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Kenny Dorham: Kenny Dorham: Jazz Contrasts
by Samuel Chell
In the new liner notes included with this addition to the Keepnews Collection on Riverside, the producer expresses his satisfaction with this 1957 “blowing" album, showcasing the trumpeter whom, after Clifford Brown, he considers second to none. Recorded approximately a year following Brown's passing, the date demonstrates Dorham's gifts as a balladeer, composer and, above all, as a pyrotechnician--the kind of player who can take apart a song's chord structure and reconstruct it with surgical precision, even while operating at ...
Continue ReadingKenny Dorham: Jazz Contrasts
by David Rickert
Producer Orrin Keepnews was never one to indulge much in blowing sessions, but this 1957 recording from trumpeter Kenny Dorham comes pretty close. With a lineup featuring Sonny Rollins, Oscar Pettiford, Hank Jones, and Max Roach, why not just give the guys a few standards and turn them loose? Dorham had been recruited for Riverside from a successful stint at Blue Note and Rollins had just completed Saxophone Colossus (Prestige, 1956), so both were eager and ready. The rhythm section ...
Continue ReadingSonny Rollins: Plus Four
by John Barron
Originally released in 1956 on Prestige, Plus Four has been reissued by Concord Records, which recently acquired the Prestige catalogue. On this session a twenty-something Sonny Rollins uses the other musicians in the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet (of which he was a member) as his sidemen. When you consider the personnel, the tunes, and the impending tragic deaths of Clifford Brown and Richie Powell (both were involved in a fatal car crash just months after this recording was made), the ...
Continue ReadingSonny Rollins: Sonny, Please
by Dan McClenaghan
Tenor saxophone legend Sonny Rollins took his band into the studio in late 2005 and early 2006 after a tour in Japan to record Sonny Please, his first studio recording in five years. According to Rollins, “...a string of performances tightens up an ensemble...," and a spin of the disc bears that out. A tighter ensemble seems to allow Rollins the freedom and inspiration to really blow, to loosen up his chops. And Sonny Rollins, loose and inspired, is something ...
Continue ReadingSonny Rollins Returns to Mellon Jazz Fridays at the Kimmel Center
by Victor L. Schermer
Sonny Rollins Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, Verizon Hall Philadelphia, PA December 1, 2006 Greatness in music is difficult to define, but one of its characteristics is the sustained development of a unique potential without sacrificing the essence of a specific musical syntax. If this be the case, then Sonny Rollins is more than a saxophone “colossus, as he has aptly been called. He belongs in the pantheon of greats with Louis Armstrong, Charlie ...
Continue ReadingSonny Rollins: Sonny, Please
by Jack Bowers
Am I alone in believing that Sonny Rollins, now in his 76th year, may have lost a step or two? Don't read me wrong; the man can still tame the tenor saxophone, let there be no doubt about that. But I fear he may have become a sort of untouchable icon, akin, for example, to Miles Davis, about whom seldom was heard a discouraging word, even though in his later years he produced scant evidence (in my opinion) of creativity ...
Continue ReadingSonny Rollins: Hardy Perennial
by Victor L. Schermer
Legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins is a “household word, an innovator, and a “hardy perennial" in the jazz world. He came up, performed, and recorded with the likes of Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane. His musical evolution never stopped, and at 76, he continues to offer a hefty schedule of concerts worldwide. Recently, he came out with a new CD, Sonny, Please (Doxy, 2006), which is generating great interest among critics and fans alike. The record ...
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