the1920sand30s | Coleman Hawkins & Django Reinhardt - Avalon [Rose] (1935) @the1920sand30s | Uploaded July 2022 | Updated October 2024, 4 hours ago.
Performed by: Coleman Hawkins

Full Song Title: Avalon (Rose)

Recorded in: March 2, 1935 - Paris, France

Guitar – Django Reinhardt
Piano – Stéphane Grappelly

Coleman Hawkins, in full Coleman Randolph Hawkins, (born November 21, 1904, St. Joseph, Mo., U.S. — died May 19, 1969, New York, N.Y.), American jazz musician whose improvisational mastery of the tenor saxophone, which had previously been viewed as little more than a novelty, helped establish it as one of the most popular instruments in jazz. He was the first major saxophonist in the history of jazz.

At age four Hawkins began to study the piano, at seven the cello, and at nine the saxophone. He became a professional musician in his teens, and, while playing with Fletcher Henderson’s big band between 1923 and 1934, he reached his artistic maturity and became acknowledged as one of the great jazz artists. He left the band to tour Europe for five years and then crowned his return to the United States in 1939 by recording the hit “Body and Soul,” an outpouring of irregular, double-timed melodies that became one of the most imitated of all jazz solos.

Hawkins was one of the first jazz horn players with a full understanding of intricate chord progressions, and he influenced many of the great saxophonists of the swing era (notably Ben Webster and Chu Berry) as well as such leading figures of modern jazz as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. Hawkins’s deep, full-bodied tone and quick vibrato were the expected style on jazz tenor until the advent of Lester Young, and even after Young’s appearance many players continued to absorb Hawkins’s approach. One of the strongest improvisers in jazz history, Hawkins delivered harmonically complex lines with an urgency and authority that demanded the listener’s attention. He was also a noted ballad player who could create arpeggiated, rhapsodic lines with an intimate tenderness that contrasted with his gruff attack and aggressive energy at faster tempos.

Hawkins gave inspired performances for decades, managing to convey fire in his work long after his youth. From the 1940s on he led small groups, recording frequently and playing widely in the United States and Europe with Jazz at the Philharmonic and other tours. Despite alcoholism and ill health, he continued playing until shortly before his death in 1969.

Django Reinhardt, original name Jean Reinhardt, (born January 23, 1910, Liberchies, Belgium—died May 16, 1953, Fontainebleau, France), guitarist who is generally considered one of the few European jazz musicians of true originality.

Reinhardt, who was of Roma (Gypsy) parentage, traveled through France and Belgium as a boy and young man learning to play the violin, guitar, and banjo. The loss of the use of two fingers of his left hand after a caravan fire in 1928 did not impair his remarkable aptitude for the guitar. In 1934 he became coleader, with violinist Stéphane Grappelli, of the Quintette du Hot Club de France, a group whose many records are greatly prized by connoisseurs. In his only visit to the United States, in 1946, Reinhardt toured with the Duke Ellington orchestra.

For most of his career Reinhardt played in the swing style that reached its peak of popularity in the 1930s. Perhaps his most lasting influence on jazz was the introduction of solos based on melodic improvisation, at a time when guitarists generally played chorded solos. His inimitable improvisations, particularly those in slow tempos, were often a curious but beguiling blend of Roma and jazz sounds. Among his guitar compositions transposed into orchestral works are “Nuages” and “Manoir des mes rêves.”

On 16 May 1953, while walking from the Gare de Fontainebleau–Avon Station after playing in a Paris club, he collapsed outside his house from a brain hemorrhage. It was a Saturday, and it took a full day for a doctor to arrive. Reinhardt was declared dead on arrival at the hospital in Fontainebleau, at the age of 43.

Stéphane Grappelli ( born 26 January 1908 – died 1 December 1997, born Stefano Grappelli) was a French-Italian jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties.

For the first three decades of his career, he was billed using a gallicised spelling of his last name, Grappelly, reverting to Grappelli in 1969. The latter, Italian spelling is now used almost universally when referring to the violinist, including reissues of his early work.

Grappelli died in Paris on 1 December 1997, suffering heart failure after a series of minor cerebral attacks.

I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

Best wishes,
Stu
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