Sonny Rollins

[JSngry]

I did write the liner notes for an early '70s LP reissue of "Worktime,"

Ah yes, Prestige7750. "The rest of Worktime's delights I leave for you to discover." Still have it, still play it. And still read the essay.

It might (or might not!) interest you to know that that was the VERY first record I bought the VERY first day that I left home and got dropped of by my misty-eyed parents in Denton, Tx, at NTSU. It took me about 45 minutes to unpack, another 15 to find and walk to the record store, and about 30 seconds to track down a copy of WORKTIME. We didn't have it in the Piney Woods, and the Internet had yet to be born. Mail order? Too slow, too risky, too "fancy". But I knew I had to get it, and get it I finally did. Live and in living Electronically Remastered For Stereo!

Listening to that album (and reading that essay) over and over for the first 48 hours or so away from home at a "major" university, made the prospect of embarking on a new direction in life not only less intimidating, but positively the most exciting thing that anybody could ever want to do.

Although, the slightly pained look on Sonny's face on the cover photo they used, like somebody REALLY trying to stifle a sneeze, should have been a warning that not all would be roses...

[Larry Kart]

Jim, actually the version of those "Worktime" liner notes that will be in my (he said, clearing his throat) forthcoming book has a different ending, in part because "The rest of 'Worktime's' delights etc." was a straight steal from the end of one of Martin Williams' liner notes. Why I did that I now have no idea -- I almost certainly had time to think of some other way to bring the thing to an end; maybe it was a kind of joke? -- but I thought that in 2003 I should adopt a slightly different exit strategy.

About you and "Worktime" in Denton--to complete the circle perhaps, "Sonny Rollins Plus 4" was the first record I bought with my own money, i.e. money I'd earned, not from an allowance. Our blond wood Webcor phonograph was in the living room, where my Dad would read the paper in his easy chair after dinner (a real "Leave It To Beaver" scene), and every night for I think several weeks I'd play the album, usually repeating "Pent-Up House" several times -- in effect, trying to memorize Clifford and Sonny's solos on that track without having that as a conscious goal. Finally my Dad exploded: "Don't you have any other records!" Funny thing was that while I of course understood what he meant as soon as he said it, until he did, the thought hadn't entered my mind that what I was doing was anything other than logical and necessary.

[Lazaro Vega]

For what it is worth, Rollins had one of those levitating the bandstand moments during the Chicago Jazz Festival I think it was in the late 1980's or early 1990's when Marvin Smitty Smith was the drummer in his quintet: the audience turned into a writhing sea of screams as he hung his toes over the edge of the stage and let blow with ecstacy and intellectual abandon. It was one of the most exciting musical events I've ever heard. Standing next to Dan Morganstern in the Press section of festival, and he just looked out at what was happening and said, This is one of those nights. Larry, where you there? John Litweiler? I think Chuck was there. He came back a year or two later, but without the drummer: he had a hand percussionist, and it never got off the ground. Had moments of wonder, but that earlier one: trance-end-dant.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I'm very tired just now, almost entirely due to staying up far too late last night in absolute wonder at the album of standards from the RCA box set.

Does anyone like this? The solos are absolutely extraordinary - on 'Three Little Words' in particular, it struck me. But some really beautiful moments throughout the album. I really enjoy Herbie Hancock in this context as well, taking more of a 'back seat'.

[Larry Kart]

Lazaro -- No, damnit, I wasn't there that night. I'd stopped writing about jazz for the Chi. Tribune in 1988 and might have been out of town on family business during that Jazz Fest.

[JSngry]

I'm very tired just now, almost entirely due to staying up far too late last night in absolute wonder at the album of standards from the RCA box set.

Does anyone like this? The solos are absolutely extraordinary - on 'Three Little Words' in particular, it struck me. But some really beautiful moments throughout the album. I really enjoy Herbie Hancock in this context as well, taking more of a 'back seat'.

I LOVE all the RCA material. Not all of it reaches "full realization", but Sonny is, for some reason I'll probably never understand, somebody whose "misses" somehow end up having as much, or almost as much, meaning (as opposed to satisfaction) as his "hits". I didn't ask for this to be the case, it just happened. Go figure...

As for "Three Little Words" - Red, are you familiar with the version on ON IMPULSE ? That's one of the most mind-boggling things I think anybody's ever commited to wax (or magentic coated mylar, as the case may be. Faster than hell, yet rhythmically fragmented and deconstructed with a sense of relaxation that could be called perverse if it weren't so damned RIGHT! I slowed this puppy down to 16 2/3 RPM one time, and it really jumped out at me that THIS is where Henry Threadgill is coming from as a player a lot of times. I had already suspected it, but this confirmed it!

And then there's the live of TLW version from 1968, in Copenhagen, captured by a private recordist and released on Moon as SONNY ROLLINS IN DENMARK VOLUME 2. I'd include it in my blindfold test, but it's about 45 minutes long (and is almost all Sonny, or Sonny trading fours w/Tootie Heath), and to just include an excerpt would be cruel. I made a tape copy of it for a good friend once, and he later told me, in all seriousness, that he was istening to it while driving, and about 15 minutes into it, he had to pull over to the side of the road, shut the engine off, and just listen.

Now that never happened to me, but I seldom drive for pleasure, and I'm usually running late, so...

Edited November 8, 2003 by JSngry

[Late]

Red, count me in as a fan of Rollins' RCA work as well. The standards from that box that I'm most attracted to are some of the shortest tracks — "I'll Be Seeing You" and "Autumn Nocturne" come immediately to mind. You just know that there's extra tape (Please don't fade it out Mr. Avakian!) somewhere from some of those tracks. When I first heard Rollins' RCA work (junior in college), I happened to have been dating a 6' tall, quiet, studious, and lovely blonde woman. Hearing this music now, I sometimes get nostalgic. I gave her a postcard of Sonny Rollins ("My idol," I said), and she taped it right above the door to her room.

[Alexander Hawkins]

I was actually just thinking, I wish I had my copy of On Impulse! here at college with me - I thought I remembered there being a TLW on it, but it's one I'm definitely going to go back to. I find that having enjoyed this period Rollins for a couple of years, only now am I beginning to go beyond 'enjoying' it and really being able to get 'inside' the music.

I know what you mean about him 'delivering' even when he misses. I think it's almost like watching a sportsman whom you know to have sublime skill do the simple things, or even try something and get it wrong - the context of knowing what he CAN do makes you appreciate the discretion not to do something spectacular and the failed effort.

I'm off for another crack at this album. I was wondering about those fade-outs too, Late - are they the result of a breakdown of the take? Or are they artistic (can it ever be artistic to stop Sonny?)? Or simply to do with time? They certainly are some of the most tantalising/frustrating fades I can think of off the top of my head...

[JSngry]

I was wondering about those fade-outs too, Late - are they the result of a breakdown of the take? Or are they artistic (can it ever be artistic to stop Sonny?)? Or simply to do with time? They certainly are some of the most tantalising/frustrating fades I can think of off the top of my head...

I might be way off on this, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that this was a last-ditch effort by RCA (and possibly Sonny) to produce an album that would be a "big" seller, a commercial success that would help the company recoup the huge (for the time) advance they had given him. The tunes were therefore faded to fit within conventional "airplay friendly" timing boundaries.

By some accounts, Sonny really felt pressure to "deliver" for RCA, and this might account for the nature of some of the music he recorded for them, especially as far as tune selection goes. He certainly sounds more relaxed, and possibly even more adventurous, on the subsequent Impulse! dates, I think.

[Late]

That's the story I've heard too — re. RCA wanting to present a more "commercial" Rollins. The original liner notes to The Standard Sonny Rollins even allude to this. Here's an excerpt of what George Avakian, who penned the liners, had to say:

"In a field given to long, spun-out improvisations, some of the performances are surprisingly short. This is in part because Sonny was seeking compactness and brevity of statement in much of the album, and in part because we felt, in editing the performances, that some of the brief bursts of fantastic improvisation (as in "Night and Day," "Three Little Words," and "I'll Be Seeing You") would be best set off it they were presented in this way."

Hmmm ... who is the "we" here? And if Sonny really were "seeking compactness," wouldn't he have been able to complete whole tunes — a la The Sound of Sonny — in a short space? I have to say, I'm a little dubious of Avakian's claim here. It's not out of the question, but I think an alternate angle might be that Avakian simply said: Blow, let yourself relax, and we'll keep the best parts. Thank goodness the 14 minute "alternate" take of "Now's the Time" didn't meet this fate. There are some moments on this track where Rollins' improvisation begins to meander, and with not a lot of interest, but then, just when you think you're really not interested, he turns it around and grooves, via some wonderful syncopated figures, the shit out of that song.

Another statement by Avakian's liners that seems again to suggest his concern about the public's acceptance of Rollins' work is:

"Can the neophyte listener follow all of Sonny's flights of fancy? Many of them seem extraordinarily removed from the original melodies and harmonies."

He then goes on, however, to encourage this "neophyte" with:

"But it is not as hard as one might feel at first. Try, for example, humming the melody of 'Three Little Words' as Sonny takes off ... You should be able to do it ... [and] quickly learn why jazz improvisation becomes more meaningful when one can relate the source to the improvisation."

(The elided parts of the quote simply describe Rollins' playing ... e.g. "rare abandon")

I wonder how history would have played out if — when the "secret" balloting went on for Rollins' new contract after his return to recording — Alfred Lion or Bob Thiele had landed some extra dough (well, a lot of extra dough) to "win" the bid for Rollins' contract. In some ways, though I love Rollins' RCA period, I think that Avakian never really knew how to handle Sonny Rollins the artist. It's sensitive terrain, surely, and it would be intriguing to have the opportunity to "revise" history and see how Rollins on Blue Note, or Rollins on Impulse!, for the years 1962-65, would have sounded like. Hell, I haven't even considered how Sonny would have sounded under Teo Macero's production!

[Aggie87]

I picked up an interesting (to me anyway) release of Sonny's last night, called "First Moves" on Jazz Door.

It's a live recording from 12 Nov 74 in Belgrade, and has an interesting supporting cast - Yoshiaki Masuo on electric guitar, Rufus Harley on soprano sax and BAGPIPES, Gene Perla on electric bass, and David Lee on drums. Apparently Rufus Harley is the world's only jazz bagpipe player. Have only listened to half of this in my car so far, but no bagpipe solo yet .

But Sonny's really playing well on this disc, IMO. I have nothind else from this period to compare to, but like what I'm hearing. And Masuo seems competent at least. The sounds quite good for a 29 year old soundboard (I'm assuming) recording.

1. First Moves 7:15

2. Look for the Silver Lining 14:25

3. To A Wild Rose 7:44

4. Alfie's Theme 16:53

Edited November 14, 2003 by Aggie87

[JSngry]

Aggie, if you like FIRST MOVES, try THE CUTTING EDGE (Milestone), a live date from earlier that same year (@ Montreux) w/the same core band (except that Bob Cranshaw replaces Perla) & Mtume is added on percussion, along with Stanley Cowell on piano. For my tastes, it's a much better performance than the one on FIRST MOVES, with the first 3 cuts almost "getting there" (and I do mean almost - it's SO close as to be at once satisfying and frustrating) to that special zone of Rollins'. The last 2 cuts are a truncated ballad and a pointless jam w/Harley that really goes nowhere fast, and takes it's time doing so. But thost first three cuts can really sink their teeth into you...

BTW -does anybody know what the hell Rollins was doing touring with Harley? I just don't get it.

And - whatever happened to David Lee anyway? That guy had a way with cymbals that I still find exemplary, especially what he did on "Poinciana" from NEXT ALBUM (which for me is some of the best cymbal work that any drummer's ever done anywhere at anytime). Seems like he was around for a hot minute or two w/Newk & Roy Ayers, and then vanished. Too bad.

Edited November 14, 2003 by JSngry

[PHILLYQ]

I saw that band with Rufus Harley three times in one week at the Village Vanguard in 1974. For each gig, Rufus Harley wore a different outfit, one night looking like a doctor and I can't recall the other two, but he certainly stood out as a weird guy to me and my friends. In fact, the night he was in the hospital whites, as he came down the stairs to the VV, I was waiting on line on the stairs and I asked if there was a doctor in the house(18year old wiseguy line), and he said "Yes,a witch doctor!"

He did play some smoking bagpipes, though, and that band(w Mtume, Cranshaw, Masuo, Lee, & Cowell) was excellent with Sonny.

[Guy Berger]

A stupid question from a non-musician who can't really articulate his thoughts very well. What, in technical or semi-technical terms, makes Sonny Rollins the tenor player c. '55-'58 stand out from other bebop tenorists? Aside from the quality of his ideas, of course.

Guy

[Late]

A stupid question from a non-musician who can't really articulate his thoughts very well. What, in technical or semi-technical terms, makes Sonny Rollins the tenor player c. '55-'58 stand out from other bebop tenorists?

Not a stupid question — but difficult to answer comprehensively. For me, it's a handful of things. First and foremost, Rollins has an astonishing command of the horn in the bop idiom. Anything he thinks, he can play — he doesn't need to "shed" very much (any more) to communicate any particular idea that comes to him. Secondly, and this is what makes Rollins so hard to imitate (for music students at least), his command of nuance and inflection when phrasing a line is utterly singular. Many people have sounded/can sound like Coltrane, but very, very few can pull off a line, and have it sound just like Newk. (I think Lovano does it at times on 52nd Street Themes.) Thirdly, Newk's sensibility — e.g. his sense of humor, sardonicism, etc. — separates him from the crowd: he doesn't just play "bebop," he plays the horn in the idiom, while communicating sophisticated, if subtle, ideas and emotions. Just play Worktime. I don't think anyone's ever touched that level of artistry — in that particular idiom — since that album was recorded. There have been albums of similar and equal merit, but nothing that matches the power, wit, and detached insouciance of Sonny's playing there.

[Alexander Hawkins]

Just pulled out the 'Big Brass + Trio' album from 1958 to have a listen, and think it's fantastic.

Does this one get overlooked by 'virtue' of not being from one of his longer label residencies from the period (i.e. Prestige, BN, Contemporary?)

Anyway, no matter, I think this is great. an early sighting of Henry Grimes, as well.

For me, though, the standouts are probably the tracks with members of the MJQ. 'Doxy' and 'Limehouse Blues' are beauties!

[kh1958]

It looks like a new live Sonny Rollins is coming out, according to this article excerpt.

"Rollins' most recent example of the art of the improviser is forthcoming in August in a remarkable album, "Without a Song (The 9/ 11 Concert)," recorded live in Boston only four days after the terrorist attacks. (Rollins was at his Manhattan apartment six blocks from the World Trade Center during the attack, and was famously shown on television, being escorted to safety, with his saxophone in hand.)

As you can imagine, the concert program of standards like "Why Was I Born?" and "Where or When" has riveting improvisations, empowered by the potent emotions of the time, and is Rollins' exhibit A in the case for the healing power of music."

[mrjazzman]

for me its tenor madness, saxophone colossus, alfie, sonny side up, sonny rollins + four, sonny rollins plays bird...............

[shrugs]

how about the November '66 Graz date?

Love Sonny's playing on There Will Never Be Another You. Seems like the song was written for him.

Casual brilliance and then some.

[montg]

Thanks for reviving this thread. I've been on a real Sonny kick lately--Alfie and Worktime in particular. This thread will make some fun reading, especially later tonight when the kids get to bed and and I spin some Sonny

Edited August 26, 2006 by montg

[paul secor]

.

It's another chapter in the ongoing saga of Sonny Rollins, and possibly the beginning of the final chapter. If Rollins' is a saga of immense frustration for the fan, there is also much to be learned about how to stay alive and sane in a world that today, perhaps more than ever, seems set up to destroy the spirit that has always been at the core of Sonny Rollins' music. One of those lessons might indeed be that you play your cards close to your vest and just let out what you REALLY know in bits and pieces because although most of us claim to want the "truth", can we really, REALLY handle it on a constant, sustained basis? Could Sonny Rollins have had a viable career by playing everything he knows everytime out and on every record? That kind shit went out of style a long time ago, in case you haven't noticed! Besides, look at the physical implications - Trane did it, and look at what it did to him...

Three years late resonding to this - and you wrote much more than this excerpt, but I'd just like to respond to this portion. My response to your final two sentences is Cecil Taylor. IMO he has done exactly "that kind of shit" for many years, and it hasn't gone out of style for him - at least not that I've noticed. I realize that there are different physical implications in playing piano as opposed to tenor sax, but there are indeed physical implications and they haven't changed Cecil over the years.

[JSngry]

Cecil does what Cecil does for reasons of his own, as does Sonny. Cecil started out as an "outsider" (and not just musically), whereas Sonny started out as an "insider" (and not just musically). There's always been an element of "playing your cards close to your vest" to Sonny. There never has been such a thing in Cecil.

Different people, different personalities, different lives, different strategies, and different lessons to be learned. Choose one lesson to learn, or choose both to learn more.

[paul secor]

Cecil does what Cecil does for reasons of his own, as does Sonny. Cecil started out as an "outsider" (and not just musically), whereas Sonny started out as an "insider" (and not just musically). There's always been an element of "playing your cards close to your vest" to Sonny. There never has been such a thing in Cecil.

Different people, different personalities, different lives, different strategies, and different lessons to be learned. Choose one lesson to learn, or choose both to learn more.

Agreed and understood. Sonny and Cecil are two different cats on two different paths with different ways of dealing. I was just responding to your statement that playing all out all of the time "went out of style a long time ago", and your comment that the "physical implications" of playing that way destroyed Trane.

Cecil has played in a style that you say "went out of fashion" for years and is still around doing it at 73. I doubt that Cecil (or any other musician worthy of the name, but especially Cecil) has ever cared a whit about being in fashion.

The physicality and constant searching in Trane's playing may have contributed to his early demise, but we'll never know that for sure, and certainly other factors were involved.

I guess we can go round on this, but I understand what you're saying, and I hope that you understand what I'm saying.

I definitely agree with your statement "... although most of us claim to want the "truth", can we really, REALLY handle it on a constant sustained basis?" The fact that I don't listen to late Trane or anytime Cecil regularly is my answer to that question. That doesn't deny the truth that they were (and in Cecil's case he still is) able to handle that kind of truth and play it without fear. That's one path to take in music. Fortunately for all of us, the world of music provides a lifetime of other paths.

[JSngry]

Yeah, I understand what you're saying. I would only add that the element of playing all out having "gone out of style" in Sonny's vs Cecil's case is as much an element of their respective audiences as it is anything else. Sonny's general audience from the 70s on isn't nearly as "adventurous" as the one he had in the 50s & 60s. Cecil's otoh, is the same type he's always had - people who expect all-out playing and who would be disappointed by less. We still hear a lot of Rollins fans saying that Rollins' best work was in the 50s and that everything since has been lacking, which is ridiculous. You don't hear that out of Cecil's fans. So, I think that Cecil has a "built in" external support system that Sonny doesn't. Nor does he seem to have been inclined to "challenge" his audience as overtly as a lot of us wish he would. But that's a differnt matter altogether than saying that he's "lost it", or some such rot.

We can say that such things shouldn't matter, and perhaps, in a better world than this, they shouldn't. But they do.

As for the physicality issue, I do believe that there is a difference between piano & wind instruments, and that difference is breathing & breath. "Blowing" sets up a set of physical strains and stresses that "hitting" (used objectively here) doesn't. It involves the strain of abdominal support, resistance from the mouthpiece/reed, the pacing of inhalation/exhalation that is different from regular breathing, and the cumulative wear & tear on the facial muscles. No doubt that Cecil's way of playing is extremely physically demanding, but it's more akin to a good, healthy workout than exerting the same energy on a wind instument would be.

[DukeCity]

I just read through this thread, and I have to say that besides the hundreds of threads of goofy, wise-ass comments that get fired up here on a daily basis (which I certainly enjoy), it's thoughtful, insightful discussions like this one that make this board such a great place to hang out.

One of my students recently asked me about Sonny and his penchant for quoting other tunes in his solos, and I was reminded of an interview that Sonny did in one of the 'big' jazz magazines a few years ago. The interviewer asked if Sonny's quotes were a conscious, premeditated thing and the jist of Sonny's response was that, when he's improvising a line, he can be in the middle of a phrase and suddenly realize that, "Hey, I just played the first few notes of "XXXX". So, since my ears were leading me in that direction, I might as well finish that thought" (I'm paraphrasing Sonny here). That strikes me as a very different impetus for the playing of quotes than someone like Dexter (another quote of "Here Comes the Bride", anyone?).

And just to derail my own post: just the other day listening to Trane with Miles at the Olympia in 1960, the crowd goes nuts when Trane quotes "Mona Lisa" in one of his solos. It stuck out to me because Trane's not often much of a quote guy.

But, now I gotta go track down some of the Rollins sides mentioned in this thread that I haven't checked out. Good thing it's almost pay day.