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Article Excerpt
There was a small group of musicians waiting for Coleman Hawkins when his ship docked in New York City. Coleman had been away in Europe for five years. But with war simmering to a boil, he knew it was time to get himself on the first ship steaming back to the States. The welcoming committee included two of his oldest friends, Benny Carter and Jimmy Harrison. After the glad-handing was out of the way, they started signifying to make him feel at home.
"Hey Bean, you looking as trim as your mustache," Jimmy said.
Leave it to Jimmy to draw first blood. Something Coleman was known for when they were in the Fletcher Henderson Band together. Nobody had called him Bean since he left the country. Early on, Coleman gained a reputation for having a mean 'bean' of a brain that allowed him to do just about anything he wanted on the tenor saxophone. He kept tight-lipped about how good he was, but the name stuck and he answered to it.
"I guess if you got a lot of trim over there in England," Jimmy said, "you more than likely gonna stay that way yourself."
He enjoyed the laughter that followed but didn't join in. That was always his way. Stay close to the mix of what was going on, but don't get too familiar with it. Laughter continued bouncing around in everyone's shoulders. And Coleman remembered Jimmy was also called 'bean,' but only the kind that went with the word 'string.' He was still all arms and legs, his skinny limbs like rubber, connecting him to the trombone when he played.
"So who's who and what's what?" Coleman asked.
Heads swiveled toward one another to see if everyone got his drift.
"It didn't take you long to get down to business," Benny Carter said.
"What business might that be?"
"Bean! You've gotten even more slippery than you were before you left. But you just gonna have to wait 'cause we don't wanna spoil the surprise!"
They all piled into Benny Carter's Cadillac and headed uptown. Benny always impressed Coleman with how he held his own in any musical setting. He wasn't intimidated by reputations, whether they preceded his or came after, making him someone who could play with the best and never let anyone play him cheap. This made them do their best when they challenged each other on saxophone or clarinet years before in the Henderson Band. Benny still had that barrel chest, easy laughter, and eyes that soaked up anything worth paying attention to.
"So Bean, tell us about all the 'fine dinner' you had while you were gone," one of the other musicians said.
"You got me all wrong. The reason I came back so trim was because I traveled light and ate the same way."
"Man You as much of a tightwad about giving up any info on all your overseas chippies as you've always been about holding onto your money!"
"I'm sorry fellas, but I follow the old saying that those who tell don't know."
"You don't need to worry none, Bean. We can't cut in on your time with ladies who're way over on the other side of the ocean."
They had that right, since no one cut in on Coleman's time with women more than he did himself. He was known to play gigs all night and then find jam sessions that lasted late into the morning. This steady diet of playing fed him creatively but starved his first marriage. Coleman's wife, Gertie, always greeted him with a ready-made breakfast and a sweetness that only wanted to please. To be honest, he had to accept his share of the responsibility for that. There was more than a little calculation in how meticulous he was about his appearance--from double-breasted Gibraltar-shouldered suits and long spike-collared shirts to the slim trim of his mustache and cut of his nails. He knew the stylishly dressed figure he cut while playing the Glenn Miller Band's hit ballad "Wishing (Will Make It So)" would have more than a few women rushing up to him afterward, hoping to convince him how anxious they were to please. And he was more than happy to have them try which was how he first met Gertie. What he hadn't figured on was how wanting to please got old when the thrill didn't cut both ways. It would've been better for both of them if Gertie had done what she probably really wanted to do--which was to get up in his face about his late hours and demand that he spend more time with her. That's what Coleman lived for: the opposition he got from other musicians who took each other's best shots and came away from the fray with the only kind of companionship that made sense to him.
The day after Gertie finally left, Coleman looked around the nearly empty apartment. Whatever home they shared, she'd made and taken it with her. Coleman felt no loss for what was gone and saw nothing of himself in what remained: a bed, a table, and a few chairs. The only thing that mattered stood upright on a stand in a corner, gleaming like it had been washed in a burst of light from the sun. Coleman often wondered if he could ever be with a woman who needed, as much as he did, the opposition that was the same as friendship. Good question.
Coleman continued to take the ribbing that tightened the squeeze of bodies on either side of him. They could have all the fun they wanted, since there were more pressing matters on his mind, like the surprise Benny said was waiting for him later that evening. The conventional wisdom was that any advances in the music were a young man's game. He looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. The streamlined mustache that curved upward just short of his nostrils had no traces of gray and still received compliments from women on how it made his mouth fuller and more expressive whether he was playing or talking. Since he was only a few months shy of thirty-five, his hairline had receded a bit, something he would fix by keeping it cut short. Could it be that he might've stayed away too long, and would be unable to keep pace when challenged by these young upstarts who were eager to expose him as a has-been? But being a little anxious didn't mean he was fearful. He'd spent too many years honing his musical chops to believe there was anyone so good that he wouldn't have answers for whatever they had to offer.
Coleman had come a long way since his youthful days in the early 1920s, when he was given top billing as the 'Saxophone Boy,' with Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds. He never mentioned this period of his life because it froze him in a time he wanted no part of. Coleman was even close to the vest about his birth, saying his father was a merchant seaman who met his mother on the Cape Verde Islands, where they married. He was born at sea on a merchant ship heading back to the United States. So there was no record of the actual date or year of his birth. The here and now was all that interested him. On the rare occasions when Coleman dwelled on the past at all, it usually related to music he was thinking about at the moment. He recalled the advice of his mother, Cordelia,...
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