Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Sonny Rollins
Among the most creative voices to emerge from the 1950s hard-bop movement, Sonny Rollins has long been one of the most commanding soloists in jazz, a masterful tenor saxophonist whose big sound can encompass ballad warmth and blazing runs. This compilation concentrates on Rollins's most creative years, from 1954 to 1966, and includes some of his best-known compositions, tunes like "Oleo" (played here withMiles Davis's band) and "St. Thomas," which are now standards in the jazz repertoire. His playing has often used thematic improvisation, varying and extending a tune's original melody with remarkable rhythmic creativity to unfurl long solos of brilliant structural coherence, heard here in a version of his "Sonnymoon for Two." Rollins has also demonstrated an unusual sense of humor, sometimes using unlikely tunes--like "I'm an Old Cowhand"--as a basis for his solos. His relationship to the senior tenor master,Coleman Hawkins, takes two forms here, in the unaccompanied version of "Body and Soul" and in 1963's "All the Things You Are," with Hawkins joining Rollins at his most experimental.--Stuart Broomer