Sonny Rollins: An Exceptional Jazzman Who Reached for the Stars

Sonny Rollins was fully 95 years old when he died earlier this week, meaning that he had outlived his projected life expectancy by roughly 60 years. He came from a generation of modern jazzmen who, due to their own foibles and bad decisions, rarely made it past 35 or 40. He had stopped playing a few years ago, surfacing only to do the occasional interview. Yet, in spite of all that, it was a major loss when he left us, like a great presence departing the earthly realm. I saw Rollins live in concert roughly a dozen times from 1980 to 2010, and had the pleasure of interviewing him formally and informally on several occasions. His persistence and dedication were an inspiration to us all. I am pleased that I was able to write about him many times, most recently here in the New York Sun less than a year ago. Everytime I experienced Sonny live in concert, my reaction was the same. Leaving the concert hall, I invariably came to the inevitable conclusion that this was the greatest musician I had ever heard. Was he the greatest jazzman that ever lived? I couldn’t tell you, but it certainly felt that way. The review that follows below was published in the Sun nearly two years ago, upon the release of the box set of “Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings.” “Freedom Weaver” marked the end of Rollins’s “second period,” which began in 1955, after he liberated himself from a debilitating substance addiction:There’s a moment that never ceases to amaze me in a 1932 Jerome Kern song, “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star,” as played by Sonny Rollins in the late 1950s. Modern jazz, vaudeville, and operetta coalesce into a single remarkable event, and yet for Mr. Rollins to play this tune at all is somewhat surprising. The song comes from “Music In the Air,” a show by Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II that was proudly old-fashioned even when it was brand new. Right down to the apostrophe that signifies the word “every” is to be pronounced informally, on two notes instead of three, this is a charming number that one expects to hear sung by a sweet young female voice — it would have been perfect for Blossom Dearie — or even a more formal soprano. Yet Mr. Rollins not only tears into it, he renders it with such considerable aggression and testosterone that he makes it sound significantly more direct and masculine than the original. Along the way, he injects it with considerable humor. He was clearly playing with a knowledge of the lyric, in which two of the three main sections end with the question, “Why haven’t I told you?” Mr. Rollins also evidences the masterful timing of a great stand-up comedian: He keeps the whole thing in a very specific medium-fast tempo, but then, when he gets to that last line, he unexpectedly pauses after the note that corresponds with the word “told” and then lets us wait for the word “you.” Then, instead of simply delivering it, he pauses, after which he takes us all by surprise by injecting a phrase that suggests a momentary dance break. It’s like there are a ballerina and a tap dancer performing side-by-side, and at that break the prima donna hands it over to the hoofer, who taps out that brief, highly rhythmic phrase a capella. Or think of it as a coloratura duetting with a scat singer. Mr. Rollins even moves his tenor saxophone slightly off mic at that moment, to enforce the illusion that there are two different soloists performing those two different parts of the melody.A new boxed set, “Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings,” could have been easily subtitled “I’ve Told Ev’ry Little Star,” as it contains no less than four distinct versions — recorded in Sweden, Switzerland, Holland, and Germany — of the Kern-Hammerstein song. The package comprises roughly three hours (three CDs or four LPs) of live recordings made over just a week’s time in March 1959. Jazz fans — not to mention every tenor saxophonist of the last 60 years — are familiar with these recordings, but this is the first time they’ve been collected into a definitive package. It was produced by the Jazz Detective, Zev Feldman, with the cooperation and participation of the artist himself.As critic Bob Blumenthal makes clear in his informative annotation, and as Aidan Levy explores further in his authoritative extended biography, “Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins” (2022), this tour marks the end of Rollins’s “second period,” which began in 1955, after he liberated himself from a debilitating substance addiction. These tracks also extend a specific artistic phase from 1956 and 1957, when Mr. Rollins worked with just a trio, a bass and drums and no conventional chordal instrument — no guitar or pianos. All of the March 1959 European recordings feature Mr. Rollins backed only by the versatile bassist Henry Grimes and a rotating cast of drummers: Pete La Roca, Kenny Clarke, and Joe Harris.Rollins also plays several already-established modern jazz standards, specifically Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody n’ You” and Tadd Dameron’s “Lady Bird.” He also takes a Duke Ellington classic rarely heard in the bop era, “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” and transforms into a tour-de-force of interplay and high-energy trades with Grimes and Harris. Rollins also gets several opportunities to play his own “I Got Rhythm” contrafact, “Oleo,” as well as the very catchy “Paul’s Pal,” in which, in a manner possibly implied by the title, he also sounds like two distinct players in a dialog with each other, trading phrases back and forth.He further lives up to expectations by playing more unexpected pop songs, none more so than “Cocktails for Two,” a 1934 song that lyricist Sam Coslow authored, apparently with a straight face, as a highly sophisticated celebration of the repeal of prohibition and ode to inebriation, which provided ripe fodder for satire by such master musical comedians as Spike Jones and Jo Stafford in her tone deaf alter-ego of “Darlene Edwards.” The masterful modern jazz readings, first by Rollins — here in his only performance of “Cocktails” — and later by both Charles Mingus and Sun Ra, are both affectionate and ironic. He further turns in masterful renditions of two ballads by Victor Young, “Love Letters” and “A Weaver of Dreams,” both clearly inspired by Nat King Cole.In the first of four versions of “Ev’ry Little Star” heard here, Rollins introduces it as “a composition that may be found on Contemporary Records.” He did perform it on his 1958 album “Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders,” a track that featured guitarist Barney Kessel playing harmonic support behind Mr. Rollins, as well as a piano solo by Hampton Hawes. In an interview on the new set, he tells us that, with all due respect to the great jazz pianists, he currently prefers to work without a keyboard and the chordal road map it provides. This set is particularly important in that it may be the most significant release by Sonny Rollins since he went into retirement a decade or so ago. It also seems to represent his final documented performances before, after he returned home to New York in the Spring of 1959, he started a two-year sabbatical from public performance — and instead practiced relentlessly on the Williamsburg Bridge. Ironically, Rollins, then only 28 years old, took an extended break because his playing wasn’t up to his own Olympian standards — and yet these miraculous tracks show that he was already quite capable of reaching the stars.

Sonny Rollins: An Exceptional Jazzman Who Reached for the Stars

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