Coleman Hawkins

The father of the jazz tenor surrounded by bebop modernists: J.J. Johnson, Idrees Sulieman, Hank Jones, Oscar Pettiford. The eleven-minute slow blues Juicy Fruit carries one of the great extended Hawkins solos. He reminds bebop where it came from.

The two great tenor sounds of the swing era, master and disciple, in a single room with the Oscar Peterson trio behind them. Less a battle than a long conversation between two players who invented adjacent halves of the same language.

Forty years into both careers, the first studio meeting of two founders. Ellington brought a small band of his stars, Hawkins brought the sound, and Mood Indigo got the tenor reading it had been waiting on since 1930.

Hawkins and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, two generations of Kansas City style tenor, trading choruses over a blues-soaked Prestige rhythm section. The title track is as deep in the pocket as Hawkins ever got on record.

The all-ballads Moodsville session with Kenny Burrell, Ronnell Bright, Ron Carter, and Andrew Cyrille. Just that enormous tenor sound moving slowly through great songs. One of the definitive late-night Hawkins records.

The quartet date that proves the Impulse! years were more than a victory lap. Tommy Flanagan at the piano, an unhurried program of standards and surprises, and a Hawkins still finding new corners in tunes he had played for decades.

Sonny Rollins at his most avant-garde, aimed lovingly at the man who invented the instrument, with Paul Bley pushing from the piano. The strangest great record in the Hawkins discography and the only studio meeting of the two tenors.