Born in 1904, Hawkins was five years older than two other great names on the tenor saxophone, Lester Young and Ben Webster. Hawkins was on the scene before both Webster and Young. He was the first to elevate the tenor saxophone as an instrument worthy of solos.
On the morning of May 19, 1969, Coleman Hawkins, one of the greatest names on the tenor saxophone, succumbed to pneumonia and other bodily complications at the age of 64. At that time, Thelonious Monk was pacing in the corridor outside the hospital room where Hawkins was lying. He was walking back and forth with the records he held in his hands. Just before he was hospitalized, Hawkins gave Monk several albums as gifts. The records belonged to Coleman Hawkins. While Hawkins was being taken to the hospital that fateful night, the patroness of the great jazz musicians, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, also known as Nica, was in the hotel suite with Monk.
Coleman Randolph Hawkins (November 21, 1904 – May 19, 1969), nicknamed "Hawk" and sometimes "Bean", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.
Monk was emotionally shaken by Hawkins' death, and they had played clubs together in midtown Manhattan. Monk had his first club experience with Hawkins. There is no doubt that Monk was an interesting man. There were occasions when he was obsessed. If he wasn't on the piano and recording an album of a jazz band, he wouldn't easily listen to other friends' records. For three days after Hawkins passed away because he couldn't sleep, Coleman played and played the albums that Hawkins had gifted him over and over again…. This was Monk's first and last experience of listening to records belonging to others.
Monk made a great effort to manage the ebb and flow of his mood after Coleman's death. Moreover, he was not wrong to have devoted feelings for Coleman. Even though more than fifty years have passed since his death, Hawkins' music is still very important in itself, entertaining, and worth examining beyond its historical value. Many tenor saxophone players loudly state that the place they occupy today is in some way indebted to Hawkins.
Father of the Tenor Saxophone
Born in 1904, Hawkins was five years older than two other great names on the tenor saxophone, Lester Young and Ben Webster. Hawkins was on the scene before both Webster and Young. He was the first to elevate the tenor saxophone as an instrument worthy of solos.
His career began in 1925, before the recordings of Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five. It lasted until the end of the 1960s, the peak of the 1960s and the fusion era. There is no other musician who started with Armstrong at the beginning of his career and was able to play with Sonny Rollins towards the end of his career and share the same stage.
Musician Who Influenced Generations
Hawk had a very full active year. Monk had the opportunity to work with John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, and Django Reinhardt. Perhaps with the opposite premise, they were able to work with Coleman Hawkins. Hawkins played a direct role in the transition of not one generation, but at least two generations, from swing to bebop. He influenced many musicians during the period. This situation lasted until the years when we felt the sounds of modern jazz.
Despite his place in music and his importance in the community, Armstrong could not reach the crazy saturation of free jazz and avant-garde style. Coleman Hawkins clearly did this. Hawkins resisted. In 1923, with Fletcher Henderson's swing band; In Europe in the 1930s with Django Reinhardt, in the 1940s with Monk, Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis, in the 1950s with Monk and Coltrane; and separately played with Roach, Duke Ellington and Sonny Rollins again in the 1960s.
Body and Soul
Hawkins returned to the United States from Europe when he was in his early thirties. Lester Young was also playing in the Count Basie band in the same years (between 1936 and 1940). Lester formed a very close friendship with lead singer Billie Holiday in the band. This made Lester very popular during the period. Both were masters of different styles. Lester was younger, perhaps more refined, than Coleman, and Hawkins, perhaps cruder but more technically proficient. Both musicians later played together on the same stage many times during their Jazz at the Philharmonic tours.
In 1939, Hawkins formed a nine-piece band. He improvised and recorded the well-known ballad Body and Soul. It was as if the rough edges of the song were polished with Coleman's interpretation. Sonny Rollins recalls that Thelonious Monk once asked Hawkins: "How could you make such a hit out of a song that you interpreted as an instrumental, with no lyrics, different from its original form?" Rollins himself said of Body and Soul, interpreted by Coleman Hawkins, “This interpretation is a masterpiece; still is and always will be; It is beyond me to explain this; "This is why Coleman Hawkins is in the sky," he said.