When you get up in the morning, you must have a song - Ray Charles

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Coleman Hawkins - The Hawk And The Hunter


 I'll be honest. I don't often enjoy strings with my jazz.Well instrumentalists anyway. Even with singers I am a tad wishy-washy. It's like that thick icing on birthday cakes, all show but so cloyingly sweet it can only be ingested in small amounts. Save the strings for soundtracks is my general philosophy.
 But then again, when a giant of the idiom and a personal favorite thinks it's a good idea, I have to give it a listen. A fair listen.
 As any follower of this blog will note, I am a big Hawkins fan and besides just laying over some strings, he brought along a rhythm section for this recording. Well, actually two, and one of them sports one of my favorite pianists as well, Hank Jones.
 Despite the fact that the strings do indeed get a bit saccharine at times I still kinda dig this lp.It's very reminscent of those Moodsville lps. Hawkins shines through especially on the self penned tunes. Unfortunately this version of Brahm's Lullaby makes me long for a version without strings. That would have been some ballad.

Groovy cool cover for bonus points.

The Hawk and the Hunter
1. Easy Walker*
2. Traumerei
3. All The Time *
4. Lazy Butterfly
5. Not Quite Right*
6. Pebbles*
7. I Knew Dana*
8. Lullaby
9. Hawk Talk
10. Misty Morning
11. Lonely Tenor
12. Whisper To Me*

Coleman Hawkins - tenor sax
Frank Hunter - conductor

tunes marked *
Dick Hyman - piano
Milt Hinton - bass
Osie Johnson - drums

all others
Hank Jones - piano
George Duvivier - bass
Jimmie Crawford - drums

no recording info included

Mira records LP-3003
 

9 comments:

Hookfinger said...

http://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/t1s329

brianbrora said...

There's been very few jazz LPs with strings that work, I can only think of two or three. I've never heard this before, but it's pretty good. The strings are kept under control - not to ''sickly''. And Hawk sounds great! Discogs list this as being from 1965. Many Thanks indeed.

Hookfinger said...

I agree about the strings Brian. I have a cleaner copy of this going up in a few days. Thanks for dropping a line.

Jumpinjeep said...

Like the lushness of strings, in certain circumstances.

T'anks.

Scoredaddy said...

thanks!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for more good Hawkins.

chu said...

This was recorded in New York, March 21-25, 1963.

Prof. Yaffle said...

Normally if there are strings I'll run a mile so I didn't think I was going to say this, but I'm quite enjoying this. Thank you.

Alberto Cos said...

many thanks for this!!