Coming in February 2024: "The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins" (NYRB)

[Mark Stryker]

https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-notebooks-of-sonny-rollins

[JSngry]

I want this, thank you. 

[AllenLowe]

1 hour ago, Mark Stryker said:

https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-notebooks-of-sonny-rollins

I am very interested but I have a feeling Sonny still holds almost everything back. The most insightful thing I have ever heard about him was about 30 years ago from Jamil Nasser who said that Sonny early eccentricities - the bridge, the mohawk, the sabbiticals - were expressed when Coltrane ascended and really usurped Sonny's tenor dominance. Jamil felt that all of this was just a way of his trying to reassert his popularity, that it was random, aimless, and somewhat pointless. I tend to agree, to whit: right after this time he did his best playing ever, some of the best playing in the history of jazz (say, 1962-1968) before turning to what I would call (and this is not a popular opinion) an over-ripe, neo-pop style with a newly-dominant (and noisy) rhythm section, culminating in years and years of good but unfocused playing. At this point (yes, in my personal opinion) he just decided he was going to be popular, and though there were real, live sparks of what he could do, his body of work just ended up as - a body of work, inconsistent, crowded with empty performances (of both his and the band's). There is almost a weirdly disturbing hint of distorted ego in all of this, and I remember being really disgusted with his interivews in that movie (G-Man?) where, along with Lucille, everything seems almost totally self directed. And the rest was a kind of sordid artistic journey from nowhere to nothing.

Sorry, that's how I feel. Sonny is one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, and genuinely nice guy to boot, and personally he has had a dominating effect on my own playing and musical approach; but he could still have been wildly popular and made plenty of money if he had learned how to be dispassionately self-critical (instead of doing so in a more radically self-rejecting way, as indicated by one passage I saw quoted). He has/had the right to do otherwise, and more power to him, but it doesn't mean we cannot evaluate his work realistically.

So....I guess what I am saying is that I would be interested in the notebooks if they reflect a real inside look instead of one that, under the guise of telling all, is really still very sanitized, even if in a way that is deep and very carefully encoded.

Edited October 23, 2023 by AllenLowe

[ghost of miles]

I'm in.  Glad to see NYRB, an imprint I enjoy very much, taking this on.  

[HutchFan]

Oh yeah.  Count me in.

 

[danasgoodstuff]

On 10/23/2023 at 11:07 AM, AllenLowe said:

I am very interested but I have a feeling Sonny still holds almost everything back. The most insightful thing I have ever heard about him was about 30 years ago from Jamil Nasser who said that Sonny early eccentricities - the bridge, the mohawk, the sabbiticals - were expressed when Coltrane ascended and really usurped Sonny's tenor dominance. Jamil felt that all of this was just a way of his trying to reassert his popularity, that it was random, aimless, and somewhat pointless. I tend to agree, to whit: right after this time he did his best playing ever, some of the best playing in the history of jazz (say, 1962-1968) before turning to what I would call (and this is not a popular opinion) an over-ripe, neo-pop style with a newly-dominant (and noisy) rhythm section, culminating in years and years of good but unfocused playing. At this point (yes, in my personal opinion) he just decided he was going to be popular, and though there were real, live sparks of what he could do, his body of work just ended up as - a body of work, inconsistent, crowded with empty performances (of both his and the band's). There is almost a weirdly disturbing hint of distorted ego in all of this, and I remember being really disgusted with his interivews in that movie (G-Man?) where, along with Lucille, everything seems almost totally self directed. And the rest was a kind of sordid artistic journey from nowhere to nothing.

Sorry, that's how I feel. Sonny is one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, and genuinely nice guy to boot, and personally he has had a dominating effect on my own playing and musical approach; but he could still have been wildly popular and made plenty of money if he had learned how to be dispassionately self-critical (instead of doing so in a more radically self-rejecting way, as indicated by one passage I saw quoted). He has/had the right to do otherwise, and more power to him, but it doesn't mean we cannot evaluate his work realistically.

So....I guess what I am saying is that I would be interested in the notebooks if they reflect a real inside look instead of one that, under the guise of telling all, is really still very sanitized, even if in a way that is deep and very carefully encoded.

Given that I love Sonny, it would be easy to overreact to this.  Suffice to say I respect your opinion but don't agree.  I find Rollins work to be both uneven throughout his career and all of a piece.  He always struggled to get his mojo working in the moment and always tried many different approaches to get there.  And I enjoy his later work more than many even as I acknowledge that it has issues but struggling with them can be an artistic statement of its own.  He could be guarded and was not immune to getting hung up in any number of ways, but to me there is always something very human in his playing that I just love for that very reason.  I even love his playing on the Stones' Tattoo You, certainly better than Miles' cameo with Scritti Politti.

[JSngry]

Sonny Rollins tried to get me fired with this solo. 🤣

[danasgoodstuff]

In any case, looking forward to this publication.

[Ken Dryden]

While I agree that Sonny Rollins’ discography has some highs and lows, my experience doing a phone interview with him for a feature promoting his 50th anniversary Carnegie Hall concert in 2007 was very enjoyable and I managed to convince my editor to let me run a few hundred words over the usual limit.

[AllenLowe]

On 10/28/2023 at 6:12 PM, danasgoodstuff said:

Given that I love Sonny, it would be easy to overreact to this.  Suffice to say I respect your opinion but don't agree.  I find Rollins work to be both uneven throughout his career and all of a piece.  He always struggled to get his mojo working in the moment and always tried many different approaches to get there.  And I enjoy his later work more than many even as I acknowledge that it has issues but struggling with them can be an artistic statement of its own.  He could be guarded and was not immune to getting hung up in any number of ways, but to me there is always something very human in his playing that I just love for that very reason.  I even love his playing on the Stones' Tattoo You, certainly better than Miles' cameo with Scritti Politti.

I figured my opinion would be counter to the general sense of things here; but I will tell you, listen to his 1964 recording of the album Now's the Time, and think about whether anything he has done in the last 40 years even comes close to what he was doing back then. I think it's a huge loss for jazz; on the other hand, he wouldn't be the first artist who did unbelievably important work, and then stalled out. Think Ralph Ellison, for one.  It doesn't alter Sonny's legacy, which is gargantuan.

Edited October 30, 2023 by AllenLowe

[mikeweil]

Sometimes I think you develop your ideas in youth, and spend your life as an artist trying to refine them. Once you reach that point, what will you do?

Few musician re-invented themselves completely. I think Tony Williams did after 1970. 

I wouldn't blame Sonny, you have to make a living - I only think he played his solos much too long in the last 20 or 30 years.

[Gheorghe]

On 10/30/2023 at 1:01 PM, mikeweil said:

 

 

 

I wouldn't blame Sonny, you have to make a living - I only think he played his solos much too long in the last 20 or 30 years.

I saw Sonny Rollins only one time live and it was in the late 70´s with his then current band with Mark Soskin, Jerry Harris and Al Foster. I think that those quartet surrindings with topnotch sidemen was most enjoyable. And there was also enough solo space for the wonderful pianist Mark Soskin, and Al Foster is one of my special favourites on drums. 

I think when he called his nephew trombone player in the band, this one mostly stood aside, only fillin in here and there. That was quite strange. And in later years he played over long tracks and most of the time was exchanging fours with the drummer, which is very exiting and we all love that, but not for dozens of chorusses. 

I remember one time in Miami/FL where we missed Sonny because we just arrived that evening, but soon heard James Moody and during intermission we discussed the music with a Swiss cetatean who had settled in Miami and when we came about Sonny Rollins whom we missed, he made such a face and said "I don´t like what Sonny has done since 1975'". 
Now my wife, who just listens to jazz from time to time and doesn´t think historically about it, answered " well, this is 1999 and if you don´t like what he had done since 1975, what is left ???? " 😀

[Eric]

Amazon showing a April 9th release date.

[Gheorghe]

I´m not really sure if I should buy it. 

Now I´m reading the biography about him, and I tend to overlook the more non musical passages. 

I like to read things that are musically important . Maybe some little trivia here or there ,but not to much. I love also to read what other fellow musicians say from playing with him. 

Right now I think I had read the chapter after "The Bridge" where he is in California. 

Oh man, all those letters to Lucille, all those heavy words and thick stuff, they must have been a very very intellectual couple. On the other hand, to end a letter with "You are my woman. I am your man" sounds strange and blunt to me. Serena wouldn´t let me in the house if I rote such dumb stuff at the end of a message for her 😶

I´m more the kind of guy who says to his sweetheart how great she looks.....😍

[Hoppy T. Frog]

In the letter to Coleman Hawkins, he puts a lot of emphasis on being a "MAN", which in context, seems to Sonny to mean taking responsibility and keeping healthy in mind and body. Those are always good values to have, but I credit his equating it with "manliness" to the times. I'm sure Sonny would use less gendered language today.  

[JSngry]

I read the point being a broader "manhood", not just a reductionist "masculinity". 

[Hoppy T. Frog]

That makes sense