Hampton Hawes: For Real! 

A year or two ago, a friend sent me a book I had never heard of, "Raise Up Off Me" the autobiography of the great bop pianist, Hampton Hawes.  Before that, I had heard of Hawes but was not very familiar with his music other than his playing on one Sonny Rollins album.  Well, his life story is fascinating, so I'll summarize it here before getting on to the music: born in Los Angeles in 1928 to a minister father and church pianist mother, he began picking out tunes on the piano at age 3.  Largely self-taught, he was gigging around while still in high school, and before the age of 20 he had played with the greats of the Central Avenue scene (including Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Art Pepper) and had a life-changing (for good and bad) stint as the pianist with trumpeter Howard McGhee's Quintet which featured Charlie Parker during Bird's longest West Coast stay.  Hawes said that Parker was his primary musical influence, but like many who fell under Parker's spell, Hawes also became a heroine addict, and his book is filled with tragicomic misadventures of trying to score drugs in a variety of settings, including while stationed in Japan with the US Army during the Korean War.  Returning to the States in the mid-50's, Hawes had his greatest success as a recording and touring musician over the next 4 or 5 years, despite missing more than a few dates because he was strung out or in search of a fix.  In 1958 he was arrested on drug charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.  Three years into his sentence, Hawes watched JFK's inauguration on TV in prison and decided to write to the new President seeking a pardon.  Amazingly, he was granted executive clemency in 1963, and returned to his musical career before dying suddenly of a brain hemorrhage at the age of 48 in 1977. 

    

Although Hawes recorded a number of terrific albums, mostly in trio settings, For Real! (recorded a few months before his incarceration) is my favorite because his playing is so wonderfully complemented by his band mates, Harold Land (tenor), Scott La Faro (bass) and regular collaborator Frank Butler (drums). Hawes's playing is a unique blend of bebop rhythm, harmony and technique - learned at the feet of the master, Parker - and a bluesy/funky/gospel feel...sort of a mix of Bud Powell and Horace Silver (although if I had to pick one player he most reminds me of it would probably be Wynton Kelly).  The opening tune of the album, "Hip," is a Hawes composition and an odd one in that the theme is an 11-bar blues...12 measures being the standard blues form and the basis for the great solos that follow.  The album has 2 classic bebop performances that show Parker's influence, "Crazeolgy," played moderately fast, and the Cole Porter standard "I Love You," played insanely fast.  But even at those speeds Hawes and Land, never fall into playing clichés or just running scales to keep up with the bass and drums.  "For Real" shows off Hawes's gospel/down home style on a tune reminiscent of Sonny Rollins's "Doxy." 

A few comments on the sidemen:  Scott La Faro had already established himself as one of the great bassists in jazz by the time he died in a car accident at 25 in 1961.  In his short career he played with such great, and diverse, musicians as Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, Stan Getz, Ornette Coleman, and perhaps most memorably, as a member of the Bill Evans Trio.  La Faro's rich sound, technical agility, steadfast time keeping and melodic solos are heard throughout this album.  Although I was very familiar with Harold Land from his recordings with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet (where he had the unenviable job of replacing Rollins), his playing, while first rate, had never really jumped out at me.  But his work on this album was a revelation...so consistently outstanding that I can't imagine any other great bop or hard bop tenor player of the time (Rollins, Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Hank Mobley) doing any better.  I especially like the story he tells in his gorgeous, soulful, self-assured solo on "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams" (the YouTube clip linked at the top).