Happy Birthday to Hawk

He was probably the only musician to play with Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds in 1913 and with Art Pepper in 1977. He was Coleman Hawkins, dubbed "Hawk" and "Bean," and he was born November 28, 1904, in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Coleman Hawkins might not have invented the tenor saxophone, but he was the first to show how it could be played. His 1940 recording of "Body and Soul," a largely ad lib rendition, remains one of the seminal jazz performances. Out of Hawkins came Ben Webster, Buddy Tate, Lucky Thompson, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Chu Berry, and two generations of muscular, big-toned  saxophonists, through to Sonny Rollins, Ernie Watts and John Coltrane.

Rollins said that he and other children would sit on the front steps of their Harlem homes and watch for Hawkins coming down the street, always nattily dressed, always wearing a snapbrim fedora. They looked on him with awe, the way Montreal children would have looked at Maurice Richard.

One of the remarkable things about Hawkins was his ability to move with the music, from the rough blues of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey through 1940s swing and Jazz at the Philharmonic tours to the bop and post-bop era of Coltrane and Rollins and Thelonious Monk.

A tip of our fedora to Coleman Hawkins, as we exit now to listen again to his "Body and Soul."