Freelance Years
Sonny Rollins has been a major figure in jazz since the 1950s, a titanic improviser whose weighty sound and speech-like ease have embodied a larger-than-life personality--swaggering, comic, soaring, and tender by turns. For all that career longevity, though, his most creative work dates from the flowering of his talent in the late '50s, when he emerged as a dominant presence after years as a sideman withMiles DavisandMax Roach. He had developed a unique gift for the extended solo, creating remarkable musical architecture with fragments of melody and infinitely varied rhythmic patterns. His sense of swing was extraordinary. He would do everything possible not to swing--from false slowdowns to on-the-beat accents--while still somehow driving forward. During that time he recorded for most of the important independent jazz labels, and hisComplete PrestigeandComplete Blue Noterecordings have already appeared. This five-disc set comprises all his work for the New York Riverside and Los Angeles Contemporary labels, recorded between December 1956 and October 1958, and as such forms a remarkable portrait of the period as well as its outstanding soloist. The set includes all of Rollins's sideman appearances for Riverside, all made in Roach's creative orbit. There's a quintet date with trumpeterKenny Dorhamthat adds harp to a rendition of "My Old Flame," another withAbbey Lincolnthat brings gritty realism and high drama to jazz singing, andThelonious Monk's essentialBrilliant Corners. Rollins also leads terrific sessions with pianistsSonny ClarkandHampton Hawesand guitaristBarney Kessel, with a repertoire from "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" to a theme from Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" symphony. Though he would already go as far as solo saxophone for a version of "It Could Happen to You," Rollins is at his very best--both his wittiest and most profound--with just bass and drum accompaniment. The first Contemporary recording, originally released asWay Out West, plays with the East-West rivalry then current in jazz. Rollins, the quintessential East Coaster, is clearly having great fun applying himself to "I'm an Old Cowhand" and "Wagon Wheels," and that only feeds the level of group invention withRoy BrownandShelly Manne. Amidst all this great music, the crowning touch is theFreedom Suitesession, with Rollins working through the 20-minute title track and a series of standards with superb support and interplay from Roach and Oscar Pettiford. It's essential music, rivaled by only two contemporaneous recordings in the Rollins canon,Saxophone ColossusandA Night at the Village Vanguard. --Stuart Broomer