Music: Play the Way You Feel

"Good playing, precise playing," says Coleman Hawkins, "has no date—it goes on and on forever." Tenorman Hawkins should know what he is talking about.

The man who gave the saxophone to jazz has been blowing a wicked wind for 40 years—and the melodic breeze shows no signs of slackening. Having survived several shifts in jazz taste—swing to bebop to cool—Hawkins remains the busiest tenorman around. As fans at the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival in Cincinnati could testify last week, his swaggering saxophone has lost none of its ingenuity.

Dapper and erect at 58, Hawkins...