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Who introduced growl and subtone?

6K views 25 replies 14 participants last post by  Scaler 
#1 ·
I hear both of these techniques used pretty extensively in the playing of Coleman Hawkins. I'm curious if Hawk was the player who really introduced these sounds or if this is something other players had been doing that he picked up on and popularized?

Any sax historians out there who can answer this question?

Thanks!
 
#3 ·
The growl was used before the sax was invented so I doubt if its possible to determine what player or even which instrument started it, but it was near the start of the 'jazz age'. Pretty much the same with the sub-tone which I have heard on trumpet, clarinet and of course sax. Also would date to the start of the 'jazz age' or even before.
 
#9 ·
That clip was really fun, thanks for posting it. Full of cameos. Barbara Walters surprisingly sounded like she did some time as a swing band singer.
 
#11 ·
Coleman Hawkins was for sure the first prominent jazz musicians on the tenor who developed a non staccato style playing solo's, of course inspired by the first great solist Louis Armstrong. Sydney Bechet was also very early developing a more mature solo style in the early years. For subtone Hawk could be the first, but for growling I can imagine earlier Vaudeville or Circus type band players used those effects before Hawk. Of course all difficult to proof, we don't have recording history from before about 1917.
 
#23 ·
For subtone Hawk could be the first, but for growling I can imagine earlier Vaudeville or Circus type band players used those effects before Hawk. Of course all difficult to proof, we don't have recording history from before about 1917.
Yes, good point. I know that Hawk played clarinet (and also cello and piano) in addition to sax, so he may have been influenced by techniques he heard early jazz clarinetists using.
 
#13 ·
Because it's fun to do, present in lots of trad music around the world and anyone with a bit of curiosity will stumble on those during the first week of doodling with a reed instrument.
It's incredibly egocentric to assume that a jazzer was the first to use them!
 
#15 ·
Agreed....it may well be fun, but my question to you was "how do you know that growling was used in the 1640s?"
It is even more "incredibly egocentric" to assume that growling was used at that period.
Please do not tell me that you have a very long memory.
 
#16 ·
I have a very long memory.

Haem, seriously though, since my memory isn't that great, it's just that it's more unlikely that these techniques didn't exist than the opposite. It's not exactly rocket science, it sounds good and is fun to do, therefore we must assume that the musicians of yore, who where as sound inclined and fun loving as their modern counterparts, used it, and there rests my case!
 
#18 ·
Of course....I had forgotten that growling, flutter-tongue & slap were used on shawn, sackbut & flageolet featured during the second & fourth choruses of Charles 1st's interpretation of Greensleeves Blues in 1640.
They were not quite certain of the key as the even tempered scale was pretty avant garde at the time.
 
#22 ·
Thanks for the interesting perspectives. It does makes sense that players of other wind instruments would have experimented with similar techniques before they were carried over to the saxophone.



Thanks for the reference Allen, I will check him out.
 
#21 ·
I was once listening to a recording of a Beethoven sonata when a kid who worked for me asked
what was playing. After I told him he asked, "Is that him playing it?"

I dunno about the Jazz Age. Beethoven had some pretty cool syncopated rhythm in his 32nd sonata. The real start of
the Jazz Age? Maybe there's an old recording of him growling on saxophone!:mrgreen:
 
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