In the 1910s the saxophone was a vaudeville punchline, played stiffly like an oversized clarinet and compared to a dying farm animal. This episode follows Coleman Hawkins, born in St. Joseph, Missouri in 1904, who silenced that laughter. Piano at four, cello at seven, saxophone at nine, professional gigs by 14 and college-level harmony classes at Washburn College as a teenager gave him a foundation his peers lacked, earning him the nickname Bean for his encyclopedic knowledge of chords. The hosts argue that his childhood cello training is the skeleton key to his sound: he forced a brass tube to mimic the sweeping vibrato of a bowed string.

From Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds to star soloist in Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, Hawkins absorbed Louis Armstrong's relaxed swing when the trumpeter joined in 1924 and became the king of the tenor by the ...