Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Coleman Hawkins

While many of his generation resisted the bebop revolution of the 1940s, Hawkins was a notable sponsor, among the first to hire its exponents and to record tunes like Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody 'n' You" and Thelonious Monk's "I Mean You." In the later years of his career, he played across a broad spectrum of jazz. There's a sublime meeting here with fellow swing tenor giant Ben Webster over a Latin beat on "La Rosita." Max Roach's "Driva Man" was one of the first works of explicit social protest in jazz. And Duke Ellington wrote the concluding "Self Portrait of the Bean" for Hawkins for a 1962 session in which they belatedly joined forces. --Stuart Broomer