Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Hawkins was twenty-one when he came to New York with Mamie Smith in 1923. He was playing blues and jazz in the style of that time - similar possibly to King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. That same year, he joined the first important big band - Fletcher Henderson's - and remained until 1934. He was the first real tenor saxophone soloist, in the sense of the great viruosos of the Swing era.
His first famous solo on record was the 1926 rendition of "Stampede," with Fletcher Henderson. In 1929 came "One Hour" with the Mound City Blue Blowers, who included some of the Chicago- style practitioners. And then, in 1934, again with Henderson, "Talk of the Town" - probably the first great solo ballad interpretation in jazz history, the foundation for everything now meant by ballad playing in modern jazz. (Miles Davis said: "When I heard Hawk, I learned to play ballads.")

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