Article on Sonny Rollins Thelonious Monk Prestige album

[david weiss]

Just read this.....

http://www.jazzwax.com/2014/05/sonny-rollins-thelonious-monk.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Jazzwax+%28JazzWax%29

It makes some pretty startling statements to me.....

Thoughts?

[JSngry]

Well, it's a great session, "The Way You Look Tonight" would be on my short list of suicide prevention musics if I had one (or even wanted one), but the article itself seems like we're supposed to believe that history only happened on records or some such, which is good for an industrial paradigm, not so much for a reality-based creative life...well, these days, maybe, but back then...hell no.

The one thing that doesn't get mentioned is how close Rollins at this time was to Bird, not superficially, hell, so many people were that then, but how close to Bird he was, in terms of sheer looseness, freedom of rhythm, the ability to start anywhere, end anywhere, and turn back and forth anywhere in between. Eventually he got at least as flexible as Bird, maybe even more flexible than Bird, I mean, unfettered 60s Sonny is like, ok, what Trane did to harmony in jazz improvisation, Sonny did to swing rhythm, there's just no place left after those things, gotta make a move (somewhere) or else just accept it, accept that you are a lesser rhythmichuman than these guys, pretending anything else is just a grandiose fantasy. Either way, it's something to be dealt with, not casually skipped over, like, yeah, let's swing "like that" and/or yeah, let's just not swing like that, anything will do as long as it's not that. No, that's a joke, ok?

But before that, you can always, always tell Bird by how many "there's" there were in one solo. Nobody else had that many (and let's also consider timral variety, not "tone", but how much color-shading you can put in your line, you'd be surprised how many flatliners there are in that regard, and today, hell, it's a fucking plague, I cannot listen to all these people who flatline their way throug a bunch of theoretical twists and turns and not one really vary their timbre of even their interior pulse, just FWEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLE STOP IT, MUSIC IS A LANGUAGE PLEASE STOP MONOTONEDRONING ME TO PAST-DEATH, YOU HAVE MADE ME HATE JAZZ!!!!!)., but Sonny was getting close on these records. And Monk was directing traffic, like only Monk could. Monk could comp like a freakin' genius composer/conductor, uh, wait, he was a genius composer/conductor.

And let's do a little homework before telling everybody how history go, ok? During this time, Monk & Sonny were hanging, seriously hanging, playing together a lot (but wait, Monk didn't have very many-hardly any gigs during that time, how can that be? Because most of the music in those days was not made at gigs or in clubs, it was made by cats hanging out and jamming, 24/7 if you wanted it, they say, always somebody playing somewhere, always). So no, this is not a manifesto or whatever, this is a sample of a lot more life that was going on during this time, life that we will never know unless we were there and living it in real time.

Sonny's on record with all of this, btw, as was Trane. What was it Trane called him, "a musical architect of the highest order"? As for Sonny, read the Joe Goldberg book, everybody with even the slightest interest in the music and people of those times should read the Joe Goldberg book. Lot of little nuggets in there, useful nuggets. Don't start with Marc Meyers, or Joe Goldberg, or any written word. Start with the music, use it to get to the people who play it, learn what they are saying and then, maybe then, start with reading about it.

But startling, you say, startling, hey, this startled me.

[AllenLowe]

I like that session, but I think it's far from the new Sonny; he plays great but still very much in the pre-Collossus (sp?) way; one indicator, at least to me, is how I Want to be Happy is way slower than Bud's version. To me the big revelation of that session from when I first listened very closely to it was the way, on More Than You Know, Monk plays the sheet music changes, ignoring how a lot of the boppers were inserting II/V's everywhere.

Edited May 23, 2014 by AllenLowe

[uli]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXz5f9Nxd4A

[Larry Kart]

For me, the big turning point was "Worktime!" the first album he made after the Chicago woodshed period. I wrote about it thusly (slightly modified at the every end liner notes for a 1972 LP reissue of the album):

1972]

Most jazz fans, myself included, tend to view the process of jazz creation in a dramatic, even romantic light. If the artistic product is turbulent, passionate, noble, etc., we feel that the circumstances surrounding its creation must have been similar in tone. As one has more contact with musicians, though, one discovers that it is rarely that simple--musical events that to the listener seem immensely dramatic may have been created in a casual, “let’s get the job done” manner. I mention this as a mild corrective, for if ever there was a recording that deserved the term “dramatic,” Worktime is it.

The situation was this: Sonny Rollins, who by 1954 had established himself as the best young tenorman in jazz, moved to Chicago for most of 1955 and “woodshedded” (that apt jazz term for artistic self-examination). He emerged to join the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet, and when he recorded Worktime on December 2, 1955, it was his first appearance on record since October 1954, when recorded as a sideman with Thelonious Monk.

“Worktime” was a dramatic and startling event, then and now, because it revealed that during his sabbatical Rollins had made a quantum jump in every area of musical procedure. He was no longer “the best young tenorman” but a major innovator whose achievements would have implications for the future course of jazz that have not yet been exhausted, either by himself or by all those he has influenced. Most obviously, there was an increase in rhythmic assurance and sonoric variety on Rollins’s part. But these and other seemingly technical gains were all in the service of a shift in sensibility, a unique attitude toward his material that had only been hinted at in his previous work.

I imagine that everyone who admires Rollins’s music has commented on its humorous quality, though there seems to be agreement that “humorous,” by itself, is not an adequate description. David Himmelstein has added the information that it is “the humor of inwit, of self-consciousness or, as Sonny once aptly put it, the consciousness of a generation nourished on ‘Lux--you know, the Radio Theatre,’ ” and Max Harrison has given us the terms “sardonic” and “civilized irony.” But the best guide I have found to the sensibility that emerges on Worktime is a remarkable article by Terry Martin titled “Coleman Hawkins and Jazz Romanticism” that appeared in he October 1963 issue of Jazz Monthly. In commenting on Hawkins’s version of “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” (which can be heard on the album Soul ) Martin says that “the whole is a finely shaped drama. Dramatic structure may in fact point to the core of Hawkins’s art. He handles his materials with the ease and cunning of a great dramatist, and as with great drama the meaning may not correspond exactly with what the characters are made to say. It is the personae and the relations generated between them that contain the essence of the achievement.”

Much of this also applies to Rollins, though his kind of drama differs in form and content from Hawkins’s. A comparison between “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” and “There Are Such Things” from Worktime may show what the differences are. As Martin points out, one of Hawkins’s methods is to make an initial statement that is romantic in character and then juxtapose it with “highly emotive rhythmic figures” that eventually lead back to the original mood. It is as though he were saying, “Yes, romance does exist, but I want to show you the tough reality that lies underneath.” Structurally, Hawkins’s drama is double in effect but single in method--i.e., allowing for foreshadowing devices, he presents one personae at a time--while with Rollins the method as well as the final effect is double ( at the least). No statement is allowed to rest unqualified by him for more than a few measures, and often the very tone quality and accentuation with which a phrase is presented is felt as an ironic commentary upon it.

The implications of such an approach are numerous. For one, even though Rollins can retain and heighten the pattern of linear motivic evolution that was hailed enthusiastically by Gunther Schuller as “thematic improvising,” the effect of constant renewal produced by his simultaneous or near-simultaneous expression of multiple points of view is, I believe, the more radical and lasting development, for it enables the soloist to achieve an emotional complexity that before was largely the province of such orchestral masters as Duke Ellington, whose every band member is potentially a musical/dramatic character. Also, it opens the door to a new view of the jazz past, for the improviser can now range beyond the apparent boundaries of style and make use of any musical material that his taste for drama can assimilate.

Rollins’s frequent use of such unlikely vehicles as “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Sonny Boy,” “In a Chapel in the Moonlight,” “Wagon Wheels,” and “If You Were the Only Girl in the World” can be seen in this light--for while one wouldn’t swear that none of these pieces (and there are many more like them) appeals to Rollins on essentially musical grounds, it’s a safe bet that he is drawn to them because he likes to evoke, toy with, and comment upon their inherent strains of corniness, prettiness, and sentimentality . And by bringing orchestral/dramatic resources into the range of the individual soloist, Rollins may have given to jazz just the tool it needs to survive the apparent exhaustion of the emotional resources open to the improviser whose relationship to his material is one to one, which is what I think can be heard in the later work of John Coltrane.

The finest tracks on Worktime, for me, are “There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “Raincheck,” and “There Are Such Things.” Notice, in particular, the utterly unexpected insertion of the verse of “Show Business” (where Rollins is accompanied only by Morrow’s strong bass line) right after the theme statement. What results is quintessentially Rollins-esque, a compulsively swinging, serio-comic tour de force that at once embraces and bemusedly holds at arms’ length the flag-waving fact of Ethel Merman’s existence.

[Head Man]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXz5f9Nxd4A

.. thanks for this, uli.

[danasgoodstuff]

But before that, you can always, always tell Bird by how many "there's" there were in one solo. Nobody else had that many (and let's also consider timral variety, not "tone", but how much color-shading you can put in your line, you'd be surprised how many flatliners there are in that regard, and today, hell, it's a fucking plague, I cannot listen to all these people who flatline their way throug a bunch of theoretical twists and turns and not one really vary their timbre of even their interior pulse, just FWEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLEEEDLE STOP IT,MUSIC IS A LANGUAGE PLEASE STOP MONOTONEDRONING ME TO PAST-DEATH, YOU HAVE MADE ME HATE JAZZ!!!!!)., but Sonny was getting close on these records. And Monk was directing traffic, like only Monk could. Monk could comp like a freakin' genius composer/conductor, uh, wait, he was a genius composer/conductor.

This: yes, oh hell yes! (and, by the way, this is why Branford is wrong about Fathead not being jazz...)

Edited May 23, 2014 by danasgoodstuff

[AllenLowe]

absolutely agree, Larry, on Worktime; as a matter of fact my 14-year-old ears heard There's No Business Like Show Business and my 14-year-old brain decided then and there that this was something I had to do.

and this is the key (I was always bothered by emphasis on the thematic improv idea):

"the effect of constant renewal produced by his simultaneous or near-simultaneous expression of multiple points of view is, I believe, the more radical and lasting development, for it enables the soloist to achieve an emotional complexity that before was largely the province of such orchestral masters as Duke Ellington, whose every band member is potentially a musical/dramatic character. Also, it opens the door to a new view of the jazz past, for the improviser can now range beyond the apparent boundaries of style and make use of any musical material that his taste for drama can assimilate."

Edited May 23, 2014 by AllenLowe

[david weiss]

Well if you are going to look at things this way, Worktime makes a lot of sense. At least one could point to his shedding in Chicago and point to this result, the first time he went into the studio after all that practicing (and some gigs with Max Roach). That's an easier sell then the Monk/Rollins session which seems to be one of at least 3 dates where is he playing at the this level recorded in the months before this date so while a fine date, not quite the sudden breakthrough as described here. Monk may have made a big difference to the overall sound of the recording but the breakthrough in Rollins' sax playing is what is being discussed here.

I actually look a little later to where I think he becomes perhaps the greatest be-bop/hard bop tenor saxophonists (or one of two).

I think this peaks in the 1957-59 period and I can't really point to one album as the breakthrough, just the culmination of all that came before it though I think his playing trio has something to do with my feelings about this (plus the Blue Note album with Reflections (my favorite work of his with Monk) and Poor Butterfly.

As for the piece I linked, I've only gone to this site a few times but every time I read something there, I'm blown away by some of the whoppers and misinformation.

This guy clearly likes the music, might even have a passion for it but a little more respect for the facts would be nice.

In this article alone......

"One of jazz's big turning points came on October 25, 1954, when Sonny Rollins altered the direction of the tenor saxophone at Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack, N.J., studio". Pretty bold proclamation I think.

"Next came the Art Farmer Quintet in January 1954 and Bags' Groove in June, which was more of a Davis-Monk cutting session than a Sonny showcase". Actually Bag's Groove was recorded in December, the rest of the album was recorded in June (without Monk). Bag's Groove is the only tune with Monk on this record. Calling it "more of a Davis-Monk cutting session than a Sonny showcase" is a really strange way of putting this especially since Monk is only on one tune and if anything is a coming out party for Sonny in 1954, it's his playing on Oleo, Airegin and Doxy on this record. It certainly has all the attributes that this guy describes in Sonny's playing on his record with Monk a few months later.

"Sonny's session for Moving Out in August included trumpeter Kenny Dorham, as Prestige stubbornly continued to chaperone Sonny's sax with horns". Really???? First I've heard of this. I wonder who told him this? Sonny's first record on Prestige was a quartet date. Actually Movin' Out is the first record of Sonny's as a leader that does have another horn player.

"Finally, in October '54, Sonny was captured alone with Monk, Potter and Taylor, and we get to hear a completely new saxophone sound emerge, one unburdened by trumpets and stale bebop riffs or limited by tight time limits".

A completely new saxophone sound emerge? Really? "One unburdened by trumpets"....Kenny Dorham and Miles Davis burdens? plus as I said only one of his earlier records as a leader had another horn player on it. "Stale bebop riffs" Sonny was playing stale be-bop riffs before the record and then suddenly stopped? Is he referring to someone else? "Limited by tight time limits" This was originally a 10" record just like all the ones Sonny was on before this.

Am I being rough here? One sentence after the next has these ridiculous proclamations/speculations?

It's really too much to bear.

It's hard to see history rewritten even if it's not in a negative way.

Edited May 24, 2014 by david weiss

[AllenLowe]

thanks for that; I also want to drop in the sessions Sonny did with Babs Gonzalez and Bud Powell (with Fats N.) which were all before 1950 and both quite astoundingly mature-sounding for Sonny; also the JJ Johnson Savoys, once again before 1950. If he wants to trace Sonny's growth, he's gonna have to go back even a few more years.

but once again, I agree that Worktime is the breakthrough.

Edited May 24, 2014 by AllenLowe

[Mark Stryker]

What Jim said and then what David said (and nobody is being too rough). I appreciate the interviews on jazzwax -- a lot of good stuff there, but the criticism is usually flawed and the history distorted. FWIW, re: Sonny. I've always heard "Worktime" as a definite leap up in conception and command in terms of the recordings, and as a coming out party after the Chicago sabbatical it makes sense to mark it as the start of Rollins' maturity. But he was progressing swiftly. He was also recording A LOT. As Jim suggests, the history of jazz is not the same as the history of jazz on record, But it's interesting that in 1956 alone Sonny was in the studio about 15 times either as a leader or sideman, and if you throw in bootlegs you can more or less get a monthly snapshot of how he was playing, That pace continues in '57, before slowing up in '58. I agree with David that the true peak is 57-59 but that it's a culmination. Looking for THE turning point is folly. I will say that "A Night at the Village Vanguard" represents the pinnacle. Don't get no better than that. Ever. As I've said before, I'm a HUGE '60s Rollins fan, and that if I could play like anyone, it would be Sonny on a good night in 65. But in a way I think of the Vanguard record as the first of the '60s trios.

Edited May 24, 2014 by Mark Stryker

[AllenLowe]

actually I agree; the peak Rollins for me is RCA-era, 1964 +; there's that Scandanavian broadcoast, I think it is; a live version, among other things, of Three Little Words; and a harmonic leap even in the RCA studio recordings (though I've always thought The Bridge was his weakest), ja new post-Trane chordal density that is unworldly. And a virtuosity that is unreal.

most tantalyzing image I've had was Bill Triglia's description of what I believe was an early 1960s encounter he had when visiting Fruscella, of Fruscella and Sonny doing duos in the apartment.

as for Myers, good guy, good interviews, scattered historically - has anyone here read his book?

Edited May 24, 2014 by AllenLowe

[Peter Friedman]

It looks as though there are a variety of different opinions on identifying the peak of Sonny Rollins playing ( at least on record).

Personally, I found most of Rollins 60's recordings a fairly big let-down after his magnificent playing in the 50's.

It is the period from 1954 through 1958 that I consider the definite peak for Rollins. One record after another on Prestige, Blue Note, and Contemporary with Sonny as leader or sideman that are all essential for me.

[Head Man]

If there was one performance I could go back in time to see it would be Sonny Rollins at The Village Vanguard in November, 1957. My favourite live album... ever.

[Larry Kart]

Some probably too categorical thoughts (from 2004) about latter-day Rollins, followed by some related thoughts about Wayne Shorter, from the introductory chapter to my book:

"The rich complexity of Rollins’s musical thought, and his ability to at once dramatize and ironically comment upon virtually any emotional impulse that came to mind, led him to express multiple points of view--one could even say summon up multiple selves or characters--within a single solo. This was, however, not an approach that Rollins could sustain during the 1960s, in the face of rapid stylistic change in the surrounding jazz landscape. Responding to those changes in his own work, as he did quite strikingly up to a point, also meant that the broadly shared musical-emotional language of romantic sign and sentiment that had so deeply stirred Rollins’s own sentiments and wit was now becoming historical. It was a language that could still be referred to and played off of, but for him apparently not with sufficient immediacy.

"Shorter’s temperament--also deeply, even subversively ironic--led him at first to toy brilliantly with the idea that any soloistic gesture could or should be taken at face value. In the typical Shorter solo of the early- to mid-1960s, seemingly forthright, “heated” musical-emotional gestures are disrupted, even mocked, by oblique, wide-eyed shifts to other levels of speech (cool, chess-master complexity, blatantly comic tonal and rhythmic distortions, and so forth). Rollins had said, in effect: “There are many selves at work here, and I am present in all of them.” Shorter took the next step: “Why assume that any of these selves is a self, that any of them is me?” Significantly, this aspect of Shorter’s music emerged at the same time that Coltrane was plunging headfirst into the expressionistic sublime, although Shorter’s seemingly innate distancing diffidence also seems to have played a role. In any case, after he left the Miles Davis Quintet, Shorter increasingly withdrew from the solo arena (from 1970 to 1985 he was a member of the jazz-rock group Weather Report), and on the rare occasions when he has returned there, it is his diffidence that he essentially expresses. (That Shorter returned to the concert stage and the recording studio beginning in 2002 is a hopeful sign, though the rather studied elegance of the results so far suggests something less than full engagement.)"

[AllenLowe]

yes.

and I would suggest to Sonny that the answer to this problem or whatever it is/was in his mind, is not to surround himself with more and more distraction - mediocre bandmates filling every sonic space - but to go forward bravely into the realm of the multiple-self. Though in going this way he might have ended up like Beckett, playing less and less and expressing himself in smaller windows that, themselves, questioned the very need for expression.

One of Sonny's problems may have been his deep competetiveness; looking around he saw there was, post-Coltrane, an actual start system emerging in jazz. And he needed to be part of it for reasons of ego and cash.

Can't blame him at all, though I think he could have retained his stardom in other ways. But then, I am not best the person to give other musicians career advice.

Edited May 25, 2014 by AllenLowe

[xybert]

Threads like this always blow my mind when it comes to Sonny Rollins. I have quite a few of his albums and really enjoy them, but he's never been a favourite and based on the comments in this thread i think a lot of what he does goes way over my head. I'll be honest here at the risk of revealing my ignorance, even on the Monk records, i dig his playing but i just always felt that he was 'lesser' than Monk, just not quite worthy! I know i'm wrong, but it's almost like a prejudice i have, a half formed opinion that exists outside of the facts, or something, that i need to shake. Anyway, someday when i'm in the mood and am feeling receptive i'll need to do some listening.

[Leeway]

It looks as though there are a variety of different opinions on identifying the peak of Sonny Rollins playing ( at least on record).

Personally, I found most of Rollins 60's recordings a fairly big let-down after his magnificent playing in the 50's.

It is the period from 1954 through 1958 that I consider the definite peak for Rollins. One record after another on Prestige, Blue Note, and Contemporary with Sonny as leader or sideman that are all essential for me.

I would agree with that, with maybe the possible exception of "The Bridge," which, while I don't hold in quite as high esteem as many others do, still is quite a strong record by any standard. I've already commented elsewhere about "Our Man in Jazz," which to me is Sonny not very comfortable in the new suit he's trying to wear, whereas you might say in the 50s, it all fit together quite comfortably and impressively (apologies for tortured analogy).

[AllenLowe]

there is a box with all the RCAs; they are inconsistent, but the god-like Sonny emerges in more than one place. To me, if he had followed his, say, 1964 path, we would have seen things to which nothing else in jazz history would compare. To use a comparison, his works would stand like Shakespeare for centuries to come, or Joyce and Proust.

[jlhoots]

All very enlightening.

Don't forget Brilliant Corners.

[JSngry]

recordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecordsrecords

Here's one of 'em. because, uh...there they are.

I guess maybe, like recorded violence and recorded fucking, we've becomed discontitioned to really noticing startling rhythmicharmonictimbral freedom occurring in the context of recorded basic 4/4 swingtime & underlying diatonic changes (and this just the short version, because oh well, it's not really any more significantly developed past 1959 or anything, so why waste time, and it is just a record, that's all there is to figure out right there, just listen to the record and then work done). Oh well.

OTOH, people who have spent some time putting air into and through a tenor saxophone with any kind of rhythmic coordination listen to any Sonny Rollins from any time, "record" or otherwise, listen all these various random "misgivings" of any degree and just really LOL, because pffffffffffffffffffttttttttttttttt, really? Seriously? All these "modern" "players of today" do not push past what Sonny Rollins has done, not cumulatively, not in terms of how much of the air comes out relative to how much goes in, evenly all over the horn, and/nor how much dancing there is do to and with the time whenever the whim strikes. They might go down another road or they might signify more loudly (signifying nothing in the process) or they might break off one sector and magnify it, but they do not push past the cumulative of the cumulative Sonny Rollins (and yes, that includes the very last note he has played,which was hopefully within the last 24 hours), one is tempted to say because the maths don't go past that. So let us fully celebrate different maths, but the less that celebration is informed by an awareness of the previous maths (and the relatively/genuinely small number of true masters they have had), the less of an understanding it is and the more cheerleading plea to not be left alonely tonite it becomes. Also worth noting that very very few "players of then" (even the ones still living) have come as close to where Rollins has gone, and really...past it?....no. Just not. Hasn't happened. Won't happen.

So...no, not seriously. After some point, a "flawed god" is still a god, not matter how flawed they are, and Sonny Rollins, flaws and all, has never stopped being a god, nor a flawed god (hello, "classic 56-59 " records having a helluva lot of "failures' amongst the triumphs), hell, he was jazzborn a "flawed god" and has never been anything else - and I don't think that anybody is more acutely aware of that than he is. Hello insecurity, hello ego, hello yoga, hello flat records, hello everything that is Sonny Rollins. If I need a "perfect god", hell I can make one up or something along those lines. Options aplenty for "perfect god"s.,

But all these mortals, DAMN what fools these mortals be.

[colinmce]

I'm on board with the critcisms voiced here already, but what bugged me the most was the old 'either/or' fallacy: that since Rollins' "breakthrough" music is superior, what preceded it must be inferior (how many single horn leader dates do you know of pre-60s anyways? Certainly pre-1957. So odd that he suggests pairing Rollins with other front line players is somehow a calculation to mitigate Rollins). Just as music history doesn't follow cleanly through records, black and white isn't any more true to life.

[paul secor]

At this point, records are what we have - until someone invents a time machine.

[JSngry]

No, "records" are not what we have, if by "records" we mean (and I do) officially commercially released product.

[paul secor]

Just another form of record - imo.