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Sonny Rollins: Ten Colossal Albums
I tried to play for a long time before I realised I couldn't any more. People suggested electric instruments, but I just wanted to blow into the horn the way Coleman Hawkins did, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Lester Young. I was very distraught. Because all I ever wanted to do was play. It took me quite a while to find a way where I wouldn't end up in the insane asylum, to find another reason for living.
—Sonny Rollins (2022)
Roy Haynes
drums1926 - 2024
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
Fats Navarro
trumpet1923 - 1950
Bud Powell
piano1924 - 1966
Born in 1930, Rollins grew up in Harlem, in Sugar Hill, a neighbourhood full of the city's best jazz musicians. By the time he was thirteen, he had already met
Coleman Hawkins
saxophone, tenor1904 - 1969
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Growing up among the jazz musicians he venerated, Rollins had a geomusical advantage on the saxophonist most often touted as his rival.
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Rollins and Coltrane never considered themselves rivals in a Darwinian sense. There was a degree of competition between them, but above all they were good friends. Nonetheless, Rollins was boosted as the first "leader" in an entirely fictitious battle for supremacy which lasted until Coltrane passed in 1967. In the 1957 Downbeat critics' poll, Rollins was number one, Coltrane number two. (At this point Coltrane still did not have an album out under his own name, while Rollins had over ten). When
Leonard Feather
b.1914Coltrane started to edge ahead in late 1959, when he recorded his breakthrough album, Giant Steps (Atlantic). Towards the end of the year, Rollins began a two-year sabbatical, partly, so the rumour mill had it, because he felt threatened by Coltrane's rise. Rollins has always denied this, doing so most recently in January 2022, in a lengthy interview he gave to the writer John Fordham for Britain's The Guardian newspaper. Rollins had withdrawn from the scene before and would do so again. In the early 1950s, after a heroin bust led to a stretch of hard-labour at the Lexington Narcotics Farm in Kentucky, Rollins delayed his return until he had freed himself from all mental and physical dependency on the drug. In 1968, he pursued spiritual pursuits in India for five months before abandoning music altogether from September 1969 to November 1971, spending much of his time studying meditation.
Rollins made his last great studio album, This Is What I Do (Milestone) in 2000, and 2006's Sonny, Please (Doxy) is also worthy of your attention. He continued playing until 2014, when pulmonary fibrosis forced him to stop. "Blowing the horn made me sick," he told John Fordham. "Believe me, I tried to play for a long time before I realised I just couldn't play any more. People suggested electric instruments, but I just wanted to blow into the horn the way Coleman Hawkins did,
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
Lester Young
saxophone1909 - 1959
Rollins may not be playing anymore, but he is still very much with us. The interview in The Guardian demonstrates that, as does the characteristically insightful thoughts Rollins shared with producer Zev Feldman for the
Albert Ayler
saxophone, tenor1936 - 1970
Sonny Rollins: Ten Colossal Albums
These albums are listed in chronological order of recording, which is not in every case the order in which they were released.
Sonny Rollins Tenor Madness
Prestige, 1956
Rollins recorded six albums for Prestige during 1956. Tenor Madness was recorded in May with
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Red Garland
piano1923 - 1984
Paul Chambers
bass, acoustic1935 - 1969
Philly Joe Jones
drums1923 - 1985
Kenny Clarke
drums1914 - 1985
Art Blakey
drums1919 - 1990
Rollins' soulful, bluesy solo on "Tenor Madness," rich with blue notes and bent notes, compares well with Coltrane's rather clinical approach. Elsewhere, Rollins motivic style—which would be dubbed "thematic improvisation" by the musicologist Gunther Schuller in 1957—shines, particularly on his original "Paul's Pal" and Richard Rodgers' "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World." Tenor Madness deserves its reputation.
Rollins' first stone masterpiece, however, was recorded a month later....
Sonny Rollins Saxophone Colossus
Prestige, 1957
The crown jewel among the albums Rollins made for Prestige in 1956 is Saxophone Colossus, recorded in June. It is, indisputably, one of the greatest tenor saxophone albums of all time. Rollins fronts a quartet completed by pianist
Tommy Flanagan
piano1930 - 2001
Doug Watkins
bass1934 - 1962
Max Roach
drums1925 - 2007
In addition to Rollins' sonic mastery, Saxophone Colossus stands out for two other reasons. "St Thomas," named after the Caribbean island on which his mother was born, is his first full-on exploration of calypso, which became a permanent strand in his music. And on the minor blues "Blue 7," another original, and other tracks, Rollins brings to a new level Gunther Schuller's thematic improvisation. Rollins' solos on the album, Schuller observed, have sufficient invention and coherence to hold together as compositions themselves. A third original, "Strode Rode," features a saxophone and drums conversation which bears comparison with any of the legendary exchanges between Charles Mingus and
Dannie Richmond
drums1935 - 1988
Elvin Jones
drums1927 - 2004
Sonny Rollins Tour De Force
Prestige, 1957
Of all the albums Rollins recorded in 1956, Tour De Force is in 2022 perhaps the least widely celebrated. It is, however, every bit as good as Tenor Madness and almost as good as Saxophone Colossus. Like those albums, it features a quartet, this one completed by Max Roach, pianist
Kenny Drew
piano1928 - 1993
George Morrow
bass, acousticb.1925
Recorded six months after Colossus in December 1956, Tour De Force is unusual for the presence of a singer,
Earl Coleman
b.1925
Sonny Rollins Way Out West
Contemporary, 1957
Recorded in March 1957, Way Out West was the first album Rollins recorded with just bass and drums. The piano-less format freed him from the changes-based structures a keyboard instrument more or less imposes and, starting right here, it has produced some of his finest work.
The album was recorded in Los Angeles during Rollins' first visit to California, with bassist
Ray Brown
bass, acoustic1926 - 2002
Way Out West contains two Rollins originals, "Come, Gone" and "Way Out West," and four covers. Two of these,
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
Sonny Rollins Newk's Time
Blue Note, 1959
Recorded in 1957 two months before A Night At The Village Vanguard (see below), Newk's Time was not released until 1959.
Listening to almost any Rollins album, one may be reminded of a story attaching to the cricketer W.G. Grace, who dominated the English game in the late Victorian era and is credited with having invented modern batsmanship. At an exhibition match in 1901, Grace was bowled out during the opening minutes but refused to leave the pitch. "People have come to watch me bat, not you bowl," he said. The umpire had little choice but to let Grace remain at the crease.
Rollins seems to have displayed a similar attitude with some of the distinctly underwhelming bass and drums players who accompanied him on European tours in the late 1970s and 1980s. The people had, indeed, come to hear Rollins play and, providing the rhythm section kept time and kept out of his way, it did not really matter how good or otherwise they were.
There is nothing underwhelming about the rhythm section on Newk's Time—pianist
Wynton Kelly
piano1931 - 1971
Doug Watkins
bass1934 - 1962
Sonny Rollins A Night At The Village Vanguard
Blue Note, 1957
New York's Village Vanguard has been the location of some of jazz's greatest live albums and the earliest of these is Rollins' A Night At The Village Vanguard. It was recorded on November 3, 1957, just months after owner Max Gordon's adoption of a jazz booking policy, and the album is up there with other treasures such as John Coltrane's Live At The Village Vanguard (Impulse) and
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
Another album made with just bass and drums, in its extended and audio improved 2 x CD RVG edition, A Night At The Village Vanguard includes two tunes from the afternoon set (
Dizzy Gillespie
trumpet1917 - 1993
Donald Bailey
drums1933 - 2013
Pete La Roca
drums1938 - 2012
Wilbur Ware
bass, acoustic1923 - 1979
There are two originals—"Sonnymoon For Two" and "Striver's Row"—and the rest of the time Rollins weaves his spell on a mix of jazz standards and show tunes, including Oscar Hammerstein's "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" and "All The Things You Are," Don Raye's "I'll "Remember April," Harold Arlen's "Get Happy,"
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Sonny Rollins Freedom Suite
Riverside, 1958
The third album in this top ten made with just bass and drums, this time with
Oscar Pettiford
bass1922 - 1960
More meaningfully, a case can be made for Freedom Suite being the first explicitly political extended work to emerge from New York's burgeoning "new thing" scene; the next significant event would be Max Roach's own We Insist! Freedom Now Suite (Candid, 1960). Just in case there was any misunderstanding about the import of "The Freedom Suite," Rollins included this statement on the LP's rear sleeve: "America is deeply rooted in Negro culture; its colloquialisms, its humor, its music. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as its own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity."
Rollins' statement seemingly created such a furore amongst the white critics who constituted jazz's media gatekeepers, that Riverside pulled Freedom Suite and rereleased it under the title Shadow Waltz, the second shortest track on the album. For the reissue, the label's co-owner Orrin Keepnews wrote a new set of sleeve notes that went into contortions to deny that "The Freedom Suite" had any special relevance to black people. Instead, Keepnews maintained that the title had in mind freedom "in general." Not surprisingly, Rollins did not again record for Riverside.
Sonny Rollins The Bridge
RCA Victor, 1962
In 1959, Rollins began a two-year sabbatical, a response, it was said at the time, to Coltrane's meteoric ascent. But in the interview Rollins gave to Britain's The Guardian in January 2022, Rollins explained things differently. "I was getting a lot of publicity for my work at that time," he said. "But I wasn't satisfying my own requirements for what I wanted to do musically"—his withdrawal from the scene had little if anything to do with Coltrane. Given Rollins' attitude towards his art, as well as his relationship with Coltrane, this is a convincing explanation. Anyway, over the next two years, Rollins took to practicing alone on the pedestrian footbridge on the East River's Williamsburg Bridge, where he could play as long and as loud as liked. By late 1960, a legend had grown up around this and, inevitably, when Rollins released his comeback album, recorded in 1961, it was titled The Bridge.
The album does not reveal the radically reinvented Rollins, leaning towards à la mode free jazz, that some observers had been forecasting (1963's unimpressive RCA album Our Man In Jazz, with
Don Cherry
trumpet1936 - 1995
Still eschewing a piano, Rollins fronts a quartet completed by guitarist
Jim Hall
guitar1930 - 2013
Bob Cranshaw
bass1932 - 2016
Ben Riley
drums1933 - 2017
Sonny Rollins On Impulse!
Impulse, 1965
Rollins made three albums for Impulse in the mid-1960s. On Impulse!, in 1965, and Alfie and East Broadway Run Down, both in 1966. The winner, by three falls, a submission and a knockout, is On Impulse!.
Rollins fronts a quartet with pianist
Ray Bryant
piano1931 - 2011
Walter Booker
bassb.1933
Mickey Roker
drums1932 - 2017
East Broadway Run Down is the next of the Impulses to check. It teams Rollins with trumpeter
Freddie Hubbard
trumpet1938 - 2008
Jimmy Garrison
bass, acoustic1934 - 1976
Sonny Rollins This Is What I Do
Milestone, 2000
The majority of Rollins' finest work was made in the 1950s and 1960s. From that time on, although practically all of his albums contain at least one track of brilliance, overall the discs are patchy. Some of the best work from this latter period can be heard on the 2 x CD Milestone compilation, Silver City, released in 1996, which covers the years 1972 to 1995.
As though to demonstrate he could still turn it out when he wanted to, in 2000 Rollins made his late period masterpiece. On This Is What I Do, he leads a quintet comprising trombonist
Clifton Anderson
tromboneb.1957
Stephen Scott
pianob.1950
Jack DeJohnette
drumsb.1942
Pharoah Sanders
saxophone, tenor1940 - 2022
The final word goes to Ira Gitler, who in 1958 described Rollins' sound thus: "At the (Village) Vanguard, Rollins exhibited that staggering brand of gigantic tenor that makes you feel as if you are the instrument being played. The music does more than surround you with grandeur; it gets into your circulatory system and courses through your body." Now as then, that nails it.
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Building a Jazz Library
Sonny Rollins
Chris May
Roy Haynes
Fats Navarro
Bud Powell
Coleman Hawkins
Thelonious Monk
John Coltrane
Leonard Feather
Albert Ayler
Miles Davis
Red Garland
Paul Chambers
Philly Joe Jones
Kenny Clarke
Art Blakey
Tommy Flanagan
Doug Watkins
Max Roach
Charles Mingus
Dannie Richmond
Elvin Jones
Kenny Drew
George Morrow
Earl Coleman
Ray Brown
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Wynton Kelly
Bill Evans
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Donald Bailey
Pete La Roca
WIlbur Ware
Oscar Pettiford
Jim Hall
Bob Cranshaw
Ben Riley
Harry Saunders
Ray Bryant
Walter Booker
Mickey Roker
Freddie Hubbard
Jimmy Garrison
Clifton Anderson
Stephen Scott
Jack DeJohnette
Perry Wilson
Pharoah Sanders
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