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Sonny Rollins Recommendations?


Norm

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I've only picked up two Sonny Rollins CDs (Newks Time and Volume II). While this may seem like a big question, if you could pick one or two other titles by Rollins what would it/they be?

Norm

(P.S. I don't have a turntable so it would have to be something available on CD)

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Picking two or three becomes excruciatingly difficult, but picking one is easy: "A Night at the Village Vanguard" -- Sonny's the greatest chord change player ever and "Striver's Row" and "Old Devil Moon" prove it. Plus, Ware and Elvin (!) That record could have been recorded yesterday it's so timeless.Side note: Is it even possible anymore to get the original sequencing on a single CD? Not that everything isn't great, but that's an instance where they really did pick most of the best stuff for the original LP.

I can second "Alfie" and, from the same period, would add into the mix the incredible "There Will Be Another You" (import only at this point). From more recent times I'm partial to "+3" and "This Is What I Do."

Edited by Mark Stryker
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Nice to see all the '60s recommendations here...there was a time when "everybody" was asleep on that stuff...

You kids today ;) don't understand how much the "CD reissue boom" has changed the landscape as far as "general understanding" of the music goes. Positively and otherwise.

Apropos of this comment, I would add that, personally, if metaphysics allowed me to choose any period to hear Sonny live on a good night, it would unquestionably be in the mid '60s.

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Nice to see all the '60s recommendations here...there was a time when "everybody" was asleep on that stuff...

You kids today ;) don't understand how much the "CD reissue boom" has changed the landscape as far as "general understanding" of the music goes. Positively and otherwise.

While I like the 60s recordings I've heard, I don't find them as bracing as the best of the 50s stuff. Probably need to check more unofficial stuff. My fave (of what I've heard) is probably Sonny Meets Hawk. The Bridge just kind of gets a shrug out of me.

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I like that one too. . .but it's on Atlantic.

There was one on Verve (Metro, actually, IIRC) too...but not as good as the one on Atlantic, although truthfully, both are towrds the bottom "go to" Rollins list...the "thematic improvisation" tact had begun to become a little sefl-conscious to my ears (and in Sonny's later acknowledgement), & Lewis' comping feeds it even more. but stuill, they're better than a lot of other things by other people nevertheless

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