A true connoisseur,
Sonny Rollins concentrates almost entirely upon the year 1944 as he selects
Coleman Hawkins tracks for this volume in Verve's Ultimate series. In choosing such a narrow time frame, undoubtedly Rollins was paying effusive tribute to the
Hawk recordings that he grew up with. Also 1944 was a year of transition for
Hawkins, buttressing Rollins' point that
Hawkins was an unsung pioneer of modern music, though the progressive
Hawk is not on display here. All but three of the selections come from the Keynote collection The Complete Coleman Hawkins, with hot little swing combos containing the likes of
Buck Clayton,
Roy Eldridge,
Teddy Wilson,
Earl Hines,
Slam Stewart, Sid Catlett and
Cozy Cole. The only exceptions to this single-minded concept are the revolutionary 1948 Picasso, the first unaccompanied tenor solo in jazz history, and a pair of warm-blooded
Norman Granz-produced tracks from 1957, Like Someone In Love and La Rosita. So this, then, is not very useful as a basic
Hawkins collection, though it will do fine as a sampler from the Keynote box, with the surface noise and distortion from the 78s left in. ~ Richard S. Ginell