Coleman Hawkins

Body & Soul Revisited - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Body & Soul Revisited
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
Body & Soul Revisited
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
Hawkins! Alive! At The Village Gate - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Hawkins! Alive! At The Vi...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
Hawkins! Alive! At The Village Gate Live, 1962 - Expanded Edition
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
The Genius Of Coleman Hawkins - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
The Genius Of Coleman Haw...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
The Genius Of Coleman Hawkins Expanded Edition
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
Bluesy Burrell - Kenny Burrell, Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Bluesy Burrell Rudy Van Ge...
Kenny Burrell, Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio + Booklet HD
 
Bluesy Burrell Rudy Van Gelder Remaster / Optimized for Digital
Kenny Burrell, Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
Coleman Hawkins And His Confreres - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Coleman Hawkins And His C...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio HD
 
Coleman Hawkins And His Confreres 192kHz/24-bit
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
The Hawk Relaxes [Rudy Van Gelder Remaster] - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
The Hawk Relaxes [Rudy Va...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio + Booklet HD
 
The Hawk Relaxes [Rudy Van Gelder Remaster] Optimized for Digital
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
Coleman Hawkins: Verve Ultimate Cool - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Coleman Hawkins: Verve Ul...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
Coleman Hawkins: Verve Ultimate Cool
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
Today And Now / Desafinado - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Today And Now / Desafinad...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio + Booklet
 
Today And Now / Desafinado
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
The Mellow Sound Of Coleman Hawkins - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
The Mellow Sound Of Colem...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
The Mellow Sound Of Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
The Hawk Relaxes - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
The Hawk Relaxes Remastere...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
The Hawk Relaxes Remastered
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
In A Mellow Tone - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
In A Mellow Tone Remastere...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
In A Mellow Tone Remastered
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
Prestige Profiles:  Coleman Hawkins - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Prestige Profiles: Colem...
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
Prestige Profiles: Coleman Hawkins With Collector's Edition Bonus Disc
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
Ultimate Coleman Hawkins - Coleman Hawkins
DIGITAL
Ultimate Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
eAlbum Audio
 
Ultimate Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
SCOPRI
BIOGRAFIA
Coleman Hawkins’s musical career lasted more than fifty years. Although his tenor saxophone style continued to evolve for about forty of those years, certain characteristics were constant: he always projected a big-toned and aggressive improvisational style grounded in a firm grasp of music theory and inspired by an appetite for fresh challenges.

Coleman Hawkins (1904–69) was born in St. Joseph, Missouri. Hawkins’s earliest recordings, with singer Mamie Smith in 1922 and 1923, reveal elements of his early style: an extremely percussive attack of notes and a heavy on-the-beat phrasing. His reputation grew steadily after he joined pianist Fletcher Henderson’s band in 1923, and he was Henderson’s most advanced soloist until Louis Armstrong joined the group in 1924.

In 1934, Hawkins quit the Henderson band and traveled to England and Europe for a stay that lasted about five years. He greatly appreciated European culture and liked being treated like an artist, but few of the musicians he played with there could challenge him. One of his most successful European recording sessions took place in Paris in 1937, and features short solo spots for two musicians who could stimulate him, Belgian guitarist Django Reinhardt and American alto saxophonist Benny Carter, who was also living in Europe at the time.

Soon after Hawkins returned to the United States in 1939, he made his most famous record. Since the late 1920s, Hawkins had been developing a florid, rhapsodic approach to the slower songs in his repertoire. His work bore fruit on "Body and Soul," a flight of fancy that only briefly refers to the song’s original melody. Despite its abstraction, it clicked with the public and Hawkins was required to play it for the rest of his career.

From the mid-1940s on, Hawkins preferred to hire young modern musicians for his band. He recorded with trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Howard McGhee, and Theodore "Fats" Navarro, pianists Thelonious Monk and Hank Jones, trombonist J. J. Johnson, and vibraphonist Milt Jackson. In the 1960s, he was one of the few musicians of his generation to be sought out by modernists like drummer Max Roach and his fellow tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins.

Despite Hawkins’s sympathy toward young, exploratory musicians, some of his most successful recordings of the 1960s were encounters with his Swing-Era peers, such as tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, who had long emulated Hawkins’s big and breathy sound, alto saxophonist Benny Carter, and Duke Ellington.

Carl Woideck

Excerpted from Ken Burns’ Jazz: The Definitive Coleman Hawkins (Verve)