Starting his career in the early 1920s, Coleman Hawkins was the founding father of the tenor saxophone in jazz and one of the perennial stars of the instrument. Always modern, throughout his long career he kept in touch with the most recent styles, and surrounded himself with such youngsters as Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver, and Thelonious Monk, among others.
Hawkins' collaborations with the great pianist Bud Powell, however, are limited to the present 1960 Essen concert, first issued in Denmark as The Essen Jazz Festival All Stars (Debut Records DEB-131), on which they share four long tracks - with the rest being performed by Powell leading the rhythm section. The group is completed by the exceptional bassist Oscar Pettiford, who would suddenly die a few weeks later at the age of 37 on September 8, 1960, and drummer Kenny Clarke, one of the primary architects of bebop. Hawkins' complete 1959 quartet set at Chicago's Playboy Jazz Festival has been added as a bonus.
