JazzTimes – October 2019

JAZZTIMES.COM 31

hen Johnny Hodges moved
from Boston to New York in
the twenties, he began to make
the rounds to see where he stood in the
pecking order of alto saxes. One night
in 1927 at a basement club on 7th Ave-
nue, he heard a man whom he had met
two years before in Saratoga Springs,
New York, when they were both in
that resort town playing summer gigs.
Hodges was impressed enough to tell
Charlie Holmes, a fellow altoist from
Boston, to go “to Small’s Paradise and
hear the greatest alto saxophone player
in the world.” He was referring to Ben-
ny Carter, whom most would rank as
Hodges’ only genuine rival on the alto

over the next two decades.

Over the course of their careers,

Carter and Hodges would frequently

be linked. Benny Goodman listed the

two as the top altos of the day, and

Ben Webster, whose mature style was

formed in part by imitation of Hodges,

ranked Carter and Hodges among the

top three saxes of his era, along with

Coleman Hawkins.

They may have been together at the

top, but they were different. Carter was

better trained musically, but his tone

was thinner, less viscous than Hodges,

and so while Carter’s solos are models

of harmonic development, they pack

less of a wallop (to these ears) than

Hodges’ emotional punch.

Who was better? It is largely—but

not entirely—a matter of taste. Carter

was “the most admired alto saxophon-

ist of the thirties,” wrote Whitney Bal-

liett of The New Yorker, “but that was

hardly surprising” since, in his view

“Johnny Hodges didn’t draw himself

up to his full height until 1940.” Jazz

W

From Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music

of Johnny Hodges by Con Chapman.

Copyright © 2019 by Con Chapman and

published by Oxford University Press.

All rights reserved.

Hodges with (L to R)

Duke Ellington, Al Sears,

and Oscar Pettiford at

the Aquarium, New York,

November 1946

x Feature: Essential alto saxophone albums