Al Cohn

Fellow musicians held Al Cohn in high esteem both for his exceptional command of the tenor saxophone and for his outstanding gifts as an arranger and composer. His earliest professional work featured stints alongside Joe Marsala in 1943, Georgie Auld, Boyd Raeburn in 1946, Alvino Rey, and Buddy Rich in 1947. A decisive step came when he took Herbie Steward’s chair among the “Four Brothers” in Woody Herman’s Second Herd from 1948 to 1949, a period that first brought him wider recognition. Although Stan Getz and Zoot Sims drew more attention, Cohn supplied distinctive charts, among them “The Goof and I.” He next joined Artie Shaw’s brief-lived bop orchestra in 1949. Throughout the 1950s he stayed active as a leader—his initial sessions under his own name appeared in 1950—while supplying arrangements for both jazz and popular contexts and maintaining a steady performing schedule. Beginning in 1956 he formed a long-running, intermittently active quintet with Zoot Sims; the two saxophonists blended so seamlessly that listeners often found it difficult to distinguish one from the other. Cohn maintained a similar pattern through the 1960s, though with reduced performing time, then cut a series of notable dates for Xanadu in the 1970s. In his final years his sound grew darker and more personal, prompting him to set aside writing in favor of concentrated playing. Across his career he produced numerous strong bop-centered albums for Prestige, Victor, Xanadu, and Concord. His son, Joe Cohn, has earned recognition as a gifted cool-toned guitarist.