[78-L] Tenor Sax Styles.

[Bill McClung]

I've tried to avoid this discussion because I don't play sax and it is an
incredibly long thread but I can't stand by and just watch any more.  My
favorite is Alvin "Red" Tyler who personifies the New Orleans rocknroll/r&b
style from the 50s through the 80s.  Other favs are Wardel Gray and selected
Jay McNeeley.

And, with that, I'm back on the sidelines.

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 3:34 AM, Julian Vein <julianvein at blueyonder.co.uk>wrote:

> Dan Van Landingham wrote:
>  I taught myself to play tenor sax back in late 1969 as a junior in
> high school.I used Hawkins
>  as my role model as well as listening to the likes of Don Byas,Webster as
>  well as a few now forgotten players such as Dick Wilson of Andy Kirk's
> band and Bob
>  Carroll who played tenor for Don Redman in the thirties.One tenor
> player I can't really
>  classify was Chu Berry,whose tone struck me as being somewhere between
> Hawkins
>  and Lester Young whose tone I could never duplicate even though I
> tried to do so.I still
>  prefer Hawkins and his school over the some of the later tenorists I
> also heard from the
>  late thirties.I heard Georgie Auld by way of a handful of Bunny
> Berigan recordings but he
>  was never a favourite of mine.Charlie Barnet I got a kick out of but I
> admired his arrangers
>  even more so.Whatever respect Flip Phillips had was lost after that
> infamous solo he took
>  on "Perdido" with the JATP in the late forties.The sound Hawkins had
> by 1950 left me so-
>  mewhat befuddled:was he losing his lung power by then or was he just
> changing his tone
>  to accomodate the newer jazz fans?I cite his recordings from 1950 on
> Roost as examples.
> =======================
> Dick Wilson, I thought, was a rather ordinary, staid player. Bob Carroll
> played in a slightly "swashbuckling" way with Redman, as I recall.
> Berry's uptempo and blues playing were usually excellent (his work with
> Calloway and ballads rather less so). Another swashbuckler was Jack
> McVea with JATP, who outclassed Illinois Jacquet, where they played
> together. McVea's playing was more exciting and more musical.
>
> Georgie Auld, Charlie Barnet and Wayne Johnson (with Bob Wills) played
> in a rather old fashioned rootie-tootie way, which I have an affection for.
>
> Flip Phillips's best work was mainly before he joined Woody Herman (with
> Norvo on V-Disc). After that he became an "animal cunning" playing and
> clinging too closely to the beat. A couple of other sessions where he
> did play well was with the Teddy Wilson Quintet and the Norvo band, at
> the Town Hall Concert, June 9, 1945. Also a session under Buddy Rich's
> leadership (Verve 1957).
>
> Never thought too much about Hawk's tone in later years, more interested
> in his ability to compile long, structured solos. Listen to his Prestige
> sessions, if you think he'd lost his lung power! True, his early 50s'
> stuff was rather listless.
>
>      Julian Vein
>
>
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