Coleman Hawkins

By 1962 every major jazz label had a bossa nova album in production. Impulse! was committed to serious music but not immune to the commercial pressures that made Jobim and Gilberto's cross-cultural synthesis into a genuine mainstream phenomenon. Coleman Hawkins playing bossa nova is an idea that should work better than it does.

The problem isn't Hawkins, who plays the material with his usual seriousness and finds genuinely interesting things to do harmonically within the Brazilian framework. The problem is the rhythm section, which doesn't have a native feel for the idiom and substitutes jazz time where bossa nova asks for something lighter and more even. The result is a hybrid that occasionally tips into awkwardness.

There are moments here, particularly on the title track and a few of the slower numbers, where the combination of Hawkins's weight and the bossa nova harmonic language produces something unexpectedly compelling. But the record as a whole is a product of its moment rather than a personal statement, and it shows.

Columbia gave Hawkins a quintet with Clark Terry on trumpet, and the pairing works beautifully. Terry's flugelhorn tone is a natural complement to Hawkins's darker, heavier sound, and the two trade lines with an ease that suggests genuine mutual respect. Tommy Flanagan's piano is a steady anchor underneath, never overplaying, always placing his comping exactly where it supports the soloists best.

The program is mostly standards, but Hawkins and Terry find fresh angles on material that could easily have gone on autopilot. Major Holley's bass and Dave Bailey's drums keep the rhythm light and swinging, never pushing the tempo beyond what feels natural for Hawkins at this stage of his career. The ballad performances are especially good, with Hawkins's vibrato at its most expressive.

Back in Bean's Bag is one of the more successful late-career Hawkins dates, thanks largely to the quintet's balance of voices. Clark Terry brings just enough brightness to lift the ensembles without overwhelming the leader, and the result is a session that feels relaxed but purposeful throughout.

This is one of those Impulse! recordings where Creed Taylor clearly understood what he was doing: take two of the most significant figures in the history of jazz, put them in a room with Ellington's best small-group players, and record whatever happens. What happened was extraordinary. Hawkins and Ellington had known each other for thirty years, and the familiarity shows in the ease with which they navigate each other's musical space.

The Ellington sidemen here are not in supporting roles. Johnny Hodges, Ray Nance, Lawrence Brown, and Harry Carney were each major improvisers in their own right, and the interplay between them and Hawkins gives the session a complexity that a simple tenor-and-rhythm-section date couldn't have achieved. The ensemble passages have an organic quality, as if the musicians had been playing together for years rather than hours.

What makes this record exceptional, rather than merely excellent, is the quality of the ballad performances. When Hawkins plays a slow tune over Ellington's piano, two of the twentieth century's most distinctive musicians are working simultaneously in very close harmonic proximity, and each brings out something in the other that you don't hear anywhere else. This is the summit meeting that delivers.

Today and Now is the best record Hawkins made for Impulse! as a leader in his own right, and one of the finest things he recorded in the final decade of his life. Back to Flanagan, Holley, and Locke, a rhythm section so well matched to his needs that the sessions they made together have a consistency the mixed-group dates can't quite equal.

The program is varied in the best way: blues, standards, and a couple of originals, spread across tempos that give Hawkins room to demonstrate every aspect of his mature style. The fast numbers have a directness and urgency that contradicts any notion of an elder statesman coasting. The slow numbers have the quality of someone who has been playing ballads longer than most listeners have been alive, which means they're simultaneously timeless and very much of their moment.

If you're introducing someone to late-period Hawkins and can only give them one record, Today and Now is a reasonable choice. It captures the full range of what he could do in 1962: the harmonic intelligence, the tonal authority, the rhythmic flexibility, and the warmth that made him one of the most immediately affecting sound sources in jazz.

By 1965 Hawkins was sixty years old and his health was beginning to decline, though you wouldn't know it from the playing. Wrapped Tight is a strong late record that expands the format: Bill Berry and Snooky Young on trumpets and Urbie Green on trombone give the ensemble writing a warmth and fullness that the quartet dates couldn't achieve. Barry Harris's piano is a natural fit, his bebop fluency complementing Hawkins's harmonic vocabulary.

The title feels descriptive of the music: there's a focused quality here, the improvisations more economical than on some of the earlier sessions, the phrases tighter and more direct. Whether this reflects deliberate artistic choice or the natural compression that comes with physical limitation, the effect is compelling. The brass arrangements frame Hawkins's solos without crowding them, and the transitions between ensemble and solo passages are handled with real craft.

Buddy Catlett's bass anchors the larger group with clean, purposeful walking lines. This is a good record from a period when the jazz press was largely ignoring Hawkins in favor of free jazz, and the septet format gives it a grandeur that the quartet dates sometimes lacked.

Sirius was Coleman Hawkins's final studio album as a leader, recorded in 1966 when he was sixty-two years old and three years from his death. The title was chosen, presumably, with some awareness of what it might mean: the brightest fixed star in the night sky, visible from almost everywhere on earth, burning from a distance that makes its light ancient before it reaches you.

Barry Harris was the right pianist for this final session. Harris was one of the last musicians directly trained in the bebop tradition and he understood Hawkins's harmonic language better than almost anyone still active in the mid-sixties. The rhythm section is compact and responsive, giving Hawkins the maximum room he needed.

The playing here is not the playing of a man in full physical command. There is a restraint to the phrasing that was not always present in the prime years, and occasionally you sense the effort behind what sounds effortless in the earlier work. But the musical intelligence is intact, the harmonic thinking undimmed, and the tone retains enough of its old density to make clear that this is the same voice that defined an instrument. Sirius is a beautiful, slightly melancholy record, and a fitting close.