Coleman Hawkins on Demand

[Guest Chaney]

Below borrowed from another board.

Coleman Hawkins on Demand

Jazz Fans:

Back on November 21, 2004 I produced a 5-hour radio Special on Coleman Hawkins to celebrate his 100th birthday. The first 2-hours of that program is now available on demand at the WGBH website. It will be up for at least a week or so. Go to:

www.wgbh.org/webcasts/

and click on Jazz from Studio Four

The following is the blurb used to describe the show in our monthly magazine.

Bean's Talkin'

Coleman Hawkins practically invented the jazz tenor saxophone. To celebrate Hawkins's 100th birthday (born on Nov. 21, 1904), host Steve Schwartz devotes this edition to his music and words. Schwartz offers parts of the rare two-LP set called Coleman Hawkins: A Documentary, in which "Bean" talks about his life and career in music — from his early days with Fletcher Henderson to his travels through Europe in the 1930s and the arrivals of modern jazz in the 1940s and rock 'n' roll in the 1950s.

As jazz evolved in its early forms, the instruments most commonly used were those already employed in classical music, particularly woodwinds. As a result, the dominant woodwind instrument was the clarinet. With a soprano voice and a wide range of both pitch and dynamic, the clarinet was an ideal vehicle to capture the spirit of Dixieland.

But jazz needed more as it came of age in the '20s and '30s. The art form was constantly being pushed in its expressive possibilities, and Coleman Hawkins was there to help. With the deeper, more intense sound of the tenor sax, he added a degree of substance and color not previously heard in jazz.

His seminal recording of "Body and Soul," an artistic statement that has been compared to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address for its elegance and utter perfection, was made in 1939, apparently simply to use up some leftover studio time. His career, though, stretched well into the '60s, continuing up to his death in 1969.

Enjoy!

Steve Schwartz

Jazz from Studio Four

Friday, 7p-midnight

WGBH, 89.7FM, Boston

www.wgbh.org

[ghost of miles]

Cool! Steve does a great show.

[RDK]

Cool. But after seeing the title of this thread, my first thoughts were either that "Demand" was some obscure jazz record label or that some Hawkins performances were finally available on iTunes!