Coleman Hawkins

The Hawk Talks is a grab-bag Decca compilation that pulls together early-1950s singles sessions and drops them into the LP era without much ceremony. It's the kind of record that a label puts out when it owns the masters and knows the name will move units. None of that diminishes the playing, which is Hawkins in full command at a moment when bebop was reshaping jazz around him and he was, characteristically, absorbing it without surrendering anything he already had.

By 1952 Hawkins was deep into the bebop harmonic vocabulary while keeping the physical density that made his tone immediately recognizable. The rhythm sections vary in quality across the compilation, and the tunes don't always hang together as an album, but that's the nature of the format.

Think of this as an artifact rather than a statement. It tells you where Hawkins was in the decade before his LP-era peak, and it reminds you that even a mid-tier Hawkins date is more interesting than most tenor players' best work.

Recorded in Chicago with largely uncredited sidemen, The Hawk Returns has an unusual backstory: the later tracks feature Sun Ra at the piano, while the earlier numbers pair Hawkins with organ and guitar. The settings are unconventional for a Hawkins date, but he adapts without fuss, treating the rhythm section as a backdrop for his improvisations rather than a partner in conversation.

The Hawk Returns is a transitional record in the best sense. Hawkins sounds reinvigorated rather than accommodating, and there's a directness to the playing here that you don't always get on the more arranged sessions: just the tenor, the changes, and a rhythm section that knows when to push and when to lay back. The variety of settings across the twelve tracks gives the album an unpredictable quality.

Savoy wasn't always kind to Hawkins in terms of session quality, but this one came together. The ballads in particular showcase his ability to stretch a melody well past its original shape without losing the thread, which was his signature move from the beginning and which he never stopped refining.

The title is a period marketing ploy, RCA eager to sell new hi-fi equipment to the jazz audience, but the sessions themselves are genuinely strong. Billy Byers's arrangements are smart and colorful, the orchestra including Zoot Sims and Al Cohn on tenors, Ernie Royal on trumpet, and Urbie Green on trombone. The ensemble writing frames Hawkins's solos without crowding them, and Hank Jones's piano provides a steady harmonic foundation underneath.

The sound quality is demonstrably better than what Hawkins had been working with at smaller labels, and it suits him. His tone benefits from space and clarity, the low register especially, where the fundamental vibration of his sound comes through in a way that mono recordings often compressed into mud. This is not a record about audiophile gimmickry. It's a well-made jazz date that happened to sound excellent.

Barry Galbraith's guitar and Milt Hinton's bass give the rhythm section a richness that complements the orchestral scoring, and Osie Johnson's brushwork on the ballads is sympathetic without being passive. The larger format could have swallowed Hawkins, but Byers understood that the point was to showcase, not compete.

Despite the title, The Hawk in Paris was recorded in New York at Webster Hall in July 1956, with Manny Albam conducting a full studio orchestra including strings, harp, and woodwinds. The Paris theme is in the compositions and the mood, not the geography. Albam's arrangements are lush and atmospheric, setting Hawkins against a backdrop of orchestral color that could easily have overwhelmed him but instead frames his sound beautifully.

The Hawk in Paris is the most luxurious-sounding record in this run of mid-fifties dates. Hawkins responds to the orchestral setting with a warmth and patience in his phrasing that you don't always hear on the smaller-group dates, stretching phrases across the string textures with obvious pleasure. Hank Jones and Barry Galbraith provide quiet rhythmic support underneath the larger ensemble, and Osie Johnson's brushwork keeps things moving without competing with the orchestral scoring.

Collectors have long prized this record and the reputation is deserved. The ballad performances, with Hawkins's dark tone floating over Albam's string writing, are among the most beautiful things in his entire catalog. This is one of the rare jazz-with-strings albums that uses the format as a genuine artistic vehicle rather than a commercial compromise.

The premise of this Riverside date was a quiet provocation: surround the 52-year-old father of the jazz tenor with a band of bebop modernists, J.J. Johnson, Idrees Sulieman, Hank Jones, Oscar Pettiford, and see who has to adjust. Nobody had to. The session, cut over two days in March 1957 with Orrin Keepnews producing, proves what the smarter listeners already knew: Hawkins had been speaking the modernists' harmonic language since before most of them picked up their horns. He doesn't visit bebop here. He reminds it where it came from.

The heart of the record is "Juicy Fruit," Sulieman's eleven-minute slow blues, where Hawkins builds one of the great extended solos of his later career, chorus after chorus, each one raising the temperature a notch. J.J. Johnson is in astonishing form throughout, and the writing, with contributions from Hank Jones, Gigi Gryce, and Hawkins's own "Sancticity," keeps the date from ever feeling like a casual blowing session. "Laura" is the ballad feature, and the famous Hawkins sound, huge, dark, and harmonically restless, fills every corner of it.

Along with The High and Mighty Hawk, this is the essential statement of the late-1950s Hawkins resurgence. If someone tells you the swing generation couldn't hang with the modern players, hand them this and walk away.

The High and Mighty Hawk is a peak-period statement from a musician who should, by conventional wisdom, have been coasting. Hawkins was in his mid-fifties. He had been playing professionally for nearly four decades. Hard bop had become the dominant jazz idiom and younger tenors were everywhere. He recorded one of his best albums anyway.

Hank Jones is the ideal pianist for this date: clean, intelligent, and utterly reliable without being predictable. The rhythm section throughout is professional in the best sense, which means they give Hawkins maximum room while keeping everything grounded. Buck Clayton's trumpet adds warmth to the ensembles without crowding the lead voice.

What makes this record special is Hawkins's tone, which by this point had thickened and darkened into something almost orchestral in the lower register. When he plays a ballad here, the sound alone is an argument. When he plays an uptempo number, the combination of physical weight and harmonic sophistication is simply overwhelming. The High and Mighty Hawk is exactly what the title promises.

Norman Granz at Verve was endlessly fascinated by the format of swing-era veterans playing together in small groups, and this session delivers what you'd expect from that premise: a gathering of masters who knew each other's language before it had a name. Roy Eldridge brings his usual combination of ferocity and lyricism on his tracks. Ben Webster sits in on "Maria", cut the same Los Angeles day that produced a whole two-tenor album, Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster.

Hawkins is in excellent form, though the competition here is real in a way it often isn't. These are not rhythm section players supporting a soloist; they're major voices who each want to be heard. Oscar Peterson and Herb Ellis bring their own gravity to the Webster track, while Hank Jones anchors the rest with characteristic understated brilliance.

The record has the slight looseness of an all-star jam rather than a composed statement, which is both its limitation and its charm. You're hearing some of the greatest improvisers of the swing era at work in the late fifties, fully aware of what jazz had become around them, playing the music they had helped to create.