It was here in Saint Joseph that Coleman Hawkins first found his musical ability. He was born November 21, 1904, (or perhaps earlier – there is some controversy) to Wil
Topeka High School Orchestra from the 1921 yearbook. Coleman Hawkins name was incorrectly spelled "Haskins".
Hawkins, an electrical worker, and Cordelia (Cole-man) Hawkins, a schoolteacher and organist. Cordelia taught her son the piano at age five. He switched to the cello, then requested and received a tenor sax for his ninth birthday. Three years later he was playing for school dances.
At thirteen, Hawkins lived with friends in Chicago where he was influenced by jazz musicians from New Orleans. By 1921, Hawkins was back in the Midwest, attending high school in Topeka, Kansas, learning musical theory, harmony and composition at Washburn College in Topeka while performing in Kansas City with the 12th Street Theater pit band.
That year classic blue singer Mamie Smith and the Jazz Hounds played the theater and Hawkins joined them, creating recordings and touring from coast to coast.
In June of 1923, Hawkins left the group to freelance in New York City, where he worked with many of the top jazz men of the day.
Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds, 1921. Coleman Hawkins with the sax.
group and helped transform it from a tight, ricky-ticky novelty band into a hard-swing-ing jazz unit.
In January 1924, Hawkins joined Fletcher Henderson’s Band, remaining with the group for the next ten years, becoming a star of the ensemble. During this period, Hawkins refined his style, moving from choppy, staccato playing to a warm, full tenor sound. He was greatly influenced by Louis Armstrong who had joined Henderson’s
Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. Louis Armstrong, center standing. Coleman Hawkins, seated, 2nd from left.
At that time, Hawkins was gaining nationwide notoriety as the master of the tenor sax but a trip to Kansas City by the Henderson band in December of 1933 provided him with some major competition. The story is told by Len Weinstock in his article, “Coleman Hawkins, Father of the Tenor Sax.”
“Hawkins got the shock of his life on meeting local players Lester Young, Ben Webster and Hershel Evans. Hawkins had a ‘cut session’ with these early masters of the sax at dawn at a place called
the Cherry Blossom Club. The entire musical community of KC showed up for this session! According the earwittness accounts by Mary Lou Williams and Jo Jones, Lester Young got the best of it. The Hawk had finally met a formidable rival!”
When a Fletcher Henderson tour of Great Britain fell through in 1934, Hawkins went on his own. He was idolized throughout England and Europe, remaining for the next five years, playing and recording with all of the prominent European jazzmen. In Paris on April 28, 1937, Hawkins joined Django Reinhardt and Benny Carter to record a classic version of the song “Crazy Rhythm”.
In July 1939, Hawkins returned to the U.S. to form a nine-piece band that opened at Kelly’s Stable in New York. At the end of a recording session a few days later, he improvised a version of "Body and Soul" just to fill some avail-able studio time. Again, Len Weinstock:
“Hawkins himself didn't think there was anything outstanding about his Body and Soul saying, ‘it was nothing special, just an encore I use in the clubs to get off the stand. I though nothing of it and didn’t even bother to listen to it afterwards.' But the solo, two choruses of beautifully conceived and perfectly balanced improvisation, caused an immediate sensation with musicians and the public. It is still the standard to which tenorists aspire.”
At the end of that year, readers of Down Beat magazine voted Hawkins “best tenor saxophonist.” He then formed a big band and played the major theaters and ballrooms in New York followed by small groups and a couple of years touring the Midwest.
In the 1940’s, jazz came of age. And so did the instrument that in earlier years had been the sole reserve of Coleman Hawkins. Now the saxophone was a major part of any group or orchestra, often taking the lead. As Jazz grew and expanded, it took on new forms. One of those was Bebop. Some of the older musicians like Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong, who called Bop “Chinese Music”, shunned the new form. But Hawkins not only encouraged the young modernists, but as early as 1944 hired many of the revolutionaries like Thelonious Monk, Max Roach and Dizzy Gillespie. Hawkins was the leader on record dates of some of the earliest Bop experiments.
During the late 1950’s Hawkins continued to appear at all the major jazz festivals. He appeared on The Tonight Show in 1955, joined the Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of 1957, the Seven Ages of Jazz tours in 1958 and 1959. He continued to record during those years including his only collaboration with Duke Ellington in 1962. His last concert was at the North Park Hotel in Chicago April 10, 1969, as emotional stress and alcoholism took its toll during the last two years of his life. Coleman Hawkins died in New York on May 19, 1969.
Martin Block ran a live swing era radio show on WNEW New York. On this broadcast he had (L to R) Coleman Hawkins, Jack Jenny, Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Bunny Berigan and Count Basie.
Before Coleman Hawkins, the saxophone was mainly a favorite in marching bands and a novelty instrument in circus acts and vaudeville shows. Coleman Hawkins made the saxophone a lead jazz instrument and, for nearly 50 years, showed the world how it should be played, leaving a catalog of recordings that musicians today still try to emulate.
From St. Joe to the World --The Story of a True Jazz Pioneer
This is a partial discography of Coleman Hawkins recordings provided by StarPulse.com. Some are available remastered on CD. Some are no longer available. For additional information click on the title.
To hear the recordings, click the Play button (second from the left) twice.
These rare recordings were created when Coleman Hawkins sat in with Red McKenzie’s “Mound City Blue Blowers” for a session in New York City, November 14, 1929. The original “Blue Blowers” started in St. Louis (the “Mound City” of the title) with McKenzie playing “hot comb”, a comb and a strip of newspaper. The novelty band caught on and many young musicians of the day joined them on stage and in recordings.
The solos heard in “Hello, Lola” begin with McKenzie on hot comb, followed by Pee Wee Russell, clarinet, Hawkins, tenor sax, and Glenn Miller, trombone. Also in the group were Eddie Condon, banjo, and Gene Krupa, drums. On this cut, Hawkins can be heard playing in the standard “ricky-ticky” style of the day, followed by Miller with a hot jazz trombone.
The second song, “One Hour”, an interpretation of “If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight”, gave a first recorded indication of the saxophone style Coleman Hawkins would perfect over the next decade. And Glenn Miller's trombone solo predated the smooth sound that would make the Glenn Miller orchestra famous.
