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Sonny Rollins "Rollins In Holland: 1967 Studio And Live Recordings"

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ghost of miles

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Out Nov 27/Dec 4 from Resonance--this from Zev Feldman's Facebook page:

SONNY ROLLINS on RESONANCE! Coming November 27th for Record Store Day Black Friday. I'm honored and thrilled to announce "Rollins in Holland: The 1967 Studio & Live Recordings," Resonance Records' first archival release from the Saxophone Colossus himself, SONNY ROLLINS. Released in partnership with the Nederlands Jazz Archief this limited-edition 180g 3LP set and deluxe 2CD set (out Dec 4) is officially sanctioned by Rollins and is comprised of 3 different previously-unissued performances with bassist Ruud Jacobs and drummer Han Bennink in May of 1967 at VARA Studio 5 in Hilversum, the Arnhem Academy of Visual Arts in Arnhem, and audio from a televised performance at the Go-Go Club in Loosdrecht.
"Rollins in Holland" will include an extensive, over-the-top 100-page CD booklet and 24-page LP insert with a treasure trove of never-before-published photos from the actual performances, and essays by yours truly, Aidan Levy (currently writing a biography of Sonny Rollins for Da Capo Press) and my co-producer, the Dutch jazz journalist/producer Frank Jochemsen. I had the pleasure of speaking with Sonny for a wide-ranging interview, which will be included in the booklet, along with an interview Aidan had with Han Bennink and Ruud Jacobs at Ruud's home in 2018.

In my interview with Sonny, he said: "I’m so happy that Resonance is putting it out because it really represents a take-no-prisoners type of music. That’s sort of what I was doing around that period of time; that was sort of Sonny Rollins then . . . It was very much me. And I loved it and I loved playing with those guys."

There are many, many thank yous in order for this incredible project. I want to start by thanking George Klabin, as always, for his generosity and passion for making this the greatest Sonny Rollins package possible. This project also wouldn't have been possible without the support of Sonny's long-time publicist (and associate producer on this release), Terri Hinte. I'm so grateful for her support and everything she does for jazz. A special thanks goes to my co-producers Frank Jochemsen, who discovered the VARA Studio and Go-Go Club recordings in the Nederlands Jazz Archief archives, and David Weiss, who was a tremendous asset working with our engineers George Klabin and Fran Gala. I also want to thank the other 2 associate producers on the project, Resonance production manager and my right-hand Zak Shelby-Szyszko and Resonance legal counsel and album package editor, John Koenig. Kudos as well to our über talented designer John Sellards for delivering another absolutely stunning cover and package.

Finally, I want to thank Michael Kurtz and Carrie Colliton from Record Store Day for their continued support in making these releases possible. More info at ResonanceRecords.org

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JSngry Grand Master

JSngry

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14 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

ah, wonderful news! I have bootleg broadcasts of this very fine trio and it's some of the best music Rollins made, in my opinion. Truly exceptional. Bennink really keeps him on his toes!

EXACTLY!

Plan on seeing anew, with fresh eyes, just how high the bar really is!

JSngry Grand Master

JSngry

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I forget how I got the boots of this, but it is indeed as advertised. The first encounter, Sonny & Bennick get into a jousting match to see who's going to have the last word on how a tune ends, and it goes on waaaaaaaayyyyyyy longer than it would for mere mortals. If you're not LOL-ing by the end of it, hey, too bad for you and your joyless drained-empty soul! :g

Treasured stuff, and I THINK it's stuff that has never been after-grey-marketed yet (how did THAT happen????). This is one I will buy with pleasure and confidence and actually a bit of good old-fashioned excitement. And if Sonny himself has signed-off on it, the odds of it getting PaloAlto-ed are almost nil, especially since it comes from a time when he had no contract and really HAD all but disappeared.

Mark Stryker Collaborator

Mark Stryker

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I forget how I got the boots of this, but it is indeed as advertised. The first encounter, Sonny & Bennick get into a jousting match to see who's going to have the last word on how a tune ends, and it goes on waaaaaaaayyyyyyy longer than it would for mere mortals. If you're not LOL-ing by the end of it, hey, too bad for you and your joyless drained-empty soul! :g

Treasured stuff, and I THINK it's stuff that has never been after-grey-marketed yet (how did THAT happen????). This is one I will buy with pleasure and confidence and actually a bit of good old-fashioned excitement. And if Sonny himself has signed-off on it, the odds of it getting PaloAlto-ed are almost nil, especially since it comes from a time when he had no contract and really HAD all but disappeared.

Don't know this material (hangs head in shame). Is it better than or of a piece with the the 1968 Four/Three Little Words/etc from the same geographic part of the world?

Kevin Bresnahan Mentor

Kevin Bresnahan

Posted
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7 minutes ago, JSngry said:

And if Sonny himself has signed-off on it, the odds of it getting PaloAlto-ed are almost nil, especially since it comes from a time when he had no contract and really HAD all but disappeared.

What's funny is that his last major label release by the time 1967 rolled around was with Impulse! Wouldn't it be a riot if they dig up an old contract and find out that they can PaloAlto this? :)

JSngry Grand Master

JSngry

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, Mark Stryker said:

Don't know this material (hangs head in shame). Is it better than or of a piece with the the 1968 Four/Three Little Words/etc from the same geographic part of the world?

It's spunkier, much spunkier. By 68, Sonny had gotten Zen about shit. Not so on this gig.

both are summits, but of different peaks, if that makes any sense.

33 minutes ago, bresna said:

What's funny is that his last major label release by the time 1967 rolled around was with Impulse! Wouldn't it be a riot if they dig up an old contract and find out that they can PaloAlto this? :)

NO IT WOULD NOT BE !!!!!!!

:g

GA Russell Mentor

GA Russell

Posted
Posted
Resonance Records To Issue Set of
Sonny Rollins Discoveries
From the Dutch Jazz Archive,
"Rollins in Holland,"
As a Limited 3-LP
Record Store Day Exclusive
On November 27
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Collection of Unheard "Take-No-Prisoners" Live & Studio Recordings
From the Tenor Sax Master's 1967 Netherlands Tour
Will Arrive as a 2-CD Set
On December 4
 
Packages Will Include New Interviews with Rollins &
Dutch Sidemen Han Bennink & Ruud Jacobs,
Comprehensive Notes by Rollins's Biographer Aidan Levy,
An Essay by Journalist-Researcher Frank Jochemsen, &
Rare, Previously Unseen Photographs

 
August 27, 2020
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Rollins in Holland
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Los Angeles – On Nov. 27, “Black Friday,” independent jazz label Resonance Records will continue its ongoing tradition of releasing previously unissued archival recordings as limited-edition Record Store Day exclusives with a stellar new three-LP collection of historic Sonny Rollins performances, Rollins in Holland: The 1967 Studio & Live Recordings.
 
Featuring more than two hours of music, this stunning collection, drawn from tenor saxophone master Rollins’s Netherlands tour of May 1967, will also be presented as a two-CD set, due Dec. 4. The Rollins set succeeds Resonance’s critically acclaimed RSD archival finds from such jazz giants as Bill Evans, Eric Dolphy, and Wes Montgomery. Last November saw the release of the label’s poll-topping 10-LP/seven-CD Nat King Cole box Hittin’ the Ramp: The Early Years (1936-1943).
 
Resonance co-president Zev Feldman, known within the industry as “the Jazz Detective,” says of the forthcoming release, “The music on Rollins in Holland is extraordinary. Rollins fans will rejoice when they hear the news of this discovery. These performances follow an important time in his life, and he brought those experiences along with him to make this incredible music.”
 
In a new interview with Feldman included in the set, the 89-year-old Rollins says, “I’m so happy that Resonance is putting it out because it really represents a take-no-prisoners type of music. That’s sort of what I was doing around that period of time; that was sort of Sonny Rollins then—a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach. It was very much me. And I loved it and I loved playing with those guys.”
 
The music heard on the Resonance album is drawn from a little-documented period in Rollins’s career. The musician’s 1966 Impulse! album East Broadway Run Down was his final record date before a studio hiatus that lasted until 1972. In 1969, mirroring a celebrated public exit of a decade earlier, he began a two-year sabbatical from live performing.
Sonny Rollins Trio
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Rollins in Holland captures the then 36-year-old jazz titan in full flight, in total command of his horn at the height of his great improvisational powers. He is heard fronting a trio, the same demanding instrumental format that produced some of the early triumphs of his long career: the live A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957) and the studio dates Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) and Freedom Suite (Riverside, 1958).
 
During his brief but busy 1967 stay in the Netherlands, the saxophonist was supported by two of the nation’s top young players, bassist Ruud Jacobs and drummer Han Bennink. The pair had together supported such visiting American jazzmen as Johnny Griffin, Ben Webster, Wes Montgomery, and Clark Terry, among others. Jacobs was a celebrated straight-ahead accompanist, while Bennink had developed a reputation as an avant-garde lion, having backed Eric Dolphy on 1964’s Last Date. The pair jelled magnificently behind their celebrated leader.
 
Rollins in Holland brings together material drawn from three separate appearances by the trio: a freewheeling May 3 concert at the Arnhem Academy of Visual Arts, at which Rollins stretched out in expansive performances that sometimes topped the 20-minute mark; a four-song May 5 morning studio session at the VARA Studio in Hilversum, where Dolphy and Albert Ayler had also cut unforgettable dates; and two live shots captured during the band’s stand that evening on “Jazz met Jacobs,” a half-hour national NCRV TV show presented from the Go-Go Club in Loosdrecht and hosted by bassist Jacobs’s pianist brother Pim and his wife, singer Rita Reys.
 
In his essay for the collection, Dutch jazz journalist, producer, and researcher Frank Jochemsen notes that while recordings of the Arnhem show (presented here with carefully restored sound) had been passed hand-to-hand by Dutch jazz buffs over the years, the rest of the music was only recently unearthed.
 
In 2017, the four stereo tracks from VARA Studio were discovered by Jochemsen, and they were authenticated by Ruud Jacobs and Han Bennink as they were being digitized for the Dutch Jazz Archive (NJA). In 2019, Jochemsen also discovered the audio from the “Jazz met Jacobs” appearance in the Dutch Jazz Archive, along with a unique set of photos shot at the sound check and live broadcast of this lost TV show.
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Sonny Rollins Trio
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Jochemsen says, “I find it an exciting idea that so much has been recovered and documented from this modest tour and that the music is indeed of such high quality. Even more sensational is the fact that the whole world can listen to it now. The great Sonny Rollins at his best, accompanied by a great rhythm tandem, which makes me, as a Dutchman, extra proud.”
 
An extensive overview of Rollins’s Holland trek is supplied by jazz journalist Aidan Levy, whose biography of the saxophonist will be published by Da Capo Books. Levy says, “Rollins in Holland is a resounding, still-urgent argument for jazz as a universal art form, transcending time, place and race. This is jazz at its most international and interdependent, with no boundaries or borders.”
 
Rollins in Holland also includes an in-depth interview by Levy with Han Bennink and Ruud Jacobs, conducted a year before Jacobs’s death from cancer in July 2019. In it, the late bass virtuoso recalled the experience of playing with the American legend as “something spiritual. [There was] a very special atmosphere on the stage where I felt I could do anything.”
 
The opportunity to bring Rollins’s exceptional Netherlands performances to the public for the first time has proven a special moment for Resonance, Feldman says: “Working with Mr. Rollins has been the experience of a lifetime, and I’m so grateful that he has put his trust in Resonance and our team to bring forth this newly unearthed, previously undocumented chapter in his career.”
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Photography: Toon Fey
(at Academie voor Beeldende Kunst, Arnhem, Netherlands; May 3, 1967)
 

Resonance Records
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Sonny Rollins
ghost of miles Experienced

ghost of miles

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20 minutes ago, bresna said:

I'll wait for the CD version in December. Resonance's LPs are expensive. The 3 LP Grant Green "Funk In France" set was selling for $70 and it didn't even include a download card.

I'm extraordinarily grateful that Resonance continues to offer their releases in the CD format.  I learned yesterday that a music-writer friend of mine has penned extensive liner notes for a new box set of the Athens, Georgia group Pylon--excitement on my end till I discovered that the label doing it is only putting out a vinyl edition.  If it weren't for my friend's having written the booklet, I'd definitely take a pass... as it is, on the fence as to whether or not I'll end up getting it.  I have a record player and do occasionally listen to vinyl, mostly when it's a matter of necessity (Mosaic's Commodore sets, for instance), but I never go out of my way to buy it.

sidewinder Mentor

sidewinder

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1 hour ago, bresna said:

I'll wait for the CD version in December. Resonance's LPs are expensive. The 3 LP Grant Green "Funk In France" set was selling for $70 and it didn't even include a download card.

Wasn’t cheap here either - £75 I think - and involved a Record Store Day scrum just to get at it. 

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