Customer Reviews

Bebop Years

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This is an excellent compilation of Hawkins' work between 1939 and 1949. Most of the selections date from 1943 to 1947 and were recorded for several record labels, including Victor, Bluebird, Okeh, Brunswick, V-Disc, Commodore, Signature, Keynote, Apollo, Savoy, Clef, Regis, Capitol, Aladdin, Joe Davis, and Selmer. Sidemen include Roy Eldridge, Benny Carter, Cootie Williams, Count Basie, Art Tatum, Oscar Pettiford, Teddy Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, Budd Johnson, Ben Webster, Earl Hines, Don Byas, John Kirby, Jonah Jones, Buck Clayton, Thelonious Monk, Howard McGhee, Milt Jackson, Hank Jones, Harry Carney and Miles Davis. As you would expect with such a wide variety of source material, the sound quality varies a bit. However, it ranges from good to excellent and in most cases is on par (or identical:)) with the best previous CD issues of the same music. The set comes with a 56 page booklet that includes a lengthy essay with analysis of each session, several photographs, and a very thorough discography (you can read the complete essay and discography at Proper's website). The essay is good, though it could have used some editing. Also, the photos look like they were duplicated from printed sources. The most important thing, however, is that the music is consistently excellent. These discs show Hawkins at his absolute best, whether in a small group, big band, or solo. For the price the set is an astounding value!

... epitomizes the history of jazz better than Coleman Hawkins, from raggedy blues/vaudeville to bebop and a little beyond. Born in 1904, Hawkins jumped school in Kansas City in 1922 to join Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds on tour to Chicago. Through the late 20s and early 30s, Hawkins was the boss tenor sax in the very popular Fletcher Henderson swing band. Then he spent some five years in Europe, building an enormous popularity for himself there as well as a fervent audience for jazz that has endured to our own times. In 1939, he returned more or less permanently to the USA, and that's where this four-CD survey of his recordings during "The Bebop Years" begins.

Coleman had been a highly reputed journeyman jazzman for two decades when the first track in this box set, Body and Soul, was recorded by RCA in October, 1939. The final track on the fourth disk, Bah-U-Bah, was recorded in Paris, rehearsing for a European tour, in December, 1949. So "The Bebop Years" is not only a compendium of the Hawk's finest sessions -- 88 of them -- over a ten-year period, but also a survey of the evolution of jazz from a "high-toned low-class popular" music to the artistic heights that Hawkins shared with Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Monk, Gillespie, Gordon, and other progressive beboppers. The sax was, of course, the master instrument of the era, and it was Hawkins who first proved what the sax could offer. Hawkins had incredible chops, a rich rolling tone especially in his lower register on ballads, and it was on ballads that he sounded most harmonically adventuresome and original. But Hawk never totally abandoned his swing-era roots. He could play 'hot' or 'sweet' but 'cool' was not in him, and the 50's became a decade of neglect and disappointment for him. Unlike some younger beboppers, nevertheless, Hawkins was robust even to enjoy a revival in the late 50s and early 60s. But the 'avant-garde' of free jazz held no appeal for him. To put it bluntly, he gave up and drank himself to death at age 66 in 1969. The superb film "Round Midnight", starring Dexter Gordon and directed by Bernard Tavernier, depicts the last years of a musician who might well have been Coleman Hawkins.

The remastering of the assorted sessions, some in studios and some live, in this Properbox is extraordinarily clear and realistic. This is a fantastic bargain, a must-have for jazz lovers.

I know I am being picky but there is one MAJOR omission. The session with
trumpeter Fats Navarro that produced the great Half Step Down Please.
Otherwise this is a wonderful collection of a more modern sounding Hawkins. At least they have the Dizzy stuff. Rember Hawkins was on the first bebop recordings and I also believe Monks first session.

I would recommend this for anyone wanting to get an overview of Hawk's playing from his early prime years. His playing reached a peak in '38 and as far as I can tell pretty much stayed there until his death in the '60s. This contains his legendary recording 'Body and Soul' from '38 and goes to '49.

For comparison I would recommend also getting "The Lester Young Story" also a great 4CD set from Proper covering the same time period.

This is a magnificent collection of the Forties work of tenor sax great Coleman Hawkins, the father of the jazz saxophone. Much of it has been previously released in bits and pieces, but it has never been collected in a single package, and never with such tremendous sound. The set also includes an informative booklet with a number of rarely-scene photographs.

Hawkins began his performing career as a teenager, backing blues singer Mamie Smith in the early 1920's. Before Hawkins, the saxophone was not a major instrument in jazz, and it was seldom featured as a solo instrument. When Hawkins joined Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra in 1924, that began to change. Perhaps inspired by fellow bandmember Louis Armstrong, who spent about a year with Henderson, Hawkins quickly developed his own distinctive style as a soloist. When Armstrong left, Coleman Hawkins became the dominant soloist with the Henderson band, a position he held until 1934. He set the standard for the jazz saxophonist during the first part of the Swing era, and he strongly influenced such other figures as Ben Webster, Benny Carter, Chu Berry and many others. After a productive five-year stay in Europe, Hawkins returned to the U.S. and started his own group in 1939. One of his first records was the ballad "Body and Soul," which became a major pop hit and remains one of the most memorable recordings in jazz history. It set a standard for jazz improvisation that has seldom been matched.

"Body and Soul" first song in this boxed set, and really doesn't belong with the other recordings here, which cover the period 1943-1947. Hawkins' big band failed within a year, and he soon began working with the smaller groups that make up the bulk of these recordings. He worked for a series of small New York-based record companies, both as a leader and a sideman. During this period, the bebop movement began to make inroads into the New York jazz scene. Hawkins was as skilled and schooled as any musician in jazz, and he quickly grasped the innovative ideas that the beboppers were offering in their music. Even though he never fully embraced bebop in his own playing, he often worked with its rising young stars, such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Howard McGhee, Fats Navarro and others. Working with these new talents reinvigorated the middle-aged Hawkins, and these are some of the finest recordings of his long career. He also influenced a new generation of saxophonists such as Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins.

The title of this set is a little misleading; these recordings are more swing than bebop. Nevertheless, this is a wonderful collection that every jazz fan should own. Too often overlooked at the start of the 21st century, Coleman Hawkins was one of the titans of jazz, and this is his finest work. Proper Records, an English label, has one again done a terrific job of compiling the work of an under-appreciated and deserves much praise.

One of my favorite Jazz albums is Coleman Hawkins' "The Hawk Flies High" which he recorded with 6 other great musicians in 1957. (See my review here on Amazon.) That was my introduction to Hawkins and lead me to purchase this box set which was the first Proper set that I bought. Well, I was very impressed with this set in all ways. The music from Hawkins is great, the 56 page booklet made me much better informed about him, and the price is a bargain. Since buying this, I've gotten Proper box sets focused on Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge, Art Tatum, Jack Teagarden, and Chick Webb and have been happy with all of them.

One thing that is different about this box set compared to all the others is the period covered, 1939-1949. Most of the Proper sets start in the first half of the 1930s closer to the beginnings of the careers of the featured artists and go up to the early 1950s. (I assume they don't go beyond that because of tighter copyright controls.) However, this Coleman Hawkins set starts in 1939 even though the booklet makes it clear that he made many recordings in the 1920s and 1930s with the Fletcher Henderson band and his own groups. Proper Records clearly wanted to focus on the intersection of Hawkins with Bebop. Maybe they are holding back the earlier recordings for a Fletcher Henderson set or a "Coleman Hawkins: The Swing Years" set. Based on this set, I would definitely buy either of those if Proper issued them.

Focusing on this key period shows you why Hawk was one of the top 3 in any one's list of great Sax men...drawing solely on material from 1939-1944 the amazing total quality shines through..For those who care,this set has good quality sound and the book is a good read..