Don't forget Sonny rollins.

[king ubu]

Is it just me or has Sonny's tone spread wider and wider over the years.

You say that as if it's a bad thing. I disagree. Totally.

Things spread as you get older, trust me. A tone should be no exception.

I really do NOT like "today's" tenor sound, which is all tight and so highly focused and devoid of depth that, yes, it cuts with laser beam precision, but it leaves no residue, in either the ear or the soul (my opinion). Like a laser beam, it comes strongly, but it leaves just as quickly. BOO!

Give me a FAT sound, one that's been lived in, one that fills the entire room with its breadth (not it volume) and leaves a big glob of character on everything it comes into contact with, even tangentally. It's a TENOR, God's instrument, not a little analog sound generator that puts out generic beams of sound. Put someting into it or else switch to alto.

[Larry Kart]

Jim Sangry wrote: "It's a miracle/blessing/whatever that he's still out there doing it. I heard the tone start to "hollow out" on GLOBAL WARMING, and it had me wondering if maybe the end was near. Luckily, it wasn't, and still isn't, hopefully. But it's WORK, genuine hard physical labor, to play like Sonny does.

How Von Freeman does what he does at HIS age is even more miraculous...."

I certainly haven't heard every Rollins record and live performance in recent decades, but I don't think of his career over that time as " a miracle/blessing/whatever" but as a slow-motion train wreck. Look, a lot of us apparently have a understandable human/humane investment in Rollins the noble giant remaining noble and gigantic; I've felt those waves of feeling myself (for me Sonny was once maybe the most important artist on the planet). But to keep saying (believing?) that he's playing at a level that the evidence suggests he's not is not a good thing for him or for us either; for one thing, it more or less removes from our consciousness the perhaps important question of why and how any musician of Rollins' stature doe swhat he does when he manages to do it and why -- again, perhaps, quite understandably -- he no longer is able or no longer chooses to do it, if that is so. The mention of Von Freeman is telling. Von still does it, has never stopped. However miraculous that fact may be, I don't think it can or should be hauled over and wrapped around Sonny's neck. Whatever is or has been going on there, for many years it seems, is not a cause for celebration IMO. In particular, Jim, while we're all aware of what age does/has done to any number of great saxophonists, from Lester Young to Coleman Hawkins to whomever, it's always been my gut feeling that Rollins is a very different case -- that whatever role age and bouts of infirmity have played in his latter-day career, something pretty basic changed in his whole attitude toward making music as an improvising jazz artist a long time ago, as long ago as the end of the Cherry-Grimes-Higgins band. I'm not saying I'm automatically right about this; what I'm asking is when can we try to talk about Rollins in terms of his art and its actual trials and triumphs (whatever they are) and the whys and wherefores of same (all of which might involve "issues" that are of importance to the whole course of this music in recent years and down the road), rather than get ourselves all caught up in maintaining/gilding the Sonny Rollins statue?

[JSngry]

Nothing to say except that A)Sonny Rollins still matters to me, mediocre records and all. I still hear a story being told, even if it is often VERY much "between the lines", and it's a story that I continue to find riveting, warts and all; and B)Von had an "advantage" (a knowingly ironic word to be sure) in staying "local" until well into middle age. All things considered, it's been best for everybody that it worked out that way, no?

No need to gild the statue. It's real gold, always has been, always will be. As for maintaining it, I say let it be what it is, and let it do what it will do. Venus Di Milo with no arms is still Venus Di Milo. The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see. And if all that he could see was merely the other side of the mountain, well, hey, he sees it from the perspective of one who had to get to (and over) the mountaintop first. Not all mundaneness, such as it is, is equal...

Am I being irrational about all this? Maybe. Maybe not. Don't know, and as of now, don't really care. Someday, perhaps. All I can tell you now is that the guy still gets me. I offer no defense other than that.

[Larry Kart]

"The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see."

Glad you said that, Jim, because it sums up what most jazz musicians do or are obliged to do whenever they address their instruments in the present tense and what I think Rollins more or less stopped doing some time ago -- again (if so) for reasons that I think may be important beyond the boundaries of Rollins' personhood or reputation and that are very much worth talking about. As you probably recall, I did weigh in a bit on that subject in the intro to Ye Olde New Book.

[JSngry]

Well, ask yourself this - if you went to the top of the mountain, saw all there was to see, and decided to come back down, wouldn't your first reaction most likely be a letdown? Maybe even a bit of depression, disillusionment, whatever?

Well, sooner or later, you've got to come to grips with the fact that you're not one of the "lucky" ones who saw god and then proceeded to leave the building to take a gig on another plane, and that you're going to have to get on with the business of living out the rest of your life in a sane, functional manner, or at least as sane and functional as you can.

I doubt that this would be an easy thing to reconcile one's self to in a quick, non-linear fashion. Surely there would be all sorts of experiments to find a way to "fit in" with your new surroundings, and some would work better than others. but none would get you back to the mountaintop.

But I'd also think that after the requisite-or-more amount of soul-searching that you'd eventually, if you really DO want to live a sane and functional life for your remaining days, that you'd find what it is that gives you joy. and in Sonny Rollins' case, I believe that that is playing the tenor saxophone. NOT looking for new heights every time out (that WOULD drive you crazy, because as we all know, you can't go home again), but just playing because it is the one true joy in your life, the way that you achieve that metaphysical/spiritual/whatever state of "completeness. Just playing the damn thing as often and as well as you can.

And THAT is what I listen for in Sonny Rollins today - not some new innovations or discoveries, but just that JOY in being alive and playing the damn tenor, because, really, that's what it's come down to for him, I think - this is what I do.

And I DO hear that joy quite often, sometimes in the records (and sometimes not, but Sonny's recording history has ALWAYS been a spotted one), and/but more often in the live performances I've had the pleasure to hear recordings of.

Now of course, Sonny having been to the mountaintop and all, sometimes I hear him reminiscing about what it was like up there, and sometimes I hear him sounding really bummed that he came back down. Is it realistic to expect otherwise? Is it realistic to expect somebody who's already seen all that they can see to keep trying to see more than all, if what they want to do is live a sane and functional life down here with the rest of us? Granted, it's awfully tempting to want/expect that, but it's also easy to say when it's not US that it's being asked of.

I'd rather just let the man be, let him pursue his joy in his work, hope that he finds it as often as he is able, and continue to listen closely to what he says, because what he might drop as an offhanded aside might have more relevance to the big/long-term picture than some whiz-kid's latest innovations.

No, I don't expect, even WANT to hear Sonny climb the mountain any more. Once is enough for anybody, don't you agree? All I want to hear from him is that life is still good, and that playing the tenor is still good. Maybe that playing the tenor IS the best that life has to offer.

Are those "low" expectations of a man who once routinely levitated (musically) and displayed an ability to routinely exist in multiple dimensions simultaneously? Well, maybe, but maybe not. When the joy is as powerful as it sometime is when it comes from Rollins' horn, I'd say that asking for anything more would be asking him to do something that I should probably be doing myself. He's already done it once, and I've done it....uh.... NEVER (had a few trips up the mountain, occasionally made it up part of the way, but that's been it so far).

If the lesson of all of this is that climbing the moutain is good, getting there is even better, but after THAT you gotta work for the rest of your life, and so you might as well work at doing something that you love, that "this is what I do", no irony or slyness intended, then so be it. It's not a very Romantic lesson. to be sure, but it damn sure is REAL. For those of us who dream, probably in vain, of someday getting to that mountaintop, the lesson that there's joy, a deep, fundamental joy, in the work itself, and that a life spent in that joy is better than a life spent without it is not a trivial one. Nor is the lesson that that joy is not always going to be at your immediate disposal, and that sometimes you just gotta go ahead and get through the shit to get to the shower.

Yeah, you can probably learn the same lesson from a coal miner. But how may coal miners can play "Cabin In The Sky" like Sonny does on +3?

THAT'S the difference, and a huge one it is.

[Larry Kart]

First, if the "mountain top," "saw God" images imply something other than the greatness of Sonny's achievement(s) -- if for instance they mean that he was an unusually ecstatic-type artist in search of revelations (or "revelations"), a la Coltrane perhaps -- I don't see things that way. Sonny I think was a multiple-consciousness artist, with an emphasis on the consciousness of it all (albeit within a "blowing" context), that was almost without precedent in jazz on the part of a horn player.

"if you really DO want to live a sane and functional life for your remaining days, that you'd find what it is that gives you joy. and in Sonny Rollins' case, I believe that that is playing the tenor saxophone. NOT looking for new heights every time out (that WOULD drive you crazy, because as we all know, you can't go home again), but just playing because it is the one true joy in your life, the way that you achieve that metaphysical/spiritual/whatever state of "completeness. Just playing the damn thing as often and as well as you can."

Joy I don't hear much of, haven't for some time. And one of the questions that the shape of Sonny's career may raise -- as does W. Shorter's in a some ways similar, some ways different way -- is the relationship (for such figures) between living " a sane and functional life" and functioning as an "in the 'one'" jazz improviser. I'm saying/guessing that from Sonny and Wayne's vantage point in the 1959-'66 period, something important changed attitude-wise. For instance, who promised any of us, and improvising jazz soloists especially, a state of "metaphysical/spiritual 'completeness'"? That is -- not to get too cute about this -- what those and other jazz voyagers of that time were exploring was how much and what kind of 'incompleteness" (aesthetic/metaphysical/spiritual) they could fruitfully accept or endure (or make, by God, into new "wholes") while, in the act, they told us about all this. I'm all for full bank accounts, maximum mental and physical and spiritual well-being, and due honors for jazz's elder statesmen, but let's not forget why they and we bothered in the first place.

[JSngry]

Joy I don't hear much of, haven't for some time.

What can I say? We hear two different things.

Vive le diiferential!

[JSngry]

There's a quote from a DB interview with Rollins, late80s/early 90s, maybe, where he is asked to define jazz, or some such inane questions. His answer is something like, "All I know is that what I hear in Louis Armstrong is what jazz is." That's a rough, probably more than 50% innacurate quote, but the gist is true.

My first reaction to this was that Sonny was playing the neo-con card, but further reflection leads me to believe that what he meant was deeper than that. That the essence of life as expressed through this music is ultimately the joy. Not the "ecstasy" or any of that mess, just the JOY of being alive and doing what it is that you love to do. Now, that's kind of an antiquated notion in these days of slaying the dragon and such, but maybe...

Sonny as Louis Armstrong for the late 20th/early 21st century? A once bold and innovative force who for years simply goes about doing what they do w/o any expectations of getting somewhere other than where they already are, but letting the personal joy of that "there" be enough for them, if not for many fans and critics who grunmble that it's not "real" anymore?

If you don't hear the joy, then no, obviously not. Otherwise, stranger things have happened.

Sonny has yet to sing, however....

Edited August 12, 2004 by JSngry

[JSngry]

Sonny I think was a multiple-consciousness artist, with an emphasis on the consciousness of it all ....

...who promised any of us, and improvising jazz soloists especially, a state of "metaphysical/spiritual 'completeness'"? That is -- not to get too cute about this -- what those and other jazz voyagers of that time were exploring was how much and what kind of 'incompleteness" (aesthetic/metaphysical/spiritual) they could fruitfully accept or endure (or make, by God, into new "wholes") while, in the act, they told us about all this. .

It has been promised (or at least held out as attainable) for centuries. Some believe it is attainable, some scoff at the notion. You pays your money, you takes your chances...

But don't you think that "a multiple-consciousness artist, with an emphasis on the consciousness of it all" (an assessment with which I agree 100%, btw), is going to eventually look to find the unity, the "consciousness of it all", within/amonst all the multiples? Warne Marsh springs to mind as somebody who DID find it, but lord knows, his was a career out of the limelight, to put it mildly. And that relative obscurity, intentionally imposed (somewhat, I'm guessing) or due to/caused by personal factors (moreso, I'm again guessing) might have been all for the better, at least as far as finding what he was looking for, which I do believe was "the consciousness of it all".

Maybe the lesson is that the puzzle is better business than the solution!

[JSngry]

This well-beaten horse has long been dead, and I'm getting there. Good night, Gracie.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

The quote mentioning Armstrong is from DB May 1982 p.18. The interviewer is Bob Blumenthal.

BB: Getting back to the differences between now and, say, 20 years ago, a friend of mine likes to say that jazz isn't dead, it's just over. In other words, a natural musical cycle has run its course, like the 19th century European orchestral form, and any further evolution will be marked by so many other influences that people won't hear it as jazz.

SR: A person like me doesn't like to think of something like that being true. I like to think there is a direct link between early jazz and jazz of any time - a vital part, so you can really tell that that's what it is. I like to think that jazz can be played in a way that you can hear the old as well as the new. At least that's how I try to play and what I do personally. But maybe jazz will stretch out to the point where it's not really jazz, the basical part of jazz.

I think the basic part is done already, it can't really change. I listen to Louis Armstrong and hear something that I want to be able to hear in anything that's called "jazz."

[end of article]

Mike

[MartyJazz]

The quote mentioning Armstrong is from DB May 1982 p.18. The interviewer is Bob Blumenthal.

BB: Getting back to the differences between now and, say, 20 years ago, a friend of mine likes to say that jazz isn't dead, it's just over.

One quote that I remember from time to time is "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny." Anyone know who said it because I can't recall who it was.

[bertrand]

Frank Zappa.

Bertrand.

[Eric]

So Jim ... and others ... what 10 records should one own in a self-respecting Rollins collection? I can read all the critical essays/etc., but I would be very interested to know what someone who is obviously passionate about his music thinks ...

Edited August 14, 2004 by Eric

[danasgoodstuff]

OK, I'll bite since I love Rollins' playing and own virtually all the official, plus...

Sax Collosus

Tenor Madness (w/Coltrane)

+4 (Clifford Brown/Max Roach under Sonny's name)

Way Out West

Freedom Suite

Live @ Village Vanguard

The Bridge

Alfie

Live In Japan

+3

After the Bridge other choices could be made. I am a fan of Rollins' Milestone years but they are uneven...

[danasgoodstuff]

Jim,

I, too, hear a great deal of joy in Rollins later work. Maybe an everyday sort of joy but joy nonetheless.

Larry,

You're a perceptive and articulate guy and I've had occassion to defend you here when I thought you were being unfairly attacked, BUT did it ever occur to you that perhaps you're also a little, umm, demanding?

Hoping not to be misunderstood,

Dana

[Brad]

So Jim ... and others ... what 10 records should one own in a self-respecting Rollins collection? I can read all the critical essays/etc., but I would be very interested to know what someone who is obviously passionate about his music thinks ...

Don't forget East Broadway Rundown, one of my favorites. I'd also stick in a vote for Worksong, a very fine cd.

I don't really want to wade into this controversy but I saw Sonny awhile back at New Jersey Performing Arts Center and all the criticism I read here I don't feel is justified and even more so when he's 73 or 74. I hope I'm functioning at half that level when I'm 74. Didn't Monk record and play many of the same compositions over and over? I don't see anybody criticizing him for that.

[Larry Kart]

Dana: I've wondered about that "too demanding" thing over the years; all I can say is that Sonny Rollins once was, as I think I've said before, probably the most important living artist to me -- and "most important living artist" probably understates the case; Rollins and his music "knew" things about the world that were crucial, true, and seemingly unknown to or unspoken by others. And then Rollins IMO kind of lost heart, at the very least began leaking a lot of oil. Here's a brief allusion to what I think was going there from the intro to my book:

"The rich complexity of Rollins’s musical thought, and his ability to at once dramatize and ironically comment upon virtually any emotional impulse that came to mind, led him to express multiple points of view--one could even say summon up multiple selves or characters--within a single solo. This was, however, not an approach that Rollins could sustain during the 1960s, in the face of rapid stylistic change in the surrounding jazz landscape. Responding to those changes in his own work, as he did quite strikingly up to a point, also meant that the broadly shared musical-emotional language of romantic sign and sentiment that had so deeply stirred Rollins’s own sentiments and wit was now becoming historical. It was a language that could still be referred to and played off of, but for him apparently not with sufficient immediacy."

Being a great player, there was a lot of fine playing left to come (amid evidence of leaking oil or air), but urgent contact between Rollins, his material and preoccupations, and most crucially (for want of a better term) The Living World began to be a rear-view mirror phenomenon. And this, to exaggerate just a bit, broke my heart -- because I had so much more I needed to learn from that man, and he'd stopped speaking to us in that way and from that vantage point (or so it seemed).

About Rollins albums, "Worktime" is essential. One that may leave people uneasy at times but that I think captures something of what was going on in Rollins' soul that can't be heard as vividly anywhere else is "Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders" (OJC) from 1958 -- "In the Chapel in the Moonlight" and "You" (perhaps not by accident the Art Linkletter Show theme song) in particular. Don't know if it's on CD, but the Swedish label Dragon has/had an LP "Sonny Rollins Trio in Stockholm 1959 (with Henry Grimes and Pete LaRoca) that's to die for. I think this was just about the last Rollins before the retirement from public view that ended in early 1962 with "The Bridge." Also from that time, taped a few days later (March 11, 1959) at a club in Aix-en-Provence, with Grimes and Kenny Clarke, is "Sonny Rollins Live in France 1959" (Landscape) probably OOP, where he sounds like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of God (or is it Jehovah himself?) -- which may be close to what was actually going on.

[JSngry]

The Aix-en-Province disc is being asked about here:

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=12418

[JSngry]

10 essential Rollins albums? All the usual suspects, of course, but I'd like to mention a few 70s and beyond things that I've found continuously rewarding over the years, although none are "perfect" in the way(s) that the classics of the 50s and 60s were.

NEXT ALBUM - the big "comeback" album. Other than the sluggish opening track and the residual signs of not having played regularly for a while, a really great album. "The Everywhere Calyso" and "Skylark" are classics AFAIC.

IN JAPAN - this one displays the "new" Rollins approach as well as anything. Larry might find it disheartening in its lack of emotional "complexity", but I find it exhillirating. It's the "this is what I do" approach in full glory, and "this is what I do" is to just play the tenor. Again, though, the opening cut is the weakest, a trait of Rollins albums from the 70s on that infuriates me to no end. But the comparing version of "Alfie's Theme" here with the Impulse versions is instructive - the latter were complex in the extreme, emotionally and technically, whereas this newer version is not really that complex emotionally, but is still incredibly involed technically and creatively.

NUCLEUS - this one took a LOT of time to grab me, but once it did, it hasn't let go. There's a lot of unabashed R&B grooves on this one, and Sonny doesn't really try to do much more than ride them, which is not what I neither wanted or expected. But when I came to accept it for what it was, it's become a nice "people" album for me, Sonny's equivalent of a good Eddie Harris album (GASP!), which might seem beneath the man, but is also to me reflective of the desire that even the giants have to at least be sometimes "just plain folk". WHAT he plays on most of this one might not grab you, but HOW he plays it is what finally grabbed me. Besides, there's two straight-ahead cuts on this one that are pretty mind-boggling....

G-MAN - Live, loud, and proud. Get the LP if you can find it, because the CD has a "bonus" cut of "Tenor Madness" that is basically Rollins-free. It's "this is what I do" again - just a lot of tenor playing, and damn great tenor playing it is.

FALLING IN LOVE WITH JAZZ - This one has REALLY gotten under my skin. Again, the opening cut is the weakest, and there may or may not be "too much" space allocated to other people's playing, but Sonny's playing on this one is magnificent -full of vigor and some of the "quirkiness" of the ALFIE date (but matter-of-factly so). The version of "Little Girl Blue" on here is another deep classic, imo, and the version of "I Should Care" where Sonny "merely" plays the melody and ends it it a slowly downward bending note, a pulling back of the curtain, it seems, to reveal Branford Marsalis' take on Sonny's own mid-1950s style" is a supremely ironic/knowing moment.

+3 - this one has had its adherents from the beginning, and seems to be "gathering steam" critrically. Allow me to concur.

The only ones to REALLY avoid are THE WAY I FEEL and REEL LIFE. All of the others have moments, some of them quite strong moments, in fact (DANCING IN THE DARK has enough of them to probably make my list here, in fact), but don't really sustain interest as albums per se. To that end, get the SILVER CITY box. and leave well enough alone.

No, they're not the Rollins of old, any of these. They are what they are. Proceed accordingly.

[Eric]

Jim,

Thanks - 'zactly what I was looking for.

Based on this thread, I pulled out +3 and This Is What I Do a couple of days ago.

Always liked +3, but I seemed to have snoozed on This.

Wow - both of these are really strong and highly enjoyable. There is a LOT to listen to. How is Global Warming relative to these?

How about the RCA years - I have nothing except Bridge ... any suggestions?

Thanks

[Quincy]

How about the RCA years - I have nothing except Bridge ... any suggestions?

Not to butt in but...

Having just picked up a used copy of the RCA box I'd suggest go that route. Like yourself I only owned one the albums on CD so it seemed like now was time. Used copies can be had for < $55 and the box contains 6 discs, with quite a bit of extra material that would be hard to find elsewhere. I'd also like to add that they make it easy to see what album tracks are on which discs without any garish colors in the background. I'm very happy with it!

Another thanks to Jim for the review of the '70s & beyond material, as I've just about gotten all the pre-70s!

Edited August 15, 2004 by Quincy

[BruceH]

Y'know, there's one tenor player I always liked...what was his name? Collins...Hollins...no, ROLLINS, that was it!!! Almost forgot.

[danasgoodstuff]

Larry,

Thank you for a thoughtful & thought-provoking reply. I think I need to digest before commenting further.

Jim,

Want to have a go at the Rollins +3 album being the best argument for taking his recent work at least somewhat as seriously as the classic? I think it's better than any number of run-of-the-mill records from back in the day, if not quite as good as the best of 'em....

Dana

[JSngry]

Wow - both of these are really strong and highly enjoyable. There is a LOT to listen to. How is Global Warming relative to these?

A little less immediate in impact, but still strong in mood. There's some good tunes on that one too. Honestly, how it grabs me is highly variable, sometimes strongly sometimes less so. I get into it the most when I listen from a "player's perspective", which doesn't mean that I'm listening to critique technical things, but just that I'm listening as if I was doing the playing, which means feeling the rhythms of the phrases, the way the pauses fit with what the rhytm section is doing at the time, and anticipating the note choices as they go along. Feeling as much of the physical aspect of the actual music-making as I'm able to. When I listen like this, the amount of CHOICES that Sonny is making in even his lesser latter-day solos really stands out - the tonal inflections in relation to the time are one thing that never ceases to grab me, as do the variety of attacks that he's using. This guy is still totally involved in his playing, even if the level of inspiration varies widely.

Listening from that perspective might be asking too much of the "average fan", probably is, in fact. But I tell you, when I listen to an album like DANCING IN THE DARK like this, it's a whole helluva lot more involving than when I listen to it from a strictly subjective "listening" standpoint. When I do that, the solos seem too short and sometimes only half-formed. The other way, I can hear (and feel) the music being made, and I know enough about playing the tenor to know that solos like those on the two takes of "Allison" sound a LOT less involved (in both ways) than they really are. They might be considerably less than the apex of Rollins' creativity, but the amount of involvement and committment in the playing is not insignificant, nor is it in any way "predictable" (and if predictability and creativity seem to be thge same thing, well, sometimes yes, sometimes no...). DANCING IN THE DARK is one of those "borderline" albums, one that I would hesitate to reccommend wholeheartedly, but one that I'd not dismiss either (which pretty much sumes up a LOT of the Milestone albums). The GOOD stuff is even more engaging!