Coleman Hawkins

I don’t know who Sir William Stephen was, but he had a very nice library named after him. It was on Keewatin, which was in a kind of northwest no-man’s land, which the people living around there would dispute. If you looked due west, you’d be looking in the direction of the airport, north led out of town, and south led to Weston, and then into the west end of the city. East would bring you back into the real world, where we were living.

The library was built in 1997, so it was new when it opened, and they imported a bunch of material from an existing branch that they closed (McPhillips) and they also got some new stuff. It was nice there; it always made me feel good to visit.

So that’s where I got this Coleman Hawkins collection.

This is jazz, and it’s not so hard to listen to. Hawkins played tenor sax; he was a pioneer, before Pres, before John Coltrane, before Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins etc etc. This is bebop I’m told, and if so, then I guess I like bebop.

Needless to say, Hawkins never had any radio hits, and these tracks come mostly from the 40s and early 50s, the latest having been released in 1956, so it just barely squeaks into our period here.

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Coleman Hawkins:

· Meet Doctor Foo – But for the fact that this was recorded in 1939, it could have been an in joke among computer programmers. Was it followed by Meet Doctor Bar?
· When Day Is Done – Not the Peter, Paul & Mary song, which was just called Day Is Done, anyway.
· Say It Isn’t So
· April In Paris – The song was from 1932, and was a hit for Count Basie in 1956.
· How Strange
· There Will Never Be Another You
· Little Girl Blue – Judy Garland did this, and so did Janis Joplin
· His Very Own Blues
· 34” – 25” – 39”
· Body And Soul
· The Essence Of You