Body and Soul (Coleman Hawkins, 1995)

You don't have to call your Coleman Hawkins compilation Body and Soul...but it helps. It gets confused people like me to buy the wrong version! Now, there is some overlap with the other Body and Soul that graced this blog earlier (we don't do repeats here, at least not until I've run out of albums), but this ended up being different enough to keep around. Whereas most of the tracks on the RCA version are songs preformed by Hawkins or some band carrying his name, most of the tracks on the Topaz edition feature his work within other combos and orchestras like Spike Hughes, Fletcher Henderson, and Leonard Feather. Also this compilation covers the years 1929 to 1943, while the other one runs from 1939 to 1956 (the title track appears to best represent the small overlap). Therefore this serves as a nice bridge from the Louis Armstrong-Hot 5 and 7 stuff I have to the Swing Era and beyond. The opening tracks are very "hot" sounding and follow very naturally from Armstong's body of work during the 1920's. By the end of the run we are comfortably in swing mode with lush orchestration.

Body and Soul (Coleman Hawkins, 1996)

Buyer beware: there are multiple Coleman Hawkins compilations called "Body and Soul" - this is the one you want to get. This collection brings together many of the scattered singles Hawkins released before the album format finally caught on in the 1950's. It's pretty common to discover music from this era through collections such as this. For a single disc it covers a surprising amount of ground.

These recordings from 1939 to 1956 provide a helpful bridge from the big band stuff of the 1920's to 1940's and the bebop era of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and associates. The early tracks use a more old-fashioned instrumental approach more familiar to fans of the Hot 5's and 7's days (clarinet, strummed guitar) than the later tracks (drums, string bass), showing Hawkins progression toward bop. In his later years he would show up in a number of unexpected sideman gigs with younger performers like Sonny Rollins.