Free Republic

Coleman Hawkins’ 1958 Verve Records classic, Coleman Hawkins And Confrères, is set to be reissued on October 24 through Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series. Pre-orders are available now.Hawkins’ tenor saxophone playing is particularly confident and eloquent throughout the set. His group of “confreres” on the session is fortified by the Oscar Peterson Trio along with sit-in guests including Hank Jones (piano), Herb Ellis (guitar), Roy Eldridge and Buck Clayton (both on trumpet), and others. The album was initially recorded across two sessions, on October 16, 1957 and February 7, 1958. Consisting of both original compositions from Hawkins and covers, highlights include...

John Coltrane’s sessions for the Prestige label proved to be supremely fertile and prolific, marking the saxophonist’s creative rebirth.It’s 1958 and John Coltrane is looking to rebuild his career. The reputation of the Philadelphia-raised musician, then 32, had seemed in serious jeopardy a year earlier, after his heroin addiction got him fired from Miles Davis’ group. As a rising star of the tenor saxophone – the man who had lit up a clutch of Davis albums recorded for both Prestige and Columbia during 1955-56 – the high-flying Coltrane seemed an indispensable component of the trumpeter’s band, but the shock of...