Artist: Coleman Hawkins

Coleman Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. 

Hawkins' virtuosic, arpeggiated approach to improvisation, with his characteristic rich, emotional, and vibrato-laden tonal style, was the main influence on a generation of tenor players that included Chu Berry, Charlie Barnet, Tex Beneke, Ben Webster, Vido Musso, Herschel Evans, Buddy Tate, and Don Byas, and through them the later tenormen, Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, Flip Phillips, Ike Quebec, Al Sears, Paul Gonsalves, and Lucky Thompson. While Hawkins became known for swing music during the big band era, he also had a role in the development of bebop in the 1940s. 

Fellow saxophonist Lester Young, known as the "President of the Tenor Saxophone," commented, in a 1959 interview with The Jazz Review: "As far as I'm concerned, I think Coleman Hawkins was the president, first, right? As far as myself, I think I'm the second one." Miles Davis once said: "When I heard Hawk, I learned to play ballads." 

Further information about Coleman Hawkins is found here and here.

This content was excerpted from the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleman_Hawkins, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/).