Sonny Rollins "Without A Song" 9/11 concert

[Soul Stream]

I just downloaded this from iTunes and am interested if anybody else has had a chance to pick this up yet.

To me honest, I haven't ever heard Sonny in a live setting this recent. It's a pretty revelatory experience for me. Haven't had a chance to hear the whole thing yet, but it's bringing me a lot of joy so far. Hope Sonny decides to keep putting his live stuff out, maybe via his website like he mentioned in another article.

[Chrome]

I haven't heard it myself yet, but here's a nice review ... is the iTunes stuff directly from this CD? I'm curious about the "abridgement" mentioned in the article...

CD REVIEW

With '9/11,' Rollins reminds us of music's power

By Bill Beuttler, Boston Globe Correspondent | August 28, 2005

Anyone who attended Sonny Rollins's memorable Sept. 15, 2001, concert at the Berklee Performance Center should be delighted to learn it was recorded -- and that an abridged CD version is being released on Tuesday, titled ''Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert."

The enormity of the attacks on New York and Washington four days earlier gave the concert an unusual emotional edginess. In my case, I was there alone because my then-girlfriend -- now wife -- had traveled to Connecticut to be with her aunt and uncle, who had lost their son in one of the World Trade Center towers. The concert producer, Fenton Hollander, says he nearly broke down onstage while making his opening announcements, a fact noticed only by his wife.

Rollins himself was there because his wife, Lucille, insisted he go on with the show. He had been in the couple's apartment blocks from ground zero when the towers fell, and was so wrung out by the experience he had nearly canceled the trip to Boston.

Instead, Rollins played an exceptionally fine concert, even by his own exacting standards. He opened with what became the album's title track, which he announced he'd first heard sung by Paul Robeson many years before. Alluding to the tune's lyrics about the fundamental, life-affirming force of song, Rollins noted this particular song's heightened relevance that week. ''I think everybody feels this way," he said.

With that, Rollins and his band -- nephew Clifton Anderson on trombone, Stephen Scott on piano, Bob Cranshaw on electric bass, Perry Wilson on drums, and Kimati Dinizulu on percussion -- began a buoyant run through the tune that set the tone for all to follow.

Rollins stated the song's theme straight a time or two and then began working variations on it. Anderson followed with a lengthy solo that was warm, mature, and melodic. Scott came next with an inventive effort that borrowed the leader's habit of quoting other songs, in this case snippets of Thelonious Monk's ''Rhythm-a-ning" and the theme from the TV show ''Jeopardy." A short Dinizulu solo led back to Rollins's saxophone, with Cranshaw and Wilson keeping the tempo energetic throughout.

The desire to limit the release to a single disc means leaving off half the actual concert. ''Global Warming" is the only one of the calypsos played to make the CD, and the only Rollins composition as well. The three other tunes included are all standards: ''A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," ''Why Was I Born?," and ''Where or When."

People come to Sonny Rollins concerts hoping for transcendent playing by Rollins himself, and that night he reached inside and delivered it. A gargantuan solo on ''Why Was I Born?" displays Rollins's improvisational genius at full throttle, backed by Cranshaw's fluidly propulsive bass line and Wilson's deft drumming.

The music is what matters most, of course. But a few extraneous details included on the CD are curiously affecting, too. The 40-plus seconds of ovations that follow both ''Why Was I Born?" and ''Where or When" document the palpable release felt by an audience able to engage with art again.

And a pair of spoken announcements by Rollins sum up what he and many in the crowd were feeling that evening.

''We must remember that music is one of the beautiful things of life," Rollins tells the crowd, ''so we have to try to keep the music alive some kind of way. And maybe music can help. I don't know. But we have to try something these days, right?"

[jlhoots]

Reviewed in VV by Francis Davis.

[JSngry]

Well...

Well.......................

Well.................................................

Sonny plays great. No surprise there. Anybody who's been paying attention to the Milestones of the last few years, faults and all, will know that. The advantage to this release is that we get to hear him play at length (but there's that on some of the Milestones, too), and play at length he does. He's an old man now, and he sounds like one, in the best possible way. The word "transcendant" has been popping up in several circles regarding his playing on this album, and it is apt. But again - it's been apt for longer than most people seem to realize. Still, if this is the album that's going to make people realize that, then, hey, beautiful!

Otoh - the recoding itself is very much of "audience tape" quality. We hear Sonny's playing, but we don't get even half of the body, the immense massiveness of his sound (and that's no small part of the transcendance that comes from hearing Sonny Rollis in full flight). We do, however, get to hear the immense massiveness - and then some - of Clifton Anderson's miked horn. We also get to hear applause that is louder than anybody in the band.

I guess Sonny's approach to live shows now that he's an old man is to let his band have their say before he comes in to obliterate the need for them. That's not what reviews of other recent shows would seem to indicate, but that's what happens here. No big deal, and not a problem when you're in the venue experiencing it all in the moment. Anderson's developing into a nice, if predictable, hard-boppish player, and Stepen Scott, who seems a little out of sorts here, is a developing talent who no doubt benefits from the unconstricted space that Rollins gives him on their gigs together. And when Sonny comes in, it's to take no prisoners. At his age, he no doubt needs the space between solos. He still gives it his all when he plays, and the sheer physicality of the way he plays would drain many a younger man. Considering that he was about a month away from turning 71 (or 72, depending on whose info you believe) his playing here is damn near defiant. Let him have his breathers!

But the result of this on an album is that you gotta listen to a lot of good=but=certainly-not-even-close-to-spectacular playing before you get to the real deal. A lot of it. The downside to even the best Milestone studio albums is that Sonny's playing was often truncated. The upside is that the sidemen's playing is too. That....is not an issue here...

There's "better" live Rollins (from all decades, including the last 3) floating around. But this one ain't bad. Far from it. But without some judicious, even cruel, editing/tightening up, a bootleg it was, and a bootleg it remains, if not legally, then aesthetically.

If you have even an inkling of an interest in hearing why some, including myself, still consider Sonny Rollins to be a musician who's beyond category, a genuine giant of an artist in spite of all the ill/half-formed trash talk that's been getting around for the last 30 or so years, then by all means hear his playing here. Just be be prepared to sit through a lot of other stuff, and to not hear that glorious sound of his fully captured. Even at that, it's worth it.

But you shouldn't have to work so hard to get to it.

[GregK]

Well...

Well.......................

Well.................................................

Sonny plays great. No surprise there. Anybody who's been paying attention to the Milestones of the last few years, faults and all, will know that. The advantage to this release is that we get to hear him play at length (but there's that on some of the Milestones, too), and play at length he does. He's an old man now, and he sounds like one, in the best possible way. The word "transcendant" has been popping up in several circles regarding his playing on this album, and it is apt. But again - it's been apt for longer than most people seem to realize. Still, if this is the album that's going to make people realize that, then, hey, beautiful!

Otoh - the recoding itself is very much of "audience tape" quality. We hear Sonny's playing, but we don't get even half of the body, the immense massiveness of his sound (and that's no small part of the transcendance that comes from hearing Sonny Rollis in full flight). We do, however, get to hear the immense massiveness - and then some - of Clifton Anderson's miked horn. We also get to hear applause that is louder than anybody in the band.

I guess Sonny's approach to live shows now that he's an old man is to let his band have their say before he comes in to obliterate the need for them. That's not what reviews of other recent shows would seem to indicate, but that's what happens here. No big deal, and not a problem when you're in the venue experiencing it all in the moment. Anderson's developing into a nice, if predictable, hard-boppish player, and Stepen Scott, who seems a little out of sorts here, is a developing talent who no doubt benefits from the unconstricted space that Rollins gives him on their gigs together. And when Sonny comes in, it's to take no prisoners. At his age, he no doubt needs the space between solos. He still gives it his all when he plays, and the sheer physicality of the way he plays would drain many a younger man. Considering that he was about a month away from turning 71 (or 72, depending on whose info you believe) his playing here is damn near defiant. Let him have his breathers!

But the result of this on an album is that you gotta listen to a lot of good=but=certainly-not-even-close-to-spectacular playing before you get to the real deal. A lot of it. The downside to even the best Milestone studio albums is that Sonny's playing was often truncated. The upside is that the sidemen's playing is too. That....is not an issue here...

There's "better" live Rollins (from all decades, including the last 3) floating around. But this one ain't bad. Far from it. But without some judicious, even cruel, editing/tightening up, a bootleg it was, and a bootleg it remains, if not legally, then aesthetically.

If you have even an inkling of an interest in hearing why some, including myself, still consider Sonny Rollins to be a musician who's beyond category, a genuine giant of an artist in spite of all the ill/half-formed trash talk that's been getting around for the last 30 or so years, then by all means hear his playing here. Just be be prepared to sit through a lot of other stuff, and to not hear that glorious sound of his fully captured. Even at that, it's worth it.

But you shouldn't have to work so hard to get to it.

←

Thanks for the great review! Still not sure if I will get this one or not though

[JSngry]

Listened to it some more last night under headphones, and it sounds much better to me that way. Put's you a little bit more "inside" the band, and for a recording that's this much audience-centric, that helps. Just seemed like the balance was more even. Might just be a headphone thing, I don't know. But Scott sounds a lot better like this, and the bass/drum hookup does too. Anderson still goes on for a chorus or three too long, though, but whatcha' gonna do 'bout that?

The good thing about the headphone listens was that Sonny comes through more direct. I might have given the impression previously that there's not that much difference between what you get here and what you get on the best of the previous Milestones. In a sense, I still believe that, but in another sense, nothing could be further from the truth. While there's some great playing on those other albums, it's more often than not it's in compressed form, either in duration or in expansiveness. You don't get that here. The ideas flow freely and unencumbered, and the solos on "Global Warming" and "Why Was I Born" are the kinds of things that have fed the "you haven't heard Sonny until you've heard him live on a good night" legend.

No, this isn't the "ultimate" latter-day live Rollins album, the one (or more) that surely exists in private collections, and the one (or more) that some day will be released. But make no mistake - warts and all, this is a significant release. Sonny Rollins is a world unto himself, and this album shows us more of that world than anything we've had official access to in many, many years. If you care even slightly about that world, you're going to want to get this album.

[AllenLowe]

me like Sonny...

how come no complaints this week about Francis Davis's Village Voice review of said concert? Ther must be something wrong with it -

Edited September 2, 2005 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

Haven't read it yet.

[JSngry]

Well DOH! It was in my inbox all along.

http://villagevoice.com/music/0535,davis,67292,22.html

His Own Worst Critic

Sonny Rollins's best album in nearly three decades is the healing force of the universe

by Francis Davis

August 29th, 2005 5:31 PM

John Updike still hasn't solicited my advice (start work on Rabbit Has Arisen pronto), but during a phoner in 1992 Sonny Rollins asked if I could recommend a good young drummer. I immediately suggested Reggie Nicholson—whom Rollins said he'd coincidentally just hired, strictly on a trial basis, on somebody else's recommendation. Nicholson "supplied color and audible snap even on ballads and followed Sonny unerringly through a dozen or so choruses of 'Long Ago and Far Away,' " I reported in the Voice, following Nicholson's debut with Rollins in Philadelphia. "It looks like Rollins has finally found himself a drummer." I should have paid closer attention to Rollins's mood backstage after the gig. "Wow, the set really turned a corner during your fours with the drums on the Jerome Kern song," I gushed. "Well, something happened then," he replied—and like a fool, I assumed he was agreeing with me. Maybe my rooting interest clouded my judgment, or maybe all Rollins wanted by that point was a compliant timekeeper, not someone who returned his jabs like Max Roach in the '50s. Nicholson finished the tour, then never heard from Rollins again.

It's become a commonplace of jazz criticism to note that Rollins's studio recordings since the 1970s have barely hinted at the rapture he can induce in concert on any given night. Yet I can't count the number of times I've seen him bring an audience to its feet only to sense great displeasure in his performance from his own body language—these are nights a seasoned Rollins watcher knows there won't be an encore no matter the sincerity of our demand. Rollins may be his own worst critic in more ways than one, which is why many of us didn't dare hope for too much when it was announced earlier this year that he was auditioning concert tapes he'd recorded himself, along with those sent to him by a private collector, and had chosen a 2001 Boston show as his first live release since 1986's G-Man. Without a Song, recorded less than a week after 9-11, finally shipped yesterday, and—forget G-Man —it's Rollins's mightiest effort since Don't Stop the Carnival almost 25 years ago.

No, it isn't the Sonny Rollins album we've been dreaming of for decades, and I don't need him or anybody else to tell me why. Complaining that trombonist Clifton Anderson and pianist Stephen Scott aren't in Rollins's league hardly seems fair, because who is? Anderson has developed a burly, ingratiating presence, and Scott skips along nimbly in octaves on "Where or When" and the title track, even if I could do without his Jarrett-like singing along. The problem is the string-of-solos format: When Rollins goes first, everything else is anticlimactic, and when he goes last, as is more often the case, the wait seems forever—you wish he'd give trombone and piano their own features and grab the spotlight. Why have Bob Cranshaw play electric bass if all you ask him to do is walk? The constant buzz is a distraction, and an upright would blend more handsomely with the wood in Rollins's cello-like lower register.

Adding Kimati Dinizulu's hand percussion to Perry Wilson's traps doesn't intensify the groove: With both of them going at it, the rhythm section just sounds busy. And Rollins's opening head arrangements of four standards, including "Why Was I Born?" and "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" (routines, bands used to call them), are superfluous time killers. Better he should just come out blowing—we'd recognize the tunes from his spontaneous embellishments. 

Why am I so wild about Without a Song, then? First, no recording since his RCAs in the '60s has more faithfully captured Rollins's sound—on "Global Warming," the program's requisite calypso, his tenor saxophone is a steel drum and its spreading low notes shake your insides. Then, too, even though our national unity after 9-11 now seems a quaint memory, along with that sense of being more sinned against than sinning, maybe I'm responding to the emotionalism of the occasion, just as Rollins and the Boston audience did. In Downbeat a few months after the attacks, a fellow critic I won't embarrass by naming speculated, "while it's still too early too tell what the long-term effect on cultural expression will be . . . there's hope that substance will win out over fluff, that relevance will count for more than entertainment for its own sake, that emotion will triumph over self-serving technique, that art will trump commercialism." Trust Downbeat to wonder if a national tragedy will be good for jazz. Rollins, who lives in Woodstock but was in his penthouse pied- six blocks away from the towers when the planes hit, and who had to be guided downstairs by rescue workers the following day, after the building lost power, wasn't making any promises. "Maybe music can help," he says at one point. "I don't know. But we have to try something."

Rollins's quotes from other songs can be a tip-off to his frame of mind, and the ones that jump out here—"This Is My Lucky Day," "The Farmer in the Dell," and "Oh! Susanna" not once but twice—are ebullient. The last five minutes of "Global Warming"—all Sonny, with Anderson and the rhythm section vamping—are pure bliss, and so are Rollins's games of catch-up on "Why Was I Born?" and "Without a Song," whose melodies he stutters into abstraction, holding the beat in abeyance, before resolving the tension with legato outpourings on the turnarounds. Virtuosity on this level is always thrilling, but when the need arises, it can also be a balm.

Without a Song is reportedly the last album Rollins owes Milestone, his label since 1972, under the terms of his current contract. Concord Jazz now owns Fantasy, Milestone's parent label, and if Rollins no longer feels any loyalty and decides to leave, Blue Note and Verve figure to be right there waiting. A major would spring novel ideas on him, and this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. A tussle with Ornette Coleman, Lee Konitz, or David S. Ware and Matthew Shipp? An album of Billie Holiday songs with Bill Charlap? A Stephen Foster project? Taping all of his concerts and choosing the best material for release, forgoing the studio altogether? I've got plenty of ideas. Including this hot young drummer I know.

Ok, I'll disagree about the recording capturing the full power of Rollins' tone, but maybe FD has a significantly better stereo than mine. It wouldn't be hard.

And I'll disagree about Bob Cranshaw. I actually like how he plays and how it sounds tonally. Call me crazy.

And I thnk that the idea of a major label trying to push all these "projects" onto Rollins is more likely to drive him away from recording any more than it is to excite him. But I could be wrong.

And I don't think that Sonny owes Milestone any "loyalty", since Milestone ain't Milestone any more. It's Concord. Different world. But that's a minor point.

And I dunno, both G Man and the still-growing-on-me Falling In Love With Jazz are pretty damn strong albums. Don't Stop The Carnival, otoh, is a two LP set with one album too many (or, quite possibly, the wrong material chosen). Still, the best of it is pretty damn amazing.

Other than that, I pretty much agree with him on this one. Surprised? Don't be! I don't quibble just for grins, you know.

Edited September 2, 2005 by JSngry

[JSngry]

And oh yeah, the Reggie Nicholson story is a bit much for my tastes, and the word "phoner" is just too cute (again, for my tastes). But hey, you gotta have a lead-in, right?

[marcello]

This was one of worst Francis Davis articles I've read.

Nothing wrong with FD in general, I have his books, but this one made my skin crawl with some very uninspired writing. I expect better; I think he needs a vacation in California.

The lame recording suggestions at the end was the last straw. Do you think he's looking for a producer's gig?

[Michael Fitzgerald]

"Taping all the concerts" is standard operating procedure for MANY artists. I'm shocked to learn that Rollins isn't one of them - of course he should be doing this. This suggestion has been made time and again from the 1970s on. And ever since the introduction of DAT it's not just been a pipe dream, it's a viable option, and probably only as expensive as buying blanks and a deck for the sound guy to use.

BTW, I learned that the free Damrosch Park, NYC concert by Rollins that I stupidly skipped (August 8, 1998) - has been preserved via audience tape. This was the show that Dan Morgenstern raved about to me a few days later as being one of Sonny's best. So there's a chance that sometime I will be able to hear for myself.

And *please* deliver us from major label "projects" of the kind that FD describes. Though I wouldn't mind hearing a complete version of the piece for Rollins and symphony that is given to us in bits on the Saxophone Colossus film.

Mike

[relyles]

Here is an article about the man that recorded the concert:

http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/20...8/wired?mode=PF

JAZZ

Wired

First Carl Smith built an archive of Sonny Rollins recorded live. Then he decided to capture the magic himself.

By Geoff Edgers, Globe Staff  |  August 28, 2005

Carl Smith wore a plaid shirt that night, the dark pattern hiding the $700 microphones sewn into the fabric. He bought four seats in the second row of the Berklee Performance Center, and told his son and two friends to merely pretend to clap. Their presence would provide a sound buffer for his digital recorder.

It was Sept. 15, 2001, and Smith's mission was to capture jazz legend Sonny Rollins as he's rarely heard on record -- live and uninhibited.

As the lights dimmed, the retired Maine attorney placed the machine, just slightly bigger than an iPod, in his lap to monitor noise levels. Rollins opened the 80-minute first set with ''Without a Song," from his famous 1962 album, ''The Bridge." When Rollins approached the front of the stage, the horn was no more than eight feet from the hidden microphone. At intermission, Smith watched security eject a man trying to record the show. But the 62-year-old grandfather would not be caught.

After the concert, driving home, Smith used an adapter to connect the Digital Audio Tape machine to the car stereo.

''We got it," he remembers telling the others. ''It sounds wonderful."

Four years later, after a steady campaign to earn Rollins's trust, Smith is moving closer to his greater goal, which is to reveal a different side of the last living jazz giant. On Tuesday, Fantasy Records releases ''Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert," a CD documenting the show that took place four days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Not only is this the first of Smith's live recordings to go on sale, it also signals a breakthrough in the once icy relationship with the Rollins camp, which has historically frowned on collectors.

And for jazz fans, the release offers a tantalizing proposition that cuts to the heart of the Rollins conundrum. His greatness, some contend, is best heard during his live shows. But of the few Rollins concerts legitimately released, none captures the energy and excitement of the jazz improviser on a great night.

''The best of Carl Smith's stuff is staggering," says Stanley Crouch, the writer who long urged Rollins to trust Smith. ''It actually creates a kind of a reevaluation of what we consider musical creativity. When you hear this, these chumps in hip-hop and rock, they're jokes compared to Sonny Rollins."

A sound collection

Carl Smith, now 66, doesn't call himself a bootlegger. The Sept. 15 concert would be just one of four he recorded between 2001 and April 2003. His main job is serving as a self-appointed archivist who has, over time, acquired more than 350 live recordings of Rollins. They range from a 1949 tape of a 19-year-old Rollins trying a sax at Seymour's Record Shop in Chicago to a concert this past June in Rochester, N.Y.

Smith is part of a small, passionate group of fans who believe that Rollins is at his best on stage, particularly when he doesn't think somebody is recording him.

Hence, the surreptitious tapes. The archive is in Smith's house, which is next to a golf course in South Portland. The space is as neat as an operating room. Correspondence with collectors is filed alphabetically, his list of recordings organized by date.

The Harvard graduate has been a practicing attorney, real estate developer, and, since the early '80s, one of the owners of a high-end stereo company, Transparent Audio. But these days, he's become the ultimate superfan, with the time, money, and ambition to serve his hero. And he doesn't want a cent for his efforts.

There is more than a hint of the obsessive streak that drives all collectors. As a lifelong fan of Bud Powell, Smith acquired every known recording of the late jazz pianist then wrote and paid to publish a book, ''Bouncing With Bud," to document them.

His Rollins fixation began in 2000 on the night Smith saw him in concert for the first time. Going in, Smith respected the artist without feeling particularly passionate about him.

''We got there and about five minutes into the concert I was absolutely transfixed," says Smith. ''I turned to the guy next to me and said, 'We are in the presence of greatness.' And I meant not past greatness. What I was hearing then, in the year 2000, was beyond what I had ever heard before. It was truly a life-changing experience. I went home from that concert as if I had stumbled upon a continent nobody knew about."

As soon as he got home from that first show, Smith sent out e-mails to the network of collectors he had developed during his Powell phase. Send me anything you've got on Rollins, he wrote. Within two months, Smith had 50 tapes. They kept coming. Those he couldn't convert -- such as 11 reels of New York club dates from the early '70s sent by Florida collector Martin Milgrim -- Smith paid to have copied by a local studio.

He also had Bob Ludwig, the Portland-based sound engineer famous for his work with Bruce Springsteen and virtually every modern-day hit maker, remaster a 1980 performance tape from Sweden. The results were stunning, and encouraged Smith to take the next step.

''I wanted to capture the best possible audience recording that had ever been done," Smith says.

During the spring of 2001, Smith chose his target: He would come to Berklee to tape Rollins's September show.

None of this would have pleased Sonny Rollins -- had he known about it. His wife and manager, Lucille, also had strong feelings about bootlegs.

''My wife's reaction was that somebody's taking your work," Rollins said in a recent phone interview from his home in upstate New York.

From the start, Smith had tried to get his message to Rollins, contacting Fantasy Records, Rollins's label, to let it know he would give Rollins the archive so it could be released. He never heard back. So Smith started lobbying different critics. He e-mailed Gary Giddins, an accomplished author and columnist who had pleaded with his readers to see Rollins live. He contacted Crouch, the MacArthur ''genius" grant winner and confidant of Wynton Marsalis.

Smith made each of them sets of highlight discs. Could they help get this stuff released?

Crouch, who was working on a New Yorker profile of Rollins, flew to Maine to hear some of Smith's stash. When he returned, he talked to Rollins.

''I just told him that he was an honest man," Crouch says. ''It was kind of hard for Sonny to believe because, like most musicians of his generation, he's accustomed to people just trying to cheat him. Sonny has no precedent for this. See, it's not like here are a bunch of Carl Smiths running around."

Giddins didn't feel comfortable advocating for Smith with Rollins. But he would write about him. Last August, in Jazz Times, Giddins featured Smith in a column called ''The New Benedettis," referencing the Charlie Parker fan who recorded the late saxophonist's solos during the '40s.

The move backfired. Right after the column, Lucille Rollins sent Crouch an e-mail, which he forwarded. Lucille chastised Giddins for calling Smith ''noble." She warned Smith that she would have people looking for him at concerts, and his tapes would be confiscated. Disappointed, he hung up his microphone.

''I didn't want to do anything to upset the Rollinses," says Smith. ''I went back to just collecting."

Meeting obligations

Last winter, life changed for Sonny Rollins. Lucille, who had been ill, died of complications from a stroke in November. The studio album he had promised Fantasy wasn't done. Smith still doesn't know how or why Rollins came to approach him. But one day, Richard Corsello, Rollins's engineer, contacted Smith. He asked for his tape of the 2001 Berklee show. Rollins was thinking of fulfilling his contract with a live recording.

For Rollins, the performance had been a dramatic experience. When the planes hit the World Trade Center, he was only six blocks away in his Manhattan apartment. Coming downstairs, he saw people on the street starting to panic. He headed back inside and began to practice. The next morning, National Guardsmen came to get Rollins. He clutched his saxophone as he walked down 39 flights of stairs. He did not want to go to Boston.

''I felt shaken up," he says. ''I had gulped a lot of toxic fumes when I stupidly tried to practice that day. I was unsteady on my feet. I was just mentally and physically out of it. But my wife convinced me we should do it. I felt a little rough but once I'm playing, that usually takes precedence over everything else."

Today, the saxman and the archivist are both pleased the concert recording is being released. But neither claim it is Rollins's best.

For the musician, a notoriously tough judge of his own work, there's more practicing to do and future gigs, including next weekend's performance at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival in Lenox. For Smith, there's the growing relationship with Rollins, who he recently visited in upstate New York to begin talking about future projects.

And there's always the next day's mail, which thanks to word-of-mouth brings new treasures -- a 1978 set from a shrink in Switzerland, a Chicago concert from an English translator in Norway.

On a recent weekday, Smith shares one of his latest finds. He's just had lunch at a favorite spot, on the Portland waterfront.

He pops a CD into the car stereo and the melody starts. Smith pulls into a parking space so he can concentrate. With Casco Bay before him, he turns up the volume knob until the sound of the saxophone fills his Chevy Impala. Carnegie Hall, 1989, he announces. The bootleg recording, which arrived from Belgium this summer in a padded envelope, has never been released to the public.

On the CD, Rollins shares the stage with Branford Marsalis, the former Sting sideman. But this is no friendly duet. On ''Three Little Words," Rollins turns the gig into a ''cutting contest," buzzing the younger player with a series of intense solos. Giddins, writing in the Village Voice, would describe Rollins's playing that night as ''the thunder of Mount Sinai."

''Branford's doing all right," says Smith, starting to narrate the almost 14-minute performance. ''But you'll see what happens when Sonny comes back."

About six and a half minutes in, that moment arrives.

Smith smiles. ''He's just getting started."

Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. 

[Soul Stream]

One impression that I got from listening to this concert is something you hear in MANY old-timers, but forget. Sonny and Anderson (guess he took a nod from Sonny here) constantly return to the melody of the song. Which is quite refreshing. And a good reminder to the rest of us musicians. You just don't hear it that much anymore.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Haven't heard this particular show, but the "return to the melody" thing that I've heard Sonny do in other performances gets really tired. He has devices that he uses to "tread water" while he gathers himself for another improvisational onslaught - he's admitted that the circular breathing held note is one of them - and I think this is another, at least at times in the ways I've heard him use it.

Mike

[Soul Stream]

Haven't heard this particular show, but the "return to the melody" thing that I've heard Sonny do in other performances gets really tired. He has devices that he uses to "tread water" while he gathers himself for another improvisational onslaught - he's admitted that the circular breathing held note is one of them - and I think this is another, at least at times in the ways I've heard him use it.

Mike

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It might be a tired device. But let's face it, all musicians tread water musically....constantly. Most use pet licks or devices in order to gather their thoughts and think up something fresh. But of all the ways to do this, returning to the melody is the least often used by todays musicians. The idea that the head is just a neccessary evil...that's what I consider tired.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

But Sonny Rollins isn't one of us "mere mortals" - the standard line is that he refuses to give a just "acceptable" performance. He gives us what he's got that moment, be it transcendent or trash. So, I don't think it's appropriate to consider him as equivalent to the rest of us (who do give "acceptable" performances).

And, if he's not considering the head as a necessary evil, why then does he "compose" such fluff - absolute rubbish with pretty much no substance? From what I've heard at live shows, he's incredibly eager to dispense with the "melody," such as it is.

Mike

[Soul Stream]

But Sonny Rollins isn't one of us "mere mortals" - the standard line is that he refuses to give a just "acceptable" performance. He gives us what he's got that moment, be it transcendent or trash. So, I don't think it's appropriate to consider him as equivalent to the rest of us (who do give "acceptable" performances).

And, if he's not considering the head as a necessary evil, why then does he "compose" such fluff - absolute rubbish with pretty much no substance? From what I've heard at live shows, he's incredibly eager to dispense with the "melody," such as it is.

Mike

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Mike,

You're definately more familiar with Sonny's m.o. today and from days gone by. I guess I just enjoyed hearing the melody so much. It struck me as odd and refreshing. So, to me it was enjoyable. To others who hear Sonny much, much more may be annoyed with it. I do remember John Patton also stressing the importance of the knowing the melody. He returned to it quite often in his own soloing in latter years.

[JSngry]

why then does he "compose" such fluff - absolute rubbish with pretty much no substance?

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Hmmm...a blanket statement only somtimes true, I'd say...

[Alexander Hawkins]

But Sonny Rollins isn't one of us "mere mortals" - the standard line is that he refuses to give a just "acceptable" performance. He gives us what he's got that moment, be it transcendent or trash. So, I don't think it's appropriate to consider him as equivalent to the rest of us (who do give "acceptable" performances).

And, if he's not considering the head as a necessary evil, why then does he "compose" such fluff - absolute rubbish with pretty much no substance? From what I've heard at live shows, he's incredibly eager to dispense with the "melody," such as it is.

Mike

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But I'm not sure that he'd necessarily regard all heads as equal, or that the head should have the same function during each performance, would he?

[Michael Fitzgerald]

OK, I'll gladly revise to "why does he compose such fluff - when he does compose it"

I guess I am just having flashbacks to some really dreadful shows where some of the "compositions" were so rudimentary and boring it was almost painful. Remember, it got so bad that I *skipped free Rollins*.

Knowing the melody is one thing, and very important - but beating one over the head with it is another. What *I* particularly appreciate is what Leonard Bernstein addresses here in his Young People's Concert on "What Is Symphonic Music?":

"Now all music isn't symphonic, of course; but all music does develop in some way or another, even little folk songs, or a simple rock'n'roll tune. But these little songs develop mainly by repeating, by repetition. That's the easiest, most babyish way to develop anything - by just saying it over and over again. It's like an argument; if you're a real brainy type, you'll develop your argument with variations and with changes."

Rollins at his best gets away from strict repetition and into more sophisticated development.

Mike

[AllenLowe]

yes, absolutely, thinking of Gunther Schuller's famous essay on Blue 7 - Sonny at his best had a way of almost juggling the melody, re-organizing it little by little until it was completely his - like Monk; the problem is that in order to do so he needs a real melody to work with -

[danasgoodstuff]

Used my Borders 30% off coupon to get this and while I'm glad I did it's not all that...pretty typical late Rollins, enjoayable and more in places but not nearly as strong as, say, Live In Japan from the mid-70s (an import only, still I think) which has more energy, more better Rollins more of the time and better sound. I haven;'t heard the Ronny Scotts albums yet, I sold my Live in Denmark, hearing Sonny play anything for 40+ minutes was too much of a good thing for me...

[JSngry]

not nearly as strong as, say, Live In Japan from the mid-70s (an import only, still I think) which has more energy...

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Well, yeah, ok, but you're talking about the difference between a 43 year old man and a 71 year old man.

[Soul Stream]

Nice interview w/Rollins on Fresh Air yesterday (posted on another thread). His age is really becoming noticable in that booming, powerful voice of his. Makes me think of how we should enjoy and celebrate Sonny all the more while we've still got him on planet earth. Long live Sonny. Last of the Mohicans.

Edited September 13, 2005 by Soul Stream