The 12 months 1957 was a major one within the life and profession of Walter Theodore “Sonny” Rollins. An impressive tenor saxophonist famous for his commanding tone and infinite ingenuity as an improviser, he was simply 26 years outdated and had already been dubbed “Saxophone Colossus” by producer Bob Weinstock at Status Information, the saxophonist’s recording residence since 1951. However his contractual obligations to Status expired in late 1956 and, relatively than re-sign to the corporate for an additional long-term, probably constricting recording deal, Rollins tried his hand as a contract musician, committing himself solely to album-by-album agreements. It was throughout this significantly fertile two-year interval that he recorded 4 albums for Blue Notice Information, one of many jazz world’s main impartial file labels.
The tenor saxophonist’s first post-Status session was for Blue Notice and came about at Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack recording studio in New Jersey on Sunday, December 16, 1956. The ensuing album was launched the next 12 months as Sonny Rollins. Reflecting on his quick however productive alliance with Blue Notice, Rollins tells uDiscover Music that his affiliation with the enduring jazz label started when he was a teenage sideman. “I originally recorded for them when I worked with Bud Powell on The Amazing Bud Powell in 1949,” reveals Rollins. “That was my first encounter with Blue Note. I was just getting started in the business and that was one of my first recordings.” Rollins will be heard on tracks like “Bouncing With Bud” and “Dance Of The Infidels.”
The First Blue Notice Session
What drew Sonny Rollins to Blue Notice as a solo artist was his liking for the label’s co-founders. “I had a great fondness for the owners of Blue Note, Al Lion and Frank Wolff,” he says. “Al Lion was very enthusiastic about any jazz that he considered first rate. He was really just a gem to work with and was apt to agree with anything that the artist wanted to do. I had no ironclad contract with Prestige at that point, which would have forbidden me play with anyone else, so Blue Note hired me to do a record.”
The recording date was a quintet session that featured trumpeter Donald Byrd, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Gene Ramey and drummer Max Roach. The album featured 4 authentic tunes plus a bebop reconfiguration of “How Are Things In Glocca Morra,” a tune taken from the 1947 musical Finian’s Rainbow. The latter exemplified Rollins’ penchant for utilizing pretty obscure present tunes as automobiles for searing jazz improvisation.
“What drew me to those lesser-known tunes was my background,” the saxophonist explains. “As a child I went to a lot of movies and I listened to the radio a lot so that I was brought up on a lot of different American composers. I always loved their songs, especially the ballads, so it was quite normal for me to have a liking for a song like ‘How Are Things In Glocca Mora.’”
The Quintet
Six years Rollins’ senior, Max Roach – famed for his fluid, polyrhythmic drumming model – performed a pivotal function on the album. He’d recorded with the saxophonist many occasions earlier than and appeared on a number of of his landmark Status albums, comparable to 1956’s totemic Saxophone Colossus. “It was great playing with Max,” enthuses Rollins, recalling the legendary drums and percussion maestro. “He was an idol to me because he played with Charlie Parker and was a beloved figure in the community. All these young guys wanted to play drums like him, be like him, and even look like him, so Max was a big-time guy.”
The Sonny Rollins album can also be distinguished by the glistening piano of Wynton Kelly, who would go on to search out fame within the Miles Davis sextet, which recorded Type Of Blue in 1959. “The fact that Wynton was not there is what I liked about his playing,” says Rollins, following this declaration with a mischievous snigger. “He was the perfect accompanist because he was unobtrusive,” he explains. “Whenever there was something to be played, he played it. Whenever there was the correct sequence to be played, he was there. So he was like the guy who was there and wasn’t there at the same time.”
Simply to trigger confusion for file patrons, Rollins’ subsequent album for Blue Notice was additionally titled Sonny Rollins, however later grew to become often called Sonny Rollins Vol.2, to differentiate it from his first Blue Notice album. It was recorded on Sunday, April 14, 1957, only a month after a session for Up to date Information in California, which yielded the basic album Means Out West. That specific album showcased Rollins in a trio setting, however, for his second Blue Notice outing, he fronted a bigger ensemble: a sextet comprising, amongst others, the redoubtable Thelonious Monk on piano, who performs on Rollins’ variations of his tunes “Misterioso” and “Reflections.”
The Mentorship of Thelonious Monk
“Thelonious was different in that he was so unique, so singular,” says Rollins of the person that mentored him and helped to nurture his expertise. “It was always different playing with Monk because you had to play like him. You couldn’t play something that didn’t have anything to do with his style, his approach and the things that he laid down, which meant that you couldn’t get away from them while you were playing. And also, those things couldn’t help but influence you.”
Actually, the saxophonist regards Monk as his best instructor. “I consider him to be my guru,” he says. “I learned a lot from everybody I played with, but Monk was a very forward-looking artist and we were very close friends. So I benefited a great deal from what he knew that I didn’t know.”
The drummer on Sonny Rollins Vol.2 was the formidable Artwork Blakey. “He had a great beat,” remembers Rollins of the person that was 11 years his senior and led The Jazz Messengers for a few years. “It’s hard to describe how these drummers play but I know that Art Blakey was Miles’ favorite drummer. Miles and I were close enough that we shared those kind of deep, dark secrets, so that says a lot about Art Blakey.”
The Last Blue Notice Session
Sonny Rollins’ third and last Blue Notice studio session, Newk’s Time, was recorded on September 22, 1957, 15 days after his twenty seventh birthday. The album’s title referred to the saxophonist’s nickname, Newk. “There was a great baseball player called Don Newcombe,” says Rollins, explaining how he acquired the identify. “He was a pitcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers and a compadre of Jackie Robinson, who broke the race barrier in baseball. At that time, I had a facial resemblance to Don Newcombe. One day when I was in a cab with Miles Davis, I was wearing a baseball cap and the cab driver took me for Don Newcombe. After that Miles always called me Newk, and we kept up the pretense.”
Newk’s Time featured Rollins main a quartet comprised of pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Doug Watkins and dynamic drummer Philly Joe Jones, famed for his whip-crack snare sound. Arguably the album’s standout observe is a fascinating musical dialogue between Rollins and the drummer on a stripped-down model of the Rodgers And Hammerstein’s customary “The Surrey With The Fringe On Top.” “When I came up, Max Roach and Art Blakey were the alpha and omega of drummers,” says Rollins, “but Philly Joe Jones was a really good player too. He wasn’t Max and he wasn’t Art but he had his own style and had fantastic rhythm.”
Having a very good drummer – one who was versatile, imaginative, rhythmically astute and will mix visceral energy with a nuanced subtlety – was an necessary consider aiding Sonny Rollins’ evolution as a saxophonist. “I’ve played with so many drummers that were mediocre or just so-so, but I needed a good drummer for my own development and to help develop my own ideas,” he reveals. “I was fortunate enough to have played with some of the best drummers in the modern jazz scene. I’d challenge them and they’d challenge me.”
The Last Blue Notice Document
Sonny Rollins’ last album for Blue Notice was his very first reside file, A Night time At The Village Vanguard, which captured the tenor saxophonist at a small jazz membership situated in New York’s Greenwich Village on Sunday, November 3, 1957. “It’s a very intimate place,” remembers the saxophonist of a venue that also exists as we speak and was later used for memorable reside albums by Invoice Evans and John Coltrane. “I don’t remember it as being a very vociferous audience but they were great listeners at the Vanguard because the people there knew a lot about music. They were really jazz aficionados.”
The Village Vanguard residency was necessary for Sonny Rollins as a result of, for the primary time in his profession, he would lead his personal band; however it took a lot of tweaking and completely different personnel to get the chemistry to his liking. “I used to be pretty ruthless,” he divulges. “I didn’t spare anyone’s feelings. I used to hire and fire with regularity – that was my trait. I was constantly auditioning guys. It was like, ‘OK, good, next!’” The veteran saxophonist laughs on the recollection of his youthful, extra combative self, although now feels twinges of regret. “I’m not proud of that period. I think I might have been able to handle it better, but at that time I was really intense about things coming out right.”
Sonny Rollins’ residency on the Village Vanguard started a few weeks earlier than sound engineer Rudy Van Gelder turned up together with his recording tools. The very first incarnation of Rollins’ Vanguard band was a quintet with trumpet and piano, although it solely lasted every week. After that, Rollins disbursed with an additional horn participant and introduced in a recent rhythm part, hoping {that a} quartet would serve his musical wants. It didn’t. Finally, he dumped the piano and stripped the band proper right down to a skeletal trio of sax, bass and drums.
The Village Vanguard Trio
Lastly, he appeared to have discovered a really perfect format for his self-expression, one which he had already showcased on his groundbreaking Means Out West album earlier in 1957. “I’ve played with many great pianists in my time but I felt more free and able to hear what I needed to hear when I played without a chordal instrument,” explains Rollins. “It was for my own development and creativity that I wanted to have just a rhythm playing behind me. I wanted to create the harmonic sequences that might be necessary for me to be me and show what I could do as an individual player. I felt the trio was giving me my best opportunity to show Sonny Rollins and express what I could do.”
Although the album was referred to as A Night time At The Village Vanguard, one of many tracks, a pulsating revamp of Dizzy Gillespie’s “A Night In Tunisia,” got here from a day matinee efficiency on the membership, throughout which Rollins performed with bassist Donald Bailey and drummer Pete La Roca. The pair weren’t recalled for the night present, which made up the majority of the ultimate album. Of their stead got here Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones. “I felt that Elvin and Wilbur allowed me to do something a little different,” says Rollins.
What excited Rollins in regards to the night trio was the potential of enjoying with 30-year-old Elvin Jones, then a rising star within the jazz world. “I really loved Elvin’s playing,” says Rollins. “He was a great player. There was something that he did with a 6/8 rhythm that other people weren’t doing. Once you heard Elvin play it, you said, ‘Why isn’t everybody playing like that?’ So he was a very special player and one of my favorite drummers.”
Reflecting On The Blue Notice Classes
Trying again at his tenure with Blue Notice, Sonny Rollins – who could be very self-critical of his personal work and famously took two sabbaticals away from the jazz scene in an effort to give attention to bettering his musicianship – is hard-pressed to select a favourite recording. “I’m always looking for the faults in my albums, so I’m not a good person to think about what might be my best recording,” he confesses. “I’m always thinking, ‘Oh, gee, if I’d only done that, it would have been a better album.’” Having stated that, Rollins believes that his personal tune “Sonnymoon For Two” – written to commemorate his first marriage – is a private spotlight of his Blue Notice years. “I guess that would be my favorite track,” he says. “I like it because I think we got something going there which had some lasting value.”
Although he went on to signal unique contracts with RCA Victor and Impulse! within the 60s, after which, from 1972 onwards, spent 28 years with the Milestone label, Sonny Rollins holds Blue Notice in excessive regard: “There was something special about Blue Note Records – the logo, the album covers – and then you had the unquestionable integrity of Al Lion. He was a very sincere person. He loved the music and definitely loved the musicians… and he wasn’t out to make money.”
Rollins additionally believes that Lion’s firm, which, not like some file firms of the day, gave their musicians paid rehearsal time forward of the recording session, at all times put the musicians’ greatest pursuits forward of its personal. “Blue Note seemed to have a much more cohesive enterprise going on and it was all about the music,” he says. “And Alfred Lion gave me something which nobody else would do at that time; he gave me the publishing rights to ‘Sonnymoon For Two.’ Publishing was where the big money was to be made, but most jazz musicians didn’t know anything about the business aspect of recording. I respected Al Lion for doing that, which was another little cherry on top of the cake. I knew that he was an honest guy and respected him for his love of the music and how he created a much more congenial atmosphere for the musicians at Blue Note.”
Sonny’s Later Years
One of many final true residing giants from jazz’s golden age, the much-decorated Sonny Rollins – who jokingly describes himself as being “on the wrong side of 88” – is now not in a position to play his beloved tenor saxophone, as a consequence of respiratory issues which pressured him to place it away for good in 2012. That, after all, is a tragedy, however Sonny Rollins – ever the sage and thinker – doesn’t see it that method. Not less than not now, after he’s had time to acclimatize to his new scenario.
“Originally, it was very, very difficult when I first couldn’t play,” he confides. “I was very distraught for a while but then I got it together and my interest in the afterlife was able to pull me through because I realized that there was more to life than what I wanted. Instead of lamenting the fact that I couldn’t play any more I said to myself that I should be very grateful that I had a great career. I’ve had a really beautiful life, really, despite all the trouble and hardships.”
And the way would Sonny Rollins prefer to be remembered? “As somebody who was always trying to get better,” he says, with no second’s hesitation. “I realized how much there was that I could do, and I was always trying to get there. So that would be a true analysis of Sonny Rollins’ life: I was always trying to get better. I wanted to do the best that I could do as Sonny Rollins, whatever that was. The music gave me a vision of that – a glimpse of what it could be – every now and then on the few occasions when I had a great performance. But, boy, I had to keep practicing to get there.”
Although his saxophone is now silent, Sonny Rollins’ affect remains to be a potent one in jazz. His 4 albums for Blue Notice, all recorded throughout the house of 11 months, present him at his magnificent greatest.
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This text was initially revealed in 2019. We’re re-publishing it as we speak in celebration of Sonny Rollins’ birthday.
