" data-original-title="" title="">Hampton Hawes, born in 1928, there was scarcely a first. No sooner was he established as an up-and-coming talent than he was drafted into the Army. When he got out, he tried to pick up where he left off. A heroin habit he had acquired prior to military service led to a harsh incarceration because he refused to become an informer. Only a grant of clemency by President John F Kennedy in 1963 resulted in an early release from federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky. Yet the damage was done. Hawes recovered his freedom, but his career never quite recovered. As the music scene changed in the 1960s and 1970s, Hawes tried to adjust, but never quite managed. His earlier promise, substantial in the mid-1950s, was never realized. He died prematurely of a massive stroke in 1977. He was just 49 years of age. His reputation underwent some rehabilitation between 1980 and 2000, but he has dropped steadily from sight since then.

With luck, this audiophile reissue of For Real will once more bring Hawes to public attention. A bare summary hardly does justice to the talent that was Hawes, although his reputation now rests on a slim body of recorded work. Essentially self-taught, his idiosyncratic technique sometimes got him into trouble with critics. They could never quite decide whether or not Hawes was the second coming of some combination of