Friday, May 25, 2007

ARTY-FARTY FRIDAY #5



(Click on image for larger version)

I saw this painting, by HeWhoKnows, before any of his other artwork. I liked it at once, and it turned out that it's his own favourite too. It has always hung somewhere in his home, while most of his other handiwork remained hidden in a closet (until I arrived!) He tells me it was originally a charcoal sketch which he later enhanced. It was a drawing he'd made following his first sight of the musician in an old TV series called "Route 66". Coleman Hawkins played a bit part in one episode, and a youthful HWK was so thrilled at catching a glimpse of one of his idols that he felt inspired to draw him.

Coleman Hawkins was a jazz musician of the early to mid- 20th century. He was responsible for bringing the saxophone into mainstream jazz.

Born 21 November 1904 in St.Joseph, Missouri. Hawkins had Venus, the musical planet at 3* Capricorn, with Uranus, planet of innovation at 28 Sagittarius, forming what I think is known as an "out of sign conjunction", because they are very close, but lie in different zodiac signs. It seems appropriate, then, that he should have been the musician(Venus) who brought a new(Uranus) element into the jazz scene, added to this, Saturn lies in Aquarius, the innovative sign.

The liner notes for one of his albums begin:

"Coleman Hawkins? Man, he invented the tenor sax!" It is hard to disagree: Hawkins was the first man to solo on tenor, the first to record in the bop style, and the first to record unaccompanied on the instrument, with "Picasso" in 1948. Thoroughly grounded in the fundamentals (he supposedly could play any song in any key), Hawkins played with a facility previously unseen in the tenor, and with a drive which many musicians copied. He is largely responsible for making tenor the main solo voice of the saxophone family."

British photographer David Redfern's photographs of jazz mucisians, including Coleman Hawkins, were used in a 1995 issue of postage stamps in the USA.

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