Coleman Hawkins Biography
In a career that spanned more than fifty years, Coleman Hawkins (1904–1969) was one of the preeminent innovators of the tenor saxophone, almost singlehandedly establishing the instrument as a presence in the jazz world. Hawkins’ career spanned the swing era, the rise of bebop and the heyday of the ’60s avant-garde, and he produced vital, adventurous music during all of those periods.
Born in St. Joseph, Missouri, Hawkins learned to play piano and cello during his childhood, before picking up tenor sax at the age of nine. At the time, the instrument was largely regarded as a novelty, used in vaudeville and marching bands but rarely in jazz. He began playing professionally at the age of 12, and was performing in the pit band in a Kansas City theater when blues singer Mamie Smith hired him to join her group the Jazz Hounds, with whom he made his first recordings. He then spent a period freelancing in New York before beginning a decade-long stint with Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra in early 1924. During his tenure with Henderson (which coincided with Louis Armstrong’s time in the group), Hawkins’ stellar solos helped to steer the tenor sax to the forefront of jazz.
After quitting the Henderson band in 1934, Hawkins spent five years in Europe, where he played with English bandleader Jack Hylton’s Orchestra and recorded sessions with Benny Carter, Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. With World War II on the horizon, Hawkins returned to America in 1939, cutting his seminal interpretation of “Body and Soul,” which would become a crucial antecedent to the birth of bebop. Hawkins was also leader on the 1943 session with Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach that’s generally regarded as the first bebop recording.
Hawkins remained a leading light in bebop movement through the ’40s and ’50s, working with the likes of Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, J.J. Johnson, Thelonious Monk, Fats Navarro, Oscar Peterson and Oscar Pettiford. He also continued to collaborate with his more traditional swing-era contemporaries, including Duke Ellington, Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge and Ben Webster. Hawkins also worked in a diverse array of musical settings, including Dixieland and bossa nova, toured several times as part of the all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic, and in 1948 recorded the groundbreaking unaccompanied sax solo “Picasso.” Hawkins continued to record through 1966.
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