Sonny Rollins

[HutchFan]

4 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Yeah, and that's on Side One. Right after "If Ever I Would Leave you" which is also SO good.

Agreed. 

 

[JSngry]

Believe me, if you had the LP (and maybe you do?) The Side 1/Side 2 ratio would likely be, like 50-1, at least.

[HutchFan]

4 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Believe me, if you had the LP (and maybe you do?) The Side 1/Side 2 ratio would likely be, like 50-1, at least.

Sure.  That makes sense. 

Incidentally, I don't have the LP.  Only CD.  So different format equating to a slightly different experience of the music.

But, to your point, those first two cuts are the JUICE.

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by HutchFan

[JSngry]

Yeah, I TOTALLY backed into an LP of it, one of the very first jazz records I had. There was a local "music store" (i.e. they sold pianos and would order sheet music when asked. In my litte town. They must have been in the RCA Record Club or something at one point, because they had this little raggedy rack of LPs, and there was this one and then the Benny Goodman Moscow date, each for $3.98.

It wasn't until getting out into the real world that I found out just how scarce those RCA Rollins records had become. This had a direct impact, I believe, on how little tenor players of my age knew of this period of sonny's playing, which is, as I've said, a peak achievement of song-form improvisation. I got to college, and everybody was like TRANE!!!LIEBMAN!!!GROSSMAN!!! ETC!!!! and I was like, uh, sonny? Oh, sonny was good in the 50s, but that's it. And I was like, ok, between this one RCA I got and these impulse! records, I'm pretty sure that's NOT right...

Etc. not to bore with the memories, but a culture that was even then beginning to depend on records to shape its awareness of "the big picture"...I think it's worthat least a little bloviation every once in a while. I mean, now, NOW, JUST now, people are starting to reevaluate all this, maybe Sonny WAS into a thing ALL his own after all, even on the Milestone records. But hell, what is this, 2022? That's a helluva long time for lightbulbs to come on, if you ask me.

Oh, about LPs back in the day, on a LOT of turntables back then, you could get a side to just play over and over and over until you stopped it. the thing tracked out, the arm would pick up and then go back to the beginning and so forth, until you stopped it. Back when I didn't have a whole lot of records and something would get good to me, I'd just let it go like that, sometimes for days on end. Shut it off to good to school, turn it back on when I go home, keep it going all night while I slept, the whole thing. Turned it down so it didn't bother the folks, but yeah, you could do that, so why not do it?

[HutchFan]

31 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Etc. not to bore with the memories, but a culture that was even then beginning to depend on records to shape its awareness of "the big picture"...I think it's worthat least a little bloviation every once in a while. I mean, now, NOW, JUST now, people are starting to reevaluate all this, maybe Sonny WAS into a thing ALL his own after all, even on the Milestone records. But hell, what is this, 2022? That's a helluva long time for lightbulbs to come on, if you ask me.

No man, this is not boring.  This forum exists for us to share those perspectives!  That's what we need. 

As far as I'm concerned, questioning the "received wisdom" and continually going back to the music itself is always good thing. 

 

 

Edited May 19, 2022 by HutchFan

[Mark Stryker]

17 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

No man, this is not boring.  This forum exists for us to share those perspectives!  That's what we need. 

As far as I'm concerned, questioning the "received wisdom" and continually going back to the music itself is always good thing. 

 

 

I got down some related thoughts on Sonny in this long interview about saxophonists a few years ago with Iverson. Scroll down to the Rs ... 

https://ethaniverson.com/mark-stryker-and-the-saxes/

 

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 I mean, now, NOW, JUST now, people are starting to reevaluate all this, maybe Sonny WAS into a thing ALL his own after all, even on the Milestone records. But hell, what is this, 2022? That's a helluva long time for lightbulbs to come on, if you ask me.

I guess the question is what is the thing? The Jazz 101 version says he lost his individuality and began chasing Coltrane. Clearly, to my dumb ears, Meets Hawk is not just attempting to catch up with Coltrane. But I have a harder time figuring out what those records are. 

[Mark Stryker]

16 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

I guess the question is what is the thing? The Jazz 101 version says he lost his individuality and began chasing Coltrane. Clearly, to my dumb ears, Meets Hawk is not just attempting to catch up with Coltrane. But I have a harder time figuring out what those records are. 

The "thing" is saxophone-plus-rhythm playing a standard song form with more creativity, spontaneity, expression, authority, and swing than anyone ever did before or since -- constructing an extraordinary improvised structure that hangs together as if it was composed, except it was created on the spot in real time. As I said before: the essence of the art form.  

At least that's one of the "main things."

Edited May 19, 2022 by Mark Stryker

[AllenLowe]

1) I am glad that Jim cited The Bridge as sub-par Sonny; I find the album strangely dull.

2) I was lucky enough to come across the RCA LP of Sonny playing standards when I was maybe 15 or 16 and it was revelatory. This really was the greatest era of Sonny's playing, no if, ands, or buts. I was able to pick up a few more RCA Lps of this era as the years passed. As Mark said, his chord-change playing was unbelievable, an incredibly dense exploration of tonality and harmony (as a tenor player I have tried in vain to emulate this, though it seems to have to do with a king of circular line, parallel scales and figures that move across the harmonic landscape). Happily I now own the Complete Sonny Rollins RCA on CD (or something similarly titled).

3) Jamil Nasser expressed the belief to me that Sonny was completely thrown for a loop when Coltrane became the dominant tenor. In Jamil's opinion this was why he cultivated a somewhat self-conscious eccentricity, playing on the bridge, getting the Mohawk.

4) Sonny, for all his gentle persona, is fiercely competitive. As much as he loved Hawk, according to what Paul Bley told me he was always trying to throw Hawkins off, to play so abstractly that the older man would not know where they were in the tune. Hawk asked Bley, on more than one occasion but particularly on the recording, to signal him in for his choruses.

Edited May 19, 2022 by AllenLowe

[HutchFan]

1 hour ago, Mark Stryker said:

I got down some related thoughts on Sonny in this long interview about saxophonists a few years ago with Iverson. Scroll down to the Rs ... 

https://ethaniverson.com/mark-stryker-and-the-saxes/

Thanks for sharing that, Mark.  I'd read it before, but it's such a great interview that I enjoyed reading it again.  

 

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, Mark Stryker said:

The "thing" is saxophone-plus-rhythm playing a standard song form with more creativity, spontaneity, expression, authority, and swing than anyone ever did before or since -- constructing an extraordinary improvised structure that hangs together as if it was composed, except it was created on the spot in real time. As I said before: the essence of the art form.  

At least that's one of the "main things."

This thing sounds like it's present in the pre-RCAs too, though. It's what we all love about Rollins.

The RCAs don't seem as playful to my ears, although there's obviously humour in many tunes. But they do have something that the earlier records don't have, which is the supposedly "Coltraneish" aspect that isn't actually very Coltraneish. I don't really know what it is though.

Do you think Rollins experienced a deepening of understanding of aspects of music at this point that wasn't there before? 

Edited May 19, 2022 by Rabshakeh

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

 

Do you think Rollins experienced a deepening of understanding of aspects of music at this point that wasn't there before? 

That was the point. That was always the point. If he could play today, it would still be the point  

Tell you what - forget about RCA and go to the Alfie record. Nobody had or could think like that, much less play like that, before or since.

People talk about Coltrane's "quest", and indeed it was. Figuring out the cosmos is no small task  But the quest of Sonny Rollins is just as daunting, if much less glamorous - to find out not just who you are, but how much More of you there is.

No sense in fighting the Milestone wars yet again, but there are moments on there that tell us that he never stopped finding more there, even if he didn't want to make a record about it.

And funny as it might seem, the first person I heard that I could tell had definitely been paying attention to 60s Sonny was Henry Threadgill, explicitly on the Air Lore record. That shit had me LOL-ing, like FINALLY!!!

But you know, who can really play like that. This is the age of Xerox Jaxx and still nobody can do it. It's too damn hard, not just to play, but again, to even THINK.

So, what is that "thing"? That "thing" is Sonny Rollins. He'll tell you that it's all about God, and sure it is, but it's about God as found by, though, and in Sonny Rollins, over a lifetime of doing the work and staying the course and learning how to keep his soul together along the way 

[clifford_thornton]

Rollins' Alfie is the shit.

[Mark Stryker]

36 minutes ago, JSngry said:

That was the point. That was always the point. If he could play today, it would still be the point  

Tell you what - forget about RCA and go to the Alfie record. Nobody had or could think like that, much less play like that, before or since.

People talk about Coltrane's "quest", and indeed it was. Figuring out the cosmos is no small task  But the quest of Sonny Rollins is just as daunting, if much less glamorous - to find out not just who you are, but how much More of you there is.

No sense in fighting the Milestone wars yet again, but there are moments on there that tell us that he never stopped finding more there, even if he didn't want to make a record about it.

And funny as it might seem, the first person I heard that I could tell had definitely been paying attention to 60s Sonny was Henry Threadgill, explicitly on the Air Lore record. That shit had me LOL-ing, like FINALLY!!!

But you know, who can really play like that. This is the age of Xerox Jaxx and still nobody can do it. It's too damn hard, not just to play, but again, to even THINK.

So, what is that "thing"? That "thing" is Sonny Rollins. He'll tell you that it's all about God, and sure it is, but it's about God as found by, though, and in Sonny Rollins, over a lifetime of doing the work and staying the course and learning how to keep his soul together along the way 

Amen.

[Chuck Nessa]

45 minutes ago, JSngry said:

That was the point. That was always the point. If he could play today, it would still be the point  

Tell you what - forget about RCA and go to the Alfie record. Nobody had or could think like that, much less play like that, before or since.

People talk about Coltrane's "quest", and indeed it was. Figuring out the cosmos is no small task  But the quest of Sonny Rollins is just as daunting, if much less glamorous - to find out not just who you are, but how much More of you there is.

No sense in fighting the Milestone wars yet again, but there are moments on there that tell us that he never stopped finding more there, even if he didn't want to make a record about it.

And funny as it might seem, the first person I heard that I could tell had definitely been paying attention to 60s Sonny was Henry Threadgill, explicitly on the Air Lore record. That shit had me LOL-ing, like FINALLY!!!

But you know, who can really play like that. This is the age of Xerox Jaxx and still nobody can do it. It's too damn hard, not just to play, but again, to even THINK.

So, what is that "thing"? That "thing" is Sonny Rollins. He'll tell you that it's all about God, and sure it is, but it's about God as found by, though, and in Sonny Rollins, over a lifetime of doing the work and staying the course and learning how to keep his soul together along the way 

Nice.

[Gheorghe]

I don´t remember the title of the album, but maybe it was the "Now´s the Time" or something but I remember there was some old bop tunes with a new face, very fine played and that "Afternoon in Paris" was on it, and wasn´t it with Miles´ rhythm section in 1966 during a time where Miles due to ill health couldn´t tour and eventually the band members worked with Rollins ? 

[Niko]

this one, "Now's the time" indeed

[Gheorghe]

2 hours ago, Niko said:

this one, "Now's the time" indeed

Yes, this is the one. I remember now, that "Clifford" and "Midnight" was on it as same as "Blue´n Boogie" and "52nd Street Theme". Heard it at the place of an avantgarde saxophonist who praised Rollins and McLean from the not so much avantgarde scene, and spinned it while we had dinner and beer together....

[Eric]

Gentlemen - as a lay person (finance guy, jazz nut), I have thoroughly enjoyed these posts.  I have always ignored Standard b/c of the short track times.  Listened a couple times last night.  I don't get it the way you guys do, but I get it.  It is fun, no joyous to listen to.

[AllenLowe]

20 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

This thing sounds like it's present in the pre-RCAs too, though. It's what we all love about Rollins.

The RCAs don't seem as playful to my ears, although there's obviously humour in many tunes. But they do have something that the earlier records don't have, which is the supposedly "Coltraneish" aspect that isn't actually very Coltraneish. I don't really know what it is though.

Do you think Rollins experienced a deepening of understanding of aspects of music at this point that wasn't there before? 

It really is not a Coltrane-ish thing to my ears, but I would suggest that Coltrane's way of stacking chords forced Sonny to take the bebop method to it's most logical conclusion, which is that every chord suggests a lot of other chords; what he did, to my ears, was connect these chords in dense and brilliantly varied (rhythmically complex) clusters. It's like this circle of harmony. Maybe it can be generally explained, but pulling it off is a whole other thing; it's like one continuous, Joycean sentence that circles itself and then extends to another level of consciousness, before seeming to level off, at which point (since the chord has changed) it recycles itself in new harmonic/scalular directions (some of which veer off harmonically, but which almost always resolve consonantly). As for Sonny understanding new aspects of music, well....I think this period is a very logical extension of his best 1950s work; it is as though he has just filled in the spaces (to get a sense of where he was in the '50s check out the recording he made with MJQ in the late 1950s; the one with Doxy, You Are Too Beautiful, I'll Follow My Secret Heart, Limehouse Blues. This is where he is starting, to my ears, to really fully extend the bop gesture).

Edited May 20, 2022 by AllenLowe

[JSngry]

One of "those labels" has done what "they" do best and done real bootleg material, in this case, the 1963 Stuttgart concert (plus a few extras) in the best sound I've yet heard it (which is not to say REALLY good sound, that probably never existed)

 If you've never heard it, you probably should. And if you've picked up one or more of the rough sounding issues of this material over the last 40 or so years, hey, here is your reward. Carpe diem. 

Of course, there are pitch correction issues on the "extra" material. Of course. Bootleg gonna bootleg. But the main menu is just fine. And even needing pitch correction, hearing '65 Sonny with Milt Jackson and Art Blakey is a hoot!