Bobby Broom - Notes of Thanks

[GA Russell]

Guitarist Bobby Broom Celebrates Jazz Titan (And Mentor) Sonny Rollins With "Notes of Thanks," Set for May 1 Release by Steele Records Album Features Nine Compositions by the Saxophone Icon, As Interpreted by Broom's Longtime Trio With Bassist Dennis Carroll & Drummer Kobie Watkins   CD Release Show: Jazz Showcase, Chicago, May 14-17   March 23, 2026 Guitarist Bobby Broom pays tribute honoring a saxophone colossus with the May 1 release of Notes of Thanks on Steele Records. The album is an exploration of the compositions of the great Sonny Rollins, in whose bands Broom recorded and toured for a combined 11 years. The guitarist is joined on the adventure by his own longtime collaborators, bassist Dennis Carroll and drummer (and fellow Rollins alum) Kobie Watkins.   As it would be for any jazz musician, working with Rollins was the gig of a lifetime for young Broom. He was still a junior at New York’s High School of Music and Art when he first played with the saxophonist at Carnegie Hall, then at 20 went on the road with Rollins for six years. Though he retired in 2014, the jazz elder is still with us and well into his nineties, observing the scene as he rests on his much-deserved laurels.   “I felt like now was the right time,” Broom says. “I wanted to say thank you to Sonny while he is here.” It’s a rich and remarkable thank you. Broom, Carroll, and Watkins offer a trio of Rollins’s best-known compositions (“Doxy,” “Valse Hot,” and “Pent-Up House”) along with a handful of eclectic, lesser-known tunes. These include “Alfie’s Theme”—not the Burt Bacharach standard, but the bluesy piece Rollins wrote for the 1966 film, here rendered in a tough, stripped-down performance; “Kim,” a fairly obscure piece from the 1980s, which features Broom in one of his most cogent and acrobatic solos; and “Paul’s Pal,” a chipper, calypso-seasoned tune from early in Rollins’s reign over the tenor kingdom. (After all, what Rollins tribute would be complete without a calypso?)   Though all of the tunes feature extended solos by the guitarist, Broom’s collaborators are not to be underrated. Carroll and Watkins do extraordinary work. The bassist contributes the album’s only original, the thoughtful ballad “Me Time,” and the drummer plays with remarkable subtlety, though offers tantalizing hints of his formidable chops while trading fours with Broom on “Strode Road” and eights on “Pent-Up House.” Indeed, Notes of Thanks is a studio reunion of sorts for Broom’s working trio, who haven’t recorded a full album as a standalone unit since 2009’s Bobby Broom Plays for Monk. Deeply rewarding as it is for the players and their fans, the record is also a clever reminder that its subject, Sonny Rollins, was in his own right a pioneer of the modern jazz trio format. It’s the kind of fine detail that makes Notes of Thanks an extraordinary homage to and by extraordinary musicians. Bobby Broom was born January 18, 1961, in New York City’s Harlem. At ten years old, he heard one of his father’s records—by organist Charles Earland—touching off his lifelong love affair with jazz. By the time he was sixteen, Broom was attending New York’s prestigious High School of Music and Art and gigging with pianist Al Haig; a year later, Sonny Rollins hired him to play at Carnegie Hall and invited him on tour. Broom elected to finish high school, went on to attend Berklee College of Music, then, in 1981, accepted Rollins’s job offer.   By that time, Broom had also signed with GRP Records and recorded 1981’s Clean Sweep, which was a crossover jazz success. But rather than settle into a comfortable career in the emerging genre of “smooth jazz,” Broom stayed on the road with Rollins until 1987, then settled into the rich Chicago jazz scene and continued his international work as a sideman for other jazz luminaries such as Earland, Kenny Burrell and Miles Davis.   In the 1990s Broom recorded two quartet records, but by 2000 had decided to make a guitar-bass-drums trio his primary outlet. He solidified a lineup with bassist Dennis Carroll and drummer Kobie Watkins with 2006’s Song and Dance, followed by 2008’s The Way I Play and 2009’s Bobby Broom Plays for Monk. (The three came together again for 2011’s Upper West Side Story, although Chicago drummer Makaya McCraven sat in for Watkins on three tracks.)   His highly successful organ ensemble the Deep Blue Organ Trio (1999-2014) recorded four albums and was updated with his current organ group the Organi-Sation, recording 2024’s Jamalot and 2018’s Soul Fingers. Other recent Broom albums include the augmenting of the trio with pianist Justin Dillard on 2022’s Keyed Up and 2025’s More Amor – A Tribute to Wes Montgomery with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. Broom returns to his unadulterated guitar-trio for Notes of Thanks, in homage to one of the most important figures not only in jazz history, but also in Broom’s own life.    The Bobby Broom Trio will appear at the Jazz Showcase, Chicago, 5/14-17.   Broom will also appear in the International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert, taking place on 4/30 at the Chicago Lyric Opera House.      >>Why Another Tribute? Bobby Broom explains.     Photography: Sandy Morris   

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