Jazz Articles about Sonny Rollins

A Fireside Chat with Sonny Rollins (2001)

by AAJ Staff
October 27, 2003

All that has been written and all that has been said about Sonny Rollins certainly has more wealth than anything I could scribe. I am only a fan of Rollins and on most days, I need not be more. His albums are a part of the lore of jazz and his legacy historical and he has won more awards than I have fingers and toes.

This is the latest of many sittings I have been privileged enough to have with ...

Sonny Rollins: Tenor Titan

by David Rickert
May 9, 2003

Despite his popularity as a performer, an unsatisfied Sonny Rollins took a three year hiatus from performing and recording to hone his technique. The image of him practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge during this period is one of jazz's enduring reference points. Once he returned in 1962, Rollins signed with RCA and released a series of albums that document uneven years of growth where he experimented with lineups and adopted the techniques of Ornette Coleman to his own style.

Sonny Rollins: With the Modern Jazz Quartet

by David Rickert
April 24, 2003

First off, don't be misled by the title--Rollins and the Modern Jazz Quartet only appear together on four of the thirteen selections. This CD is in fact comprised of three separate sessions from 1951- 53: one track recorded at the tail end of a Miles Davis session, eight done by Rollins' working quartet, and four featuring John Lewis & co.

These represent Rollins' first recordings as a leader, and it's astonishing how fully formed his style was even ...

Freedom Suite Revisited

by Marshall Bowden
February 10, 2003

In 1956 Sonny Rollins was one of the best-known tenor saxophonists in jazz, having recorded and released two wonderful and classic jazz albums, Saxophone Colossus and Tenor Madness, the latter being a tenor standoff with John Coltrane. In the following two years, freed from his Prestige Records contract, Rollins set about making some great records that were released on a variety of labels, including Riverside, Contemporary, and Period. He released Way Out West and worked with Thelonious Monk. Yet, even ...

Sonny Rollins: Way Out West

by C. Michael Bailey
February 8, 2003

Way Out West was Sonny Rollins’ first tenor saxophone-bass-drums recording. He would follow this with the trio recordings A Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1999) and Freedom Suite (Riverside/OJC, 1991). Unlike the piano-less quartets of Gerry Mulligan, Rollins did not have a counterpoint foil, as did Mulligan did in Chet Baker and later Bob Brookmeyer. The tenor trio format is full of wide-open spaces. How appropriate that this format would be chosen my Rollins for a recording entitled ...

Sonny Rollins: Tenor Madness

by C. Michael Bailey
February 5, 2003

Classical mythology is not the only place where the gods converse. Two of them readily communicate, using the universal language of the blues, for twelve-plus minutes on “Tenor Madness." Touted as the only recorded duet between the tenor titans of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the selection “Tenor Madness" represents the purity of improvisation, jazz and the blues. John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins both interned with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, drinking deep from both wells. However, it is a simple ...

Sonny Rollins: Sonny Rollins + 4 (20-Bit Remastered)

by C. Michael Bailey
October 10, 2002

The Sound of Sonny...

Sonny Rollins played in the influential Clifford Brown—Max Roach Quintet from late 1955 until mid-1957, when Brown and Bud Powell’s brother, pianist Richie Powell tragically perished in an automobile accident. About halfway through his tenure with the band, Rollins took the group into the studio under his direction for a recital that produced two jazz standards, “Valse Hot" and “Pent-Up House." Sonny Rollins Plus 4 was recorded in a single session March 22, 1956 at Rudy ...