heard over the years about what happened that night and afterwards just don't
ring any bells for me." He recalled that after repeatedly being asked to
play, Hawkins "decided to get his horn" and went across the street to his
hotel to get it. When he returned, several people commented on his unusual
behavior, because as John Kirby stated, "I ain't never seen that happen before"
- that is, "Nobody had ever seen Hawk bring his horn somewhere to get in
a jam session."
In his autobiography, Basie related how Hawkins
went on the bandstand "and he started calling for all of those hard keys,
like E-flat and B-natural. That took care of quite a few local characters
right away." Basie did not recall Mary Lou Williams's presence, but he conceded
that he left early and she might have come later. (She did.) But the very
fact that he went home to go to sleep, he emphasized, suggested that no real
battle was taking place: "I don't know anything about anybody challenging
Hawkins in the Cherry Blossom that night," he reiterated.
Basie acknowledged how subjective such undertakings
could be when he mused, "Maybe that is what some of those guys up there had
on their minds," adding, "but the way I remember it, Hawk just went on up
there and played around with them for a while, and then when he got warmed
up, he started calling for them bad keys." He concluded, "That's the main
thing I remember." Williams's version of the story is neater and more dramatic
than Basie's, and perhaps closer to what Kansas Citians wanted to believe.
But as Basie pointed out, sometimes it was a matter of opinion as to who
won a cutting contest.
There is another problem with the accepted version
of the tale: Young also told it differently, without making any mention of
a cutting contest. He explained that he and Herschel Evans and others were
standing outside a Kansas City club one night, listening to the Henderson
band: "I hadn't any loot, so I stayed outside listening. Herschel was out
there, too." Coleman Hawkins had not shown up for the date, so Henderson
approached the crowd of hangers-on and, according to Young's account, challenged
them, asking (in Young's words, which were not necessarily Henderson's own),
"Don't you have no tenor players here in Kansas City? Can't none of you
motherfuckers play?"
Since Evans could not read music, Young accepted
the challenge at the urging of his friends. Young recalled how he had always
heard "how great (Hawkins was)…grabbed his saxophone, and played the
motherfucker, and read the music, and read his clarinet part and
everything" Then he hurried off to play his own gig at
the Paseo Club, where a mere thirteen people made up the audience. Young
nonetheless savored the memory of his triumph, observing, "I don't think
he (Hawkins) showed at all."
By Young's account, his success that night was
highly symbolic, given that Hawkins was not even present. After all, with
no rehearsal, he sat in the great saxophonist's chair and played his part,
reading the music on sight "and everything." The basic point of the Williams
and Young versions is the same: the new stylist with a local following defeated
or matched the champion tenor player from the premier New York City jazz
orchestra. Williams's retelling of Young's triumph sought to legitimize a
new tenor stylist; the detail about Hawkins' ruining his new car was very
likely an embellishment designed to enhance the taste of victory by stripping
the loser of a prized possession.
Mary Lou Williams's account served to validate
not only Young himself but also what would become known as the Kansas City
style or school. It made the tenor saxophonist's subsequent attainment of
the Hawkins chair in Henderson's band more meaningful, since this particular
jam session was said to have convinced the orchestra leader that he needed
to hire Kansas City men such as Young. However, the reputation that Young
had earned with King Oliver and his sidemen may have played just as great
a role in Henderson's recruitment of him as the famous story of Young's defeating
Hawkins. King Oliver, Snake Whyte, trumpet player Herman "Red" Elkins, and
others spread word of Young's impressive abilities among fellow musicians.
Some time later, for example, Elkins ran into Red Allen and asked him, after
he had heard Young play, "What did you think of Lester?" "Oh, he was all
right, but he wasn't no Hawk," Allen said. Elkins responded to the lukewarm
statement by exclaiming, "I know he's no Hawk. Prez will set Hawk down in
a jam session and blow him clear out the room!"
Another interesting aspect of the story is the
fact that because Young refused to play like Hawkins, Henderson's reedmen
snubbed him. The tale of the victory of the Kansas City style goes some way
toward explaining the poor treatment Young would receive from Henderson's
men after he joined the band a few months later: they were generally
uncooperative and probably jealous of the upstart. Because of his unique,
un-Hawkins-like tone, Young was ostracized and resented by the New York musicians
during the few months he was with the band, from spring to summer 1934.
___________________________________________
Lester
Leaps In:
The Life and Times of Lester "Pres" Young
by
Douglas Henry Daniels
Text published with the permission of Beacon Press.
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