Coleman Randolph Hawkins aka "Hawk" and sometimes "Bean", was a prominent jazz tenor saxophomist.. He is commonly regarded as the first important and influential jazz musician to use the instrument: Joachim E. Berendt wrote, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn." Coleman is most strongly associated with the swing movement and the big band era, but he started playing professionally in the early 1920s, and conversely was also was important in the development of bebop in the 1940s, and was influenced by the avant-garde jazz of the 1950s and '60s.