I sang this song for karaoke a while back and the reaction was dead silence from the room, except for the English lit. PhD, who I think chuckled at my near-mangling of all the “thees” and “thous.”
greensleeves // coleman hawkins // soul
It’s odd to me, how people will in the same breath speak in elegiac tones about Billie recording Lady in Satin with a pint glass full of lukewarm, straight to the devil gin in her hand then bemoan the later Bean efforts. Now, this maybe isn’t something you hear all that much anymore, post rock and roll, post punk, post the various and scattershot breaking from even their strictures. Certainly after the internet “democratized” everything. But in the musty old theory books and bios in the university library from which most of my jazz education sprang, it was taken for granted that 50s and 60s Hawk could never compare to the blistering, genre-broadening mathematics he’d produced as a young turk. But consider “Greensleeves,” from ‘58, his woozy, punch-drunk (and, yes, probably actually drunk, but that doesn’t matter) bluster over Kenny Burrell’s soft, lingering guitar chords setting up Ray Bryant’s classic, scholarly take on the theme from the piano. Coltrane’s version on the Village Vanguard box may seem more “American” in its taut rendition. But it’s all teeth and bitter portent, using disciplined structure to hold back a gurgling wail. This band is closer to what an actual American take would be on the mournful English melody, replacing the mother country’s staid, starched tartan with the 5am regret of someone who’s earned the melancholy. How ever. “Body and Soul” may rule the textbooks, but I’ll take late-Bean every time.
