Read The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz Online

Authors: Tom Piazza

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The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz (70 page)

BOOK: The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
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faintly suggestive of a work song, again using call-and-response-type phrases. This leads directly into a walking-tempo ballad, which contains a fantastic Pettiford solo and ends with a brief reference to the first theme, then a reprise of the six-eight theme. The final section is very fast, again alternating four-bar theme sections with four-bar improvised sections before launching into a solo section that alternates four bars of pedal-tone, four bars of chord-changes blowing, and four bars of drums, all finally ending with the answering phrase from the first theme. This is an ingeniously structured piece that hangs together perfectly and is a model of what an organized framework for improvisation could be. The rest of the set finds the same trio playing good tunes like "Will You Still Be Mine?," "Till There Was You," and two waltzes, "Shadow Waltz'' and Noel Coward's "Someday I'll Find You."
A Night at the Village Vanguard, Volume 1
and
Volume 2
, recorded live at the New York City nightclub in November 1957 with bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Elvin Jones, is a series of extremely adventurous extended patrols into the innards of such standards as "Get Happy," "What Is This Thing Called Love?," "Old Devil Moon," "I Can't Get Started," and "A Night in Tunisia." These two discs contain some of the wildest, wooliest, and freest Rollins improvising available; Rollins's surprising explorations into the familiar material are not for the faint of heart, but if you're willing to follow, this is an exciting trip. Wilbur Ware's sound is so big and his intonation so sure that you are never in doubt about the harmony, and Elvin Jones's drums form a brilliant, dense rhythmic counterpoint to Rollins's horn; the interaction among the three instruments here is some of the most exciting and challenging ever recorded.
Sonny Rollins Brass/Sonny Rollins Trio
(Verve 815 056-2) has three 1958 tracks by a Rollins trio with Henry Grimes on bass and Charles Wright on drums; although these tunes highlight Rollins's tenor sound very well, they fall well below the level of inspiration of the previously mentioned sets. This set also has four tracks with a brass section arranged by Ernie Wilkins, which are nice but not earthshaking, and an unaccompanied Rollins solo on "Body and Soul," which never seems to lift off.
Two imported sets, recorded in early 1959 during a European tour, should be mentioned, although they may be difficult to find.
St. Thomas: Sonny Rollins Trio in Stockholm 1959
(Secret CD 479003) has Henry Grimes on bass and the excellent and little-known Pete La Roca on drums. The standout of this set is a version of "St. Thomas," recorded at a Swedish nightclub, on which Rollins really stretches out. The other tracks (including "Oleo," "There Is No Greater Love," and "I've Told Every Little Star"), recorded in a studio for broadcast on Swedish radio, feature Rollins in a relaxed, swinging mood
 
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for the most part.
Sonny Rollins, Aix en Provence 1959
(Royal Jazz RJ 502), recorded a week later at a French nightclub with Kenny Clarke on drums in place of La Roca, contains some truly abstract extended playing from Rollins; the three tracks here (Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody'n You," George Gershwin's "But Not for Me," and Tadd Dameron's "Lady Bird") are each over fifteen and a half minutes long and feature Rollins almost without a break. Rollins plays things that make you gasp in surprise at their daring. This set is for serious jazz fans only, but one no Rollins fan will want to miss. The sound is good, too.
The Bridge
The Bridge
was Rollins's first recording after returning from the self-imposed period of absence that began in 1959. Available on
Sonny Rollins - The Quartets Featuring Jim Hall
(RCA/Bluebird 5643-2-RB), along with two other 1962 cuts, the album presents a different Rollins, just as brilliant in a different way. His sound is different, more speechlike, and he is more prone to go into the horn's extreme registers, both high and low. He also uses overblowing and other effects to distort his sound. In a year or two, many of his attempts in this direction would begin to sound forced (to my ears, at least), but in 1962 they were still well integrated into an expressive style.
This set consists of four standards, including "Without a Song" and "God Bless the Child," along with Rollins's adventurous, up-tempo originals "The Bridge" and "John S." The two extra tracks are a samba version of ''If Ever I Would Leave You," and a lighter, bossa-nova-tinged "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes," both of which are lovely. The LP version of this set has several more tracks on it, including the famous calypso "Brownskin Girl." Throughout, Jim Hall's guitar is a sensitive counterpoint to the tenor, and Bob Cranshaw and Ben Riley contribute good background on bass and drums, respectively.
Another set,
All the Things You Are
(RCA/Bluebird 2179-2-RB), consists of material recorded in 1963 and 1964, including the famous, or infamous, date pairing Rollins with his hero Coleman Hawkins, one of the weirdest recordings in jazz history. Rollins sounds like he's straining for effect; only Hawkins and bassists Bob Cranshaw and Henry Grimes really deliver the goods consistently in this program of standards like "Yesterdays," "Just Friends," and "All the Things You Are." Six 1964 small-group sides with pianist Herbie Hancock are somewhat better; Rollins plays convincingly on "'Round Midnight," "It Could Happen to You," and Charlie Parker's blues "Now's the Time," but still there is the sense that he is being intentionally, pointlessly, oblique, even perverse in spots. One of the weakest pre-1974 Rollins sets available.
Rollins's three mid-1960s albums for Impulse -
On Impulse!
(MCAD-5655
 
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JVC-458),
Alfie
(MCAD-39107), and
East Broadway Run Down
(MCAD-33120) - are a real mixed bag, containing both great Rollins and monumental weirdness, often within the same eight bars.
On Impulse!
contains the wailing calypso "Hold 'Em Joe," along with a haunting, slow performance of "Everything Happens to Me" (at times Rollins changes and distorts his sound so much that he seems, literally, to be speaking through the horn) and adventuresome, up-tempo versions of "On Green Dolphin Street" and "Three Little Words,'' on which Rollins seems to be using asymmetrical melodic shapes more for their rhythmic and timbral effects than for the kind of cumulative storytelling purposes toward which he had spun melodies a few years earlier. It is definitely interesting, sometimes exhilarating, but overall I get the feeling that Rollins was, to paraphrase Picasso, seeking rather than finding.
The same can be said, in italics, for
East Broadway Run Down
, a 1966 set on which Rollins plays with bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones (both of whom had spent most of the decade with John Coltrane's ground-breaking group) and, on the title track, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard. On the twenty-minute title track, based on a simple repeated riff, Rollins plays a solo in which he takes the kind of timbral manipulation he was exploring on
On Impulse!
to an extreme, often sounding choked and distorted. The medium-tempo "Blessing in Disguise" is also based on a simple repeated riff, which Rollins takes off from, playing over the tonic and subdominant chords for the improvised segments, except for several out-of-tempo interludes. "We Kiss in a Shadow" is a very individual version of a lesser-known Rodgers and Hammerstein tune, alternating between a Latin feel and a walking tempo. A strange album, the height of Rollins's abstract expressionist phase (in the studios at least).
Alfie
is a favorite of many Rollins fans; it is in some ways the most conventional of the Impulse sets. It contains Rollins's music for the film of the same name, orchestrated for large ensemble by Oliver Nelson, mostly in a straight-ahead groove. Rollins plays some inspired stuff here; "Alfie's Theme" is a bluesy Rollins line that he still plays today, and Rollins takes an extended, exploratory solo. But the lesser-known items here are worth checking out, too.
Later and Earlier Rollins
Rollins's 1972
Next Album
(Milestone/OJC-312) is, in my opinion, the last really strong album Rollins recorded, and even it has more weak tracks than strong ones. But the two strong ones are more than worth the price of the set. "The Everywhere Calypso" is one of his best calypso performances; he builds up steam by using the underlying two-beat as accenting in his eighth-note lines, varying the pattern little by little and keeping the tension taut, like a master
 
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game fisherman playing a sailfish. And "Skylark" is one of Rollins's great ballads; he uses Hoagy Carmichael's gorgeous melody as a jumping-off point for two fullbodied meditations and ends with an extended unaccompanied cadenza which gives a picture of what Rollins might do in a club on a hot night, suspending the rhythm and using the tune's melodic motifs as a basis for a totally improvised theme-and-variations. Throughout, Rollins's phenomenally quick, allusive mind pulls rabbits out of hats as melodic fragments remind him of other melodies, which he quotes or paraphrases on a moment's notice; knowledgeable listeners will be tickled and awed by Rollins's references to other tunes and other solos remembered from records. This is one of Rollins's classic recordings.
Two Rollins sets recorded nearly twenty years earlier, before his watershed return in 1955 from seclusion in Chicago, contain solid bebop tenor.
Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet
(Prestige/OJC-011) features Rollins in 1953 with the first incarnation of the MJQ (Milt Jackson, John Lewis, Percy Heath, and Kenny Clarke) for three fine swingers and an excellent slow "In a Sentimental Mood." All of Rollins's ingredients are here - the wit, the allusiveness, the big tone, the imagination - but he hasn't quite coalesced into the grand and distinctive stylist he would become. Some 1951 quartet tracks with Kenny Drew, Percy Heath, and Art Blakey (recorded when Rollins was barely twenty-two) are somewhat less developed, but they're good nonetheless. For a hint of his later mastery of time, listen to the floating way he phrases the melody of "With a Song in My Heart."
Moving Out
(Prestige/OJC-058) contains four August 1954 cuts - the fast title cut and "Swingin' for Bumsy," the ballad "Silk N' Satin," and the blues "Solid'' - with trumpeter Kenny Dorham and a rhythm section of Elmo Hope, Percy Heath, and Art Blakey. These are fine, but not on the highest level for Rollins. A fifth track, "More Than You Know," was recorded two months later with bassist Tommy Potter, drummer Art Taylor, and Thelonious Monk on piano; Monk's presence must have inspired Rollins, for he turns in an especially reflective performance, an early masterpiece.
Two other tunes from this session (exultant, up-tempo rides on "The Way You Look Tonight" and "I Want To Be Happy") can be found on an album under Monk's name,
Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins
(Prestige/OJC-059); both contain exciting, inventive bebop tenor. Another track, "Friday the Thirteenth," is from the November 1953 session that also produced "Let's Call This" and "Think of One," available on
Monk
(Prestige/OJC-016). This session paired Rollins with French horn player Julius Watkins. But for Rollins's best work with Monk you need
Brilliant Corners
(Riverside/OJC-026), a classic Monk session from October 1956 that contains great Rollins on the medium-tempo
 
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blues "Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are," the tricky, whipsawing title track, and especially the Monk ballad "Pannonica," on which Rollins's passion and intellect both run high.
Rollins was a favorite recording companion of Miles Davis's throughout the 1950s. Their first date together, recorded in 1951 and available on
Miles Davis and Horns
(Prestige/OJC-053), is notable especially for a haunting, Lester Young-like Rollins solo on the ultra-slow "Blue Room (Take 1)" and the swinging "I Know," based on Charlie Parker's "Confirmation"; this track, the first one ever released under Rollins's name, has Davis playing piano. Later that same year they were together for a session that also included the nineteen-year-old Jackie McLean; five of the tunes are on
Miles Davis Featuring Sonny Rollins: Dig
(Prestige/OJC-005). Rollins takes one of his best early solos on "Out of the Blue" (check out his bold entering phrase; attention-grabbing opening statements were a Rollins trademark) and also plays well on ''Bluing," a blues tune, the "Sweet Georgia Brown"-based "Dig," and the bouncing "It's Only a Paper Moon."
Collectors' Items
(Prestige/OJC-071) is an essential set, containing the results of two Davis/Rollins dates, one from 1953 and one from 1956. The 1953 date was the only time Rollins ever recorded with Charlie Parker, who joins him on tenor sax instead of his customary alto; this date is discussed in some detail in both the Miles Davis and the Ensembles sections. The 1956 session is a fine quintet date with Tommy Flanagan on piano, which produced three truly great tracks: the fast blues "No Line," the slow "Vierd Blues," and the ballad "In Your Own Sweet Way." Rollins takes fantastic solos on all of them (listen to his entering phrase on "In Your Own Sweet Way"); 1956 was a vintage year for him. Lastly, the June 1954 quintet sides with Horace Silver on piano, collected on Davis's
Bags Groove
(Prestige/OJC-245), including the classic Rollins compositions "Airegin," "Oleo," and "Doxy," as well as two takes of an up-tempo "But Not for Me," contain searching, extremely cogent Rollins solos.
Finally, some of the best Rollins of the 1950s can be found on two Dizzy Gillespie albums recorded in December 1957:
Duets
(Verve 835 253-2) and, especially,
Sonny Side Up
(Verve 825 674-2). Both albums also feature tenorist Sonny Stitt; the former has the two tenors on separate tracks, and the latter throws them together for one of the most exciting sessions in jazz history.
Duets
's main selling point is the up-tempo blues "Wheatleigh Hall," on which Rollins and Gillespie both blow the walls down. But
Sonny Side Up
is the genuine item; Rollins and Stitt face off on a breakneck "I Know That You Know" (on which Rollins plays a hair-raising stop-time passage, a masterpiece of breath control, imagination, and soul), the slow blues "After Hours," a jolly, medium-tempo "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (on which Rollins takes the
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