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Dan Morgenstern on Hawk


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Absolutely nothing to quibble with about Dan Morgenstern's essay, I remember it well and it is indeed all that. He had variants of it, but for me, this was the best version.

But dammit, the blogger gives the wrong album that this essay was in. It was in a Milestong two-fer, M-47015. If people are going to get by on coyping-pasting, they should at least get their own limited commentary correct. Phone a friend first, or at least an old guy.

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The open gatefold cover photo was seriously serious, totally Hawkish at least as he is in my mind..

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Absolutely nothing to quibble with about Dan Morgenstern's essay, I remember it well and it is indeed all that. He had variants of it, but for me, this was the best version.

But dammit, the blogger gives the wrong album that this essay was in. It was in a Milestong two-fer, M-47015. If people are going to get by on coyping-pasting, they should at least get their own limited commentary correct. Phone a friend first, or at least an old guy.

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He seems to have fixed his error with the exception of still using the wrong LP cover art down at the bottom.

EDIT: Oh wait, you're right that he still refers to the wrong catalog numbers for this Milestone two-fer.

Edited by Kevin Bresnahan
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  • 1 month later...

As I may have said here before, I played a peripheral role in Hawkins' final days -- peripheral but it looms large in my memory. Dan had brought Hawkins  to Chicago to play with Roy Eldridge, Barry Harris, Truck Parham, and Bob Cousins for a Saturday public TV show taping, to be followed by a Jazz Showcase performance on Sunday afternoon --  a great idea, but Dan had no idea of in how poor a shape Hawkins was. Upon arriving at O'Hare, Hawkins collapsed, was taken to a hospital but insisted that he wanted to and felt well enough to play, and both the Saturday taping and the Sunday Showcase performance went on as planned, with Hawkins in poor shape. I was assistant editor under Dan at Downbeat at the time, and he asked me to take Hawkins to the airport on Monday morning because Dan had DB obligations that prevented him from doing so himself. I went to the hotel, the Executive House on Wacker Drive, carefully ushered Hawkins into a cab and to the airport, where a red cap recognized him and supplied a wheelchair. We were early for his flight, of course, so I asked Hawkins if there were anything he wanted. He said "The airport bar," and when we got there he ordered a Courvousier or two. When we got to the gate, the attendants blanched -- here was a strange-looking uncommunicative man, wearing a much-rumbled but originally elegant pin-stripe Hart, Schaffner, and Marx suit, and with a long scraggly beard and in a wheel chair. They wanted to put him in coach, but I knew he had a first class ticket so I kind of threw a fit, insisting that he had a first-class ticket and that's where he was going to sit  or there was going to be trouble. And that's where he sat. As he was being wheeled backwards onto the plane, he looked at me with what seemed to me to be an expression of some gratitude -- or perhaps it was a look of "justice has been done." This I will never forget. When he got back to his NYC apartment, I think he was visited by a few friends, probably Barry Harris and Tommy Flanagan, but despite their best efforts he wouldn't eat, and he didn't last much longer -- maybe a month.

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