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Jazz - Swing, Soloists, Improvisation | Britannica
Jazz - Swing, Soloists, Improvisation: Major swing soloists also emerged in the 1930s—most notably tenor saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Ben Webster; pianists Art Tatum and Teddy Wilson; and singer Billie Holiday. Hawkins had left the Henderson band in 1933 for what turned out to be a six-year stay in Europe, during which he not only taught most Europeans about jazz and swing but honed and perfected his personal style, which culminated—upon his return to the United States in 1939—in his recorded masterpiece, “Body and Soul.” During that period Hawkins’s slightly younger contemporaries Young and Webster developed quite divergent and highly distinctive improvisational styles.
