Bio

Coleman Hawkins was born in St. Joseph Missouri in 1904. He attended High School in Topeka Kansas, and subsequently had two years of college music education at Washburn College. Shortly after this period, he would relocate to New York City, where he would begin a long and prosperous tenure with Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra. He would come in contact with Louis Armstrong during this time, and it would have an incredible impact on Hawkins. He would later go on to tour extensively in Europe before returning to America for another long stretch. Coleman Hawkins is thought of as the first person to bring the tenor saxophone to prominence in jazz music. There were players before him, but he is often credited as being the first to demand that the instrument be taken seriously. His virtuosic approach to improvisation, often consisting of advanced harmonies and arpeggios, was among the first styles to be tailored precisely to the tenor sax. Coleman Hawkins would also go on to be a pioneer of the bebop style, associating with musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker and others.