Back to basics this weekend. From the legendary series Jazz At The Philharmonic, Coleman Hawkins with Sonny Stitt on alto, Roy Eldridge on trumpet, Dizzy Gillespie also trumpet, Lou Levy on piano as well as Pete Johnson, Joe Turner on vocals – Herb Ellis, guitar – Ray Brown and Max Bennett on bass and Gus Johnson on Drums. This recording comes via Swedish Radio and was recorded on May 20, 1958.
Reissued officially probably hundreds of times starting with a set of 78s – bootlegged most likely several thousand – the go-to album for Jazz fans all over the world, the Jazz at The Philharmonic series was one of the most influential and important series ever presented to an audience and on record. It’s safe to say this series made a lot of converts and introduced a whole new world to people who had never heard this level of artistry all under one roof and all working together.
A word or two about Coleman Hawkins:
Coleman Randolph Hawkins (November 21, 1904 – May 19, 1969), nicknamed “Hawk” and sometimes “Bean”, was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. One of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument, as Joachim E. Berendt explained: “There were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn”. Hawkins biographer John Chilton described the prevalent styles of tenor saxophone solos prior to Hawkins as “mooing” and “rubbery belches”. Hawkins denied being first and noted his contemporaries Happy Caldwell, Stump Evans, and Prince Robinson, although he was the first to tailor his method of improvisation to the saxophone rather than imitate the techniques of the clarinet. Hawkins’ virtuosic, arpeggiated approach to improvisation, with his characteristic rich, emotional, and vibrato-laden tonal style, was the main influence on a generation of tenor players that included Chu Berry, Charlie Barnet, Tex Beneke, Ben Webster, Vido Musso, Herschel Evans, Buddy Tate, and Don Byas, and through them the later tenormen, Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Ike Quebec, Al Sears, Paul Gonsalves, and Lucky Thompson. While Hawkins became known with swing music during the big band era, he had a role in the development of bebop in the 1940s.
Dive in.
