“It's amazing when you think back about how many great musicians were working together then. You need a little mileage to see how good it was."
While reading the above statement by tenor saxophonist, composer, arranger Benny Golson in Bob Blumenthal’s notes to the booklet that accompanies The Complete Argo/Mercury Art Farmer/Benny Golson/Jazztet Sessions [Mosaic MD7-225], it brought to mind the seemingly endless recombinations of musicians into combos that populated the New York Jazz scene in the 1950’s and 60’s.
One of my favorite combos from this era was the Jazztet. The group’s music was particularly appealing to me because it was made in the form of a sextet that added a trombone bass clef to the usual treble clef, front line of trumpet and tenor saxophone and because as Gene Lees noted in his 1960 essay for Downbeat about the Jazztet’s music:" [it offered] a balanced amalgam of formal written structure and free blowing — the long-sought Grail of jazz."
More about the Jazztet’s personnel, how the group came about and its uniqueness is contained in the following excerpts from Bob Blumenthal’s insert notes to the seven-disc Mosaic Records set which Bob has graciously allowed us to feature on these pages.
One of the musicians who seemed to be “everywhere” on the New York Jazz scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s was pianist Cedar Walton who before joining the Jazztet was with trombonist J.J. Johnson sextet. After his stint with the Jazztet, Cedar joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Not a bad five years of work. Cedar has always been one of my favorite Jazz pianists and he is featured performing Randy Weston’s Hi-Fly on the Jazztet video that closes this piece.
“The three years of music in this collection represent one peak in two exceptional jazz careers. Art Farmer (August 21, 1928—October 4, 1999) enjoyed, and Benny Golson (horn January 29, 1929) still enjoys, varied and lengthy lives as musicians, with several triumphs as soloists and, in Golson's case, composer/arranger. As a team, they left a recorded trail of their collaborations that spans four decades, yet the pinnacle of that association was clearly the sextet they co-led under the name the Jazztet. While Farmer, Golson and original member Curtis Fuller revived the group 20 years after it had initially disbanded, the six original Jazztet albums included here remain at the core of the Farmer/Golson legacy.
Farmer and Golson hardly set their individual development aside during the time of their partnership. As the six additional sessions here underscore, they were making great strides as soloists — Farmer, in his shift from trumpet to flugelhorn, and Golson through a stretch of stylistic soul-searching that (his compelling performances here notwithstanding) ultimately led him to set aside the saxophone. Yet, as with many successful partnerships, the Jazztet experience allowed them to reach beyond individual glory in search of a collective goal that Gene Lees described in a 1960 Down Beat cover story as "a balanced amalgam of formal written structure and free blowing — the long-sought Grail of jazz." The band's failure to achieve sustained commercial success says much about how the jazz world revised this notion of balance as an ultimate goal during the years in question.
A soft-spoken style combined with equally determined personalities and a wealth of similar experience made Farmer and Golson natural partners. Farmer was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa and raised in Arizona. By the time he was 16, he and his twin brother, bassist Addison Farmer, were living in Los Angeles and part of a youthful coterie (also including Sonny Criss, Teddy Edwards and Hampton Hawes) that eagerly greeted the West Coast arrival of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in 1945. Work with the rhythm and blues band of Johnny Otis brought Farmer to New York, where he remained for a couple of years before returning to California for work with such modernists as Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray. A seat in Lionel Hampton's trumpet section brought Farmer back Fast in 1953. Golson, a Philadelphia native who came of age with fellow saxophonists Jimmy Heath and John Coltrane, attended Howard University for two-and-a-half years, and then traveled with various rock and roll bands before landing a job in Atlantic City with Tadd Dameron during the summer of 1953.
"My relationship with Art goes back to 1953," Golson recalled recently. "What happened was that Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Cecil Payne, Jymie Merritt, Philly Joe Jones and I were all working with Tadd, while Quincy Jones, Monk Montgomery. Alan Dawson and Art were already in Hamp's band. Quincy heard Tadd's group one night then went back and told Hamp about Clifford, Gigi and me. I would have left for that European tour that Clifford and Gigi made, but Tadd's manager made me stay so that I could tutor all of the new guys they had to bring in. I did end up in the Hampton band myself for a hot minute, although I didn't last long because Hamp and I couldn't come to terms financially. It's amazing when you think back about how many great musicians were working together then. You need a little mileage to see how good it was."
For the next few years after their Hampton experience, Farmer and Golson followed distinct yet related paths. Farmer began recording under his own name for Prestige in 1953 (an affiliation that would last three years), then
issued albums on ABC-Paramount and Contemporary; but with the exception of a few months in 1955 during which he co-led a quintet with Gryce in 1955, the trumpeter spent most of this period working as a sideman, primarily with Horace Silver and Gerry Mulligan. In addition, because Farmer was excellent as both a reader and an improviser, he became one of the most active personalities in what were still the thriving New York City recording studios. Golson made his mark as well, primarily through his writing skills. James Moody was the first to record Golson's music in 1955, and Miles Davis helped make STABLEMATES Golson's first jazz standard in that same year; but Golson's big break came when he joined Dizzy Gillespie's reorganized big band in 1956. The stint with Gillespie helped to popularize other Golson classics such as WHISPER NOT and I REMEMBER CLIFFORD, and finally brought about his recording debut as a leader on Contemporary in 1957 — BENNY GOLSON'S NEW YORK SCENE, with Farmer featured on trumpet. A year later, in a brief stint as musical director of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Golson was the primary force behind the popular Blakey recording that included Bobby Timmons' MOANIN' as well as three of Golson's own compositions. When Golson left Blakey after a European tour at the end of 1958, he got together with trombonist Curtis Fuller. "Curtis and I went into the Five Spot for two weeks, and stayed for months after that," Golson explains. It was during this period that the pair recorded four albums together under Golson's name for Riverside and Prestige/ New Jazz and three under Fuller's for Savoy. One of the latter, ARABIA, was issued under the name of the Curtis Fuller Jazztet.
At the same time, Farmer and Golson were solidifying the relationship they had inaugurated in the Hampton band six years earlier. "Art and I were thrown into each other's company in the New York studios, on albums like George Russell's NEW YORK, N.Y., and I just loved how he played," the saxophonist recalls. Oscar Pettiford, Jimmy Cleveland, Abbey Lincoln and Milt Jackson also found occasion to employ the trumpeter and tenorman on the same record dates. By the end of 1958 both Golson and Farmer were recording for the United Artists label. Golson appeared on Farmer's quintet album MODERN ART and contributed two compositions as well as all of the arrangements for the trumpeter's tentet album BRASS SHOUT. "I was interested in forming a sextet at the time," Golson says. "There were so many quintets around, and I wanted to hear one more voice in the band. When I called Art with the idea, he just started laughing, because he was ready to leave Gerry Mulligan and had been about to call me to be the tenor saxophonist in his new sextet."
The pair came up with a straightforward solution lor completing the bund. "We decided to each pick two ol the other sidemen," Golson explains. "Art picked his brother Addison as the bassist and drummer Dave Bailey, who had also been in the Mulligan quartet. I wanted Curtis as the trombonist, and this 19-year-old pianist I had worked a job with in Philadelphia named McCoy Tyner. Art had to be persuaded about McCoy because he had never heard him — not many people had at that point — but it was my choice and he ultimately went along."
Kay Norton, an executive with the United Artists label who would take producer or co-producer credit for the majority of the albums in this collection, became the manager of the new band. An official debut gig was obtained at New York's Five Spot in November 1959, on the bill that introduced the Ornette Coleman quartet to the East Coast. All that was lacking was a name for the new ensemble. "Art and I couldn't come up with anything," Golson laughs, "and we finally asked Curtis Fuller if we could use 'Jazztet,' which he had coined for one of our Savoy sessions. So while the Jazztet was always Art's and my band, it was Curtis' name."”
“Sonny Rollins first recorded for Bob Weinstock's new Prestige label in 1949, when he was not yet 19 years old and at the very beginning of his professional career, although he had already appeared on three recording sessions (one with JJ. Johnson, and two with singer Babs Gonzales). Rollins went on to participate in a total of eighteen sessions for Prestige between 1949 and 1956—formative years in which the saxophonist would make some of his greatest strides as an improviser.”
- Charles Blancq
One of the great things about the boxed set Sonny Rollins- The Complete Prestige Recordings is that a good portion of the sleeve notes are authored by Bob Blumenthal.
So not only does the owner get a ton of brilliant music from tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins’ earliest recordings, a purchase of the set also brings the observations, comments and insights of a Jazz writer who has been awarded Grammies for the excellence of his insert notes [In 1999 for Coltrane: The Classic Quartet/Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings and 2000 for Miles Davis & John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings 1955-61].
You can read more about Bob’s background and current activities at www.jazzinamerica.org/.
As was the case with our earlier posting of Doug Ramsey’s brilliant insert notes to The Complete John Coltrane Prestige Recordings, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles is very grateful to Nick Phillips and his team at The Concord Music Group for granting copyright permission to reprint Bob’s writings on these pages. Order information regarding Sonny Rollins- The Complete Prestige Recordings is available at www.concordmusicgroup.com/.
And, of course, our thanks go out to Bob as well for his continuing generosity in allowing us to represent his work once again on the blog.
Sonny Rollins – The Prestige Years by BOB BLUMENTHAL
““Spontaneous". . ."A music of personal expression". . ."Different every performance". . . 'The sound of surprise." It's amazing how frequently I catchphrases of jazz are honored only in the breach, how often even ranking stars of the music settle for reliable choices when navigating through the potential minefield of the improvised solo. But when Sonny Rollins plays, the spontaneity, surprise, and freshly-minted personal expression are always present, which is one reason he has been cited more frequently than any of his peers as the greatest living jazz improviser (and hence jazz musician) in the two decades since he emerged from his last sabbatical.
Rollins has deserved the designation of model jazz artist for about twice that long, as the music in this collection indicates. At the age of 25, while he was still working primarily as a sideman, and had only recently returned from an earlier absence, his achievement was already imposing enough to justify the album title Saxophone Colossus. Few of those who had heard his previous Prestige sessions considered the designation mere record-company hyperbole. Rollins, who began as far more than just a promising talent, had been growing by leaps and bounds into one of those rare artists who define a musical epoch. His aggressive virtuosity, searing energy, caustic humor, and boundless imagination were already well documented, and had contributed to the evolved conception of jazz modernism known as "hard bop." Rollins's music would continue to grow in later years, as would his mystique; but by the time his Prestige contract expired at the end of 1956 he was already an acknowledged giant.
Rollins earned his reputation through the music contained on the present seven compact discs, which can be heard as Acts 1 and 2 in one of the longest (and still-running) sagas in jazz history. As such collections go, it is uncommonly comprehensive. While Rollins had made three prior visits to a recording studio before his New Jazz/Prestige debut with trombonist J.J. Johnson in 1949, and actually cut his most important session as a teenager three months later (with Bud Powell on Blue Note), the early Fifties found the tenor saxophonist establishing an exclusive base on Prestige. Over a period of five years, from his first session with Miles Davis through his first 12-inch LP tour de force Work Time, all of Rollins's commercial recording was done for that label. While 1956 would also find him making important studio appearances elsewhere—with Clifford Brown/Max Roach and the succeeding Roach quintet on EmArcy, with Thelonious Monk on Riverside, and on the first of his own Blue Note albums—he still turned out the bulk of his performances for Prestige founder/producer Bob Weinstock.
Despite the music they were creating, these were not the best of times for Rollins or his contemporaries. America had only begun to confront the racism that permeated its society, jazz was still trying to make a case for itself as an art form, and the scourge of heroin addiction among young jazz players added another and often insurmountable obstacle to personal growth. That Rollins could overcome these circumstances testifies to a strength of character equal to the strength of his sound and conception. Even when witnesses report that he was not in the best of physical shape during one or another of his early sessions, Rollins always provided at least some intimations of brilliance. His rich and bellicose tone, the bold way in which he extended and often anticipated a tune's underlying harmonies, his emphatic swing and frequently abstract counter-rhythms, and the astounding continuity he was able to generate with such diverse techniques made Rollins an influence before he had pulled himself together. This is the erratic but invaluable Rollins heard on the first half of this collection. After he had dealt with his personal problems and emerged as a featured sideman with the Brown/Roach quintet at the end of 1955, he was unstoppable.
Rollins enjoyed the luxury of working almost exclusively with jazz giants during his Prestige years — although few of them were as yet recognized as such. A quick glance at the collective personnel of this package indicates the wealth of talent involved, and also that the evolution of an entire musical style is documented here. With Brown, Davis, Kenny Dorham, or Art Farmer on trumpet; John Lewis, Monk, and Horace Silver among the pianists; a roll of drummers including Art Blakey, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones, Roach, and Art Taylor; and appearances by fellow saxophonists John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, and Charlie Parker, Rollins's Prestige recordings serve as a mini-history of hard bop. This more percussive and blues-centered wing of jazz modernism, which soon came to be known as East Coast style (to differentiate it from the less assertive West Coast variety), made its first appearance on early Miles Davis sessions recorded for Prestige and Blue Note. Certainly Blakey's drumming on the October 1951 Davis date in this collection, and Philly Joe's work on the trumpeter's subsequent January 1953 recordings, are prototypes of hard bop accompaniment, just as the Rollins solos they support helped to define the hard bop approach to the tenor.
These performances document as well the technological and marketing changes in record formats that strongly influenced the music's evolution. The very first sessions were produced for release as 78-rpm singles, yet as early as the late-1951 Davis date the possibility for extended performance offered by the 33-rpm, 10-inch "long-playing" album was being explored. By 1955, the 10-inch discs were already obsolescent, being replaced by 12-inch albums, which contained far more playing time. It was a new era for recorded jazz, and Rollins was one of the era's prophets.
Sonny was well positioned to reach such early eminence, for he grew up in one of the richest environments a young jazz musician could imagine. Theodore Walter Rollins was born in New York City on September 7, 1930; some references have listed the year as 1929 because he had once claimed to be a year older in order to obtain working papers. The Rollins family first lived in an apartment in the heart of Harlem, on 137th Street between Lenox and Seventh Avenues. The Savoy Ballroom was right around the corner, and the Cotton Club was nearby. "I used to walk by both [places] as a kid," he once recalled, "wishing I could go inside. You didn't have to be grown up to go to the Apollo, though, so I went down there at least once a week and caught practically everybody—Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Count Basie .... We used to see those guys do a stage show, and then there'd be a movie. Boy, those were the days; go get some candy, see maybe a murder mystery. You'd hear the bands warming up in the background, and then you'd actually see them. You caught a great show."
The movies, and the popular music heard on the radio, also made an impression on the young Rollins, and explain his ongoing fondness for both the staples and the obscurities of Tin Pan Alley. "I'm attracted to the older standards because I listened to them growing up. I remember a lot of them, and was influenced by Hollywood songs, songs from pictures. A lot of these songs I can still relate to," he has said. His family also played a role in shaping his tastes. "My playing calypso is mainly due to my mother coming from the Virgin Islands. I went with her to a lot of calypso dances, and heard many of the songs I play at a fairly early age."
By the time Rollins was 10, his interest in music had been focused: "What made me want to be a musician was seeing a saxophone in a case. It was so beautiful and shiny, I fell in love with the instrument." His fondness for Louis Jordan led Rollins to begin on an alto sax. When his family moved further uptown in the early Forties, to Harlem's Sugar Hill section, the youngster's enthusiasm grew into passion. The new neighborhood was full of established musicians, including his early idol Coleman Hawkins, as well as such like-minded youngsters as Jackie McLean, Art Taylor, and Kenny Drew. The teenage friends would often play together in pickup bands. "For some reason, I was always the leader," Rollins recalls, "although Kenny was the most schooled in terms of classical training.
"We were thoroughly dedicated to playing all through school," Rollins continues. "And as we got older, we got to hang out with a lot of the musicians. I got all kinds of things from a lot of people—the meticulous shine on Buddy Tate's shoes when he came out front to solo with Basic was something that registered. We'd also go down to 52nd Street and try to get into the clubs. We'd put eyebrow pencil around our lips and wear big hats pulled over our faces so no one would see how young we were. Charlie Parker was down there, and we pestered Bird a lot, but he was always very nice.
"I first heard Parker when I was 15, on his record 'Ko-Ko.' I was attracted to
him, but wasn't with him completely. At the time there was a rumor that Bird was dead, then Savoy put out 'Now's the Time' and 'Billie's Bounce' and that was all you would hear in Harlem. I began to get the message. At the same time, I was a devotee of Coleman Hawkins—I had an alto, but wanted a tenor so I could be like Coleman. I got my first tenor in 1946, so these influences were intertwined. A few years later, guys in Chicago called me 'the Bird of the tenor.'"
Rollins also acknowledges hearing a lot of other players in this formative period. "There was this older guy in the neighborhood who knew I played sax and asked me, 'Who's the greatest tenor man in the world?' I said Coleman Hawkins, but he said 'No, Lester Young.' So I went out and got my first Lester Young record, 'Afternoon of a Basie-ite,' and started paying attention to Lester. Of course, I also loved Don Byas, Ben Webster, and Georgie Auld.... All of the great tenor players made an impression."
The teenaged Rollins lacked confidence in his playing, and seriously considered pursuing his talents in the visual arts by becoming a cartoonist or painter until he received critical encouragement from several of the period's innovators, including two who would employ the young tenor man on their own Prestige recordings. He met Monk through Lowell Lewis, a trumpet-playing friend and classmate who led a high-school combo with Rollins.
"Lowell and I lived up on the Hill, but went to high school on 116th Street on the East Side. This was the beginning of New York City's efforts to desegregate the schools, so we were sent to BenjaminFranklinHigh School in an Italian neighborhood, and the situation was tense. Frank Sinatra came to sing at the school after one of the incidents. He was a big star, and an Italian-American, and it made an impression to have him come to a school in an Italian neighborhood and tell the students to settle down. Nat Cole's trio came to the school and played as well around this time." A decade later, Rollins would remember Sinatra's visit when selecting "The House I Live In" (which had been closely associated with the singer) for one of his final Prestige sessions.
"After school, Lewis would go down to Monk's apartment for rehearsals, and he'd bring me along. Monk was using another young tenor player in his band at the time, and Lowell was convinced that I was a better horn player. I learned a lot rehearsing with Monk, trying to learn that music." Indeed, the complex rhythms and harmonies, daring use of space, and idiosyncratic humor that became trademarks of the Rollins style can be traced back to Monk, and can already be heard in embryonic form in his first recorded solos, cut with Babs Gonzalez for Capitol in January and April of 1949, when Rollins was 18.
It was at about this time that he was first heard by Davis. "I used to play in the jam sessions at Minton's. There was a promoter who heard me there who ran Sunday afternoon sessions at the 845 Club in the Bronx. He would get people like Miles, Bud Powell, Dexter Gordon, and J.J. to be the featured attractions, then hire younger guys to play intermission. Miles first met me on one of those Sunday sessions, where I was playing with my trio. [Rollins was already working in the tenor-bass-drums format that he would popularize in the late Fifties.] He invited me to work with his band, and those were some of the most memorable playing experiences I had. Miles was an idol of mine, and we seemed to have a lot in common; our styles blended. Encouragement from Miles, Monk, Bud Powell, and Art Blakey finally convinced me not to be so self-deprecating and to try to make it."
The musical odyssey charted in this collection begins with an example of Rollins from this period, his early 1949 session with the sextet known as Jay Jay [sic] Johnson's Boppers. It was the tenorman's fourth visit to a recording studio, and his second with Johnson, who had used him two weeks earlier on a quintet date for Savoy that included Rollins's first two recorded compositions. The Prestige debut contains another early Rollins original, the bop blues "Hilo," and coincidentally includes three-fifths of a future Max Roach quintet, Roach, Sonny, and Kenny Dorham. About the brass giants on hand here, Rollins says: "I knew Kenny from when he moved up on the Hill. We were tight, and used to practice and rehearse together. J.J. had been on my first record date with Babs Gonzalez, but I may have met him earlier at a session."
By 1951 and his first session with Davis, Rollins had begun paying the dues that were all too common during the period. After leaving New York for Chicago to work briefly with the respected but unrecorded drummer Ike Day in late 1949, he was incarcerated for eight months on a drug-related charge in 1950. Rollins was even more intense and rambunctious after his release from prison, and his work with Davis reveals that he was a perfect contrast to the more pensive trumpeter. "Miles always needed a strong, aggressive sax player to play off his style," Rollins notes. Davis was so enthusiastic that he persuaded Weinstock to tape a track featuring Rollins at the end of the session, and, since John Lewis had already left the studio, provided the piano accompaniment. These themeless choruses on the chords of Parker's "Confirmation," ultimately titled "I Know" when released as a 78-rpm single, apparently led the Prestige executive to give the young saxophonist a recording contract.
Another studio appearance with Davis preceded the first official Rollins session in December 1951. While these dates include several intimations that the young tenor player was already something special (how many musicians would have quoted "Well, You Needn't" then, as he does during his chorus on "Out of the Blue"?), Rollins was scuffling at the time, a situation indicated by his reported use of a coat hanger and a length of rope in place of a neck strap on his first session.
"Drugs passed through like a tornado in the early Fifties," he has recalled in frank evaluation. "Guys came back from Korea smoking heroin. It was plentiful, and I was hooked pretty bad, along with everybody else. It was a thing we all went through; some of us came out of it, and some didn't. I did."
The battle was not easily won. He was arrested again in 1952 for parole violation. Out once again and back on the scene in January 1953, Rollins made his third studio appearance with Davis in a sextet that also included Charlie Parker on tenor. This summit meeting proved to be a tension-filled affair that went unreleased until 1956, after Parker's death. Rollins sounds like the most together of the soloists through much of the date, although his actual condition led to a pivotal conversation with Parker.
"I'm sure Bird thought it was because of him that I was using heroin," Rollins recalls, "and he asked me at the session if I was straight, because he knew I was on parole at the time. I had just messed around with another musician before the session, but I lied and told Bird I was straight. At a break, somebody else mentioned that I had gotten high. That's when Bird told me I could be a great musician if I didn't mess around, and that stayed on my mind. He couldn't get off of it, and when he saw all of these young kids hooked, he took it on himself. This motivated me—I wanted to show him that one of his followers got the message. The sad thing was that Bird died while I was in Lexington the second time, so I never got to tell him." His respect for Parker was clear enough at the time, despite suggestions to the contrary after he quoted "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better" on both takes of "The Serpent's Tooth." "Miles and I both liked to play that song. The quote really had no particular significance, although I thought later about how it could be taken the wrong way."
Rollins continued to grow as a musical force during 1953 and '54 despite two more years of personal turmoil. His October 1953 recordings with the Modern Jazz Quartet reveal a more mature soloist and composer. A month later, he cut his first session with Monk. More of the rough edges had been planed away on a January 1954 date with Art Farmer, who had approached Rollins about recording after the two had played together at sessions. Among its other features, the Farmer session included the Horace Silver/Percy Heath/Kenny Clarke rhythm section that would go on to make three important sessions for Miles Davis later in 1954. The last of these was the June 29th date on which Rollins came into his own.
Not only was the saxophonist playing on an elevated level on this most famous of his five Prestige sessions with Davis, but the presence of "Airegin," "Oleo," and "Doxy" made Rollins the composer a force to be reckoned with as well. The trumpeter was already an acknowledged star maker at the time, and his inclusion of a sideman's tunes on his recordings was the ultimate seal of approval. "Those tunes had all been written prior to the date," Sonny recalls, "some of them while I was incarcerated. I don't recall playing them on jobs with Miles, though; it was probably a situation where we were in the studio and Miles said 'Got any tunes?'" The arrangements of "Oleo" and "Airegin," which build tension by having pianist Silver lay out for extended stretches, were also highly influential. Rollins, like many later Davis sidemen, cannot recall if this idea was his own or the trumpeter's. "I'll give Miles the benefit of the doubt, since it was his date, but I don't really know who had the idea. When I played with Miles during this period, the piano would often inhibit what we wanted to do, and both of us would ask the pianist to stroll. We had a lot of similar ideas about music."
Musicians and fans were starting to pay attention to Rollins, and Prestige responded in the latter half of 1954 with two 10-inch albums under the saxophonist's name. As commanding as he sounds on Sonny Rollins Quintet (with Dorham and Elmo Hope) and Sonny Rollins (the quartet encounter with Monk), he was still wrestling with his drug habit. By year's end he had checked himself into the federal drug facility in Lexington, Kentucky, motivated by Parker's earlier advice to cure himself once and for all. After four and a half months in Lexington, Rollins returned to Chicago, where he felt that he had experienced important musical growth four years earlier. He took a room at the YMCA, found work as a janitor and as a laborer loading trucks, and used his spare time to practice.
Months passed before he began playing in public. "Then it started," he has recalled, "the real test. Guys coming up to you at sessions and offering you stuff, and your palms sweating; you've seen it in the movies. There I was struggling, working my little day job, and right around the corner from the YMCA where I was living was a record store with my quartet album with Monk in the window! It was tough, but I came through that okay." His practice time was spent "just working on things. I had my loose-leaf notebook—I still have that notebook, in my apartment in New York—and it had various individual things that I wanted to work on. I was always working on something, and I was also learning songs. I remember rehearsing 'There's No Business Like Show Business' in the basement of the T with Booker Little."
Rollins took the majority of 1955 to pull himself together. While in Chicago, he turned down an offer to join the newly formed Miles Davis quintet, which made a place for the then-unknown John Coltrane. In November, he subbed for Harold Land when the Clifford Brown/Max Roach quintet visited Chicago; some of their first performances at the Beehive club were taped and released a quarter-century later. When the quintet left town, Rollins was on board as a full-time member, creating one of the most inspired (and sadly short-lived) front-line pairings in jazz history. Act 1 of the Rollins saga had concluded; and Work Time, recorded in New York shortly after he had joined Brown/Roach, brings up the curtain on Act 2.
In little more than a year, Rollins would record six sessions under his own name for Prestige, as well as a final studio appearance under Davis's leadership. This is a truly prodigious output, particularly for an artist who takes so much time to prepare his contemporary releases. "All recording is a traumatic experience for me," Rollins once told Orrin Keepnews; but it was an experience he was more readily willing to undergo after his return from Lexington and Chicago. The demand for product in the dawn of the era of the 12-inch album may explain in part this burst of activity, although the determination of Prestige to stockpile material before Rollins's contract expired may have also played a role. From Rollins's own perspective, he recalls simply wanting to work and make some money after his period of struggle. Whatever the reason, Rollins approached these albums with a mixture of furious energy and intellectual rigor that announced a new creative plateau. Viewed as a group, they form an intriguing pyramid, with the first and last being the most hard-driving and confrontational, the second and fifth capturing Rollins at the head of bands where he appeared nightly as a sideman, and the middle masterpieces Tenor Madness and Saxophone Colossus revealing more subtlety and an even greater range of expression.
Work Time, from December '55, and Tour de Force, made almost exactly one year later, are the most heated of the efforts. The former has often been identified as one of Rollins's greatest achievements, while the latter features starkly contrasting moods, given the two ballads with Earl Coleman. ("Earl's recordings with Parker put him in an exalted place, in my view. Since Bird did a record with Earl, I wanted to do one too.") What earned the latter album its title, though, were the themeless dashes through the chord changes of "Lover" ("B. Swift") and "Cherokee" ("B. Quick"), as well as the voracious invention of the blues "Ee-ah." "Max and I did want to see how fast we could play," Rollins admits about this last session. "I was young and strong, and able to at least try anything."
Sonny Rollins Plus 4 and Rollins Plays for Bird found the saxophonist fronting the Brown/Roach and Roach quintets, respectively. In each instance, Rollins chose material that was not a part of the regular group repertoire. "I wrote 'Valse Hot' on the road, right after I joined the band, but never performed it in person until after the album came out. The rest of the material was just current pop tunes that I liked or, in the case of the Bird medley, songs that Max and I associated with Parker. I was interested in writing a waltz; the precedent was Fats Waller's 'Jitterbug Waltz,' that was in my mind, and I used the chords from 'Over the Rainbow.' Tent-Up House' was not based on another tune. The title comes from my situation when I wrote it. I was staying in someone's house at the time, and felt pent up because I couldn't practice."
The session with Clifford Brown is one of only two studio encounters between the trumpet giant and Rollins, who had taken part in a Brown/Roach session for EmArcy earlier in the year. It is one of the few albums of his own that the perpetually self-critical Rollins admits to liking. "I like the different moods I got with Clifford on that session. We really sound compatible." He will also express fondness for "The House I Live In" from the Plays for Bird session, although Prestige did not release the track with the other material recorded at the date. "I was never consulted about what would and would not get released," Rollins explains. This track, as well as "Sonny Boy" from the final session, only surfaced in the early Sixties after Rollins mentioned them in a conversation with critic Joe Goldberg, whose subsequent reminder to Weinstock led to their rediscovery.
The Tenor Madness album features Rollins with the Davis band of the time minus its leader, an inspired pairing of undetermined origin. "I'm not sure whose idea it was, to be honest, mine or the record company's. At that time, everybody was hanging out together, and you'd see each other all the time. Groups would be put together for albums without a lot of premeditation. It was a much smaller, tighter world." Whatever the source, the empathy of Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones inspired Rollins to some of his most relaxed and lyrical- work, before John Coltrane was added for an extended performance on a line that Kenny Clarke had recorded ten years earlier under the name "Royal Roost." "I have to plead innocent for taking a composer's credit on 'Tenor Madness,'" Rollins emphasizes. "A lot of record companies wanted to claim publishing rights at the time, and would put your name on a piece and publish it through their company. . . .The same thing happened with 'St. Thomas,' which of course is a traditional song that I heard my mother singing."
"Tenor Madness" presents the only recorded opportunity to hear Rollins and his good friend John Coltrane together, and it points up one significant difference in their outlook: Coltrane was relentlessly serious, to the point of humorlessness, while Rollins had a profound wit that ranged from whimsical innuendo to broad musical pratfalls. One particular exchange epitomizes the distinction so clearly that I have frequently played it for friends who want to hear the difference between the two giants. It takes place during the last four bars of the third chorus of "fours," and the first four bars of the next chorus. Coltrane grows increasingly heated in his turn, laboring over a pet ascending figure; then Rollins responds by juggling the lick and ultimately playing it backwards. "Humor in music is a very subjective thing," Rollins has said. "I feel whether a person has humor should be a natural thing. Because of the humor in my music, people have accused me of not really playing, of just playing around. In fact John told me that about 'Tenor Madness'; he said, 'Aw, man, you were just playing with me.'"
The consensus masterpiece of the Prestige years is Saxophone Colossus, recorded a month after Tenor Madness. Rollins describes it as "very clean for me—I'm a rough player usually," and has admitted that "it caught everybody on a good day." It has the first great Rollins calypso, "St. Thomas"; and another unique original composition, "Strode Rode." ("I might have written that one in Chicago. It was named for a legendary place there called the Strode Hotel, which is where Freddie Webster [an influential but little-recorded trumpet star of the Forties] died. I never even saw the Strode Hotel when I was in Chicago, but I wanted to dedicate something to Freddie Webster.") And it includes the most celebrated performance of Rollins's career, "Blue 7." Several essays have been written about this performance, most notably by Gunther Schuller in The Jazz Review. "I didn't really understand what I was doing until I read Gunther Schuller," Rollins would remark later.
"It's really funny. I didn't know what I was doing. This thing about the thematic approach, I guess it's true, but I had never thought about it; I was just playing it. But I guess it could be analyzed and you could find some sort of theme developing all the way through, which is nice."
Rollins would continue on his way, leaving the analysis to others while he blazed new paths. The Tour de Force session was his last for Prestige. Another two-year cycle of intense recording followed, with the saxophonist preferring to spread his masterpieces among the Blue Note, Contemporary, and Riverside labels rather than signing another exclusive contract. Keepnews, his Riverside producer (and the producer of this collection), sees this as a first attempt to take control of his own career, rather than be at the mercy of contractual demands. Rollins would push the boundaries of what had quickly become hard bop convention further in this period with his use of various piano less rhythm sections, and with his first totally unaccompanied performances. Then, in 1959, he abruptly retired, and was out of sight until a critic came upon him practicing on the WilliamsburgBridge two years later. Upon his return in 1962, he was criticized from one direction for not radically altering his style, then put down from the opposite quarter when he reorganized his band to include former Ornette Coleman sidemen. After a few years he dropped out again, this time to find spiritual fulfillment in Japan and India.
Rollins has been a more constant presence since his return to active playing in 1972, and his performances of the past 20 years have received numerous accolades. His recent working bands cannot compare, however, with the units regularly assembled in the studios for Prestige; and too many of the standards and originals that served him so well on his early recordings now go unplayed. "Actually," he reports, "I still play most of the tunes from Saxophone Colossus, including 'Moritat,' when I'm in Japan, because that was the best-selling jazz saxophone album of all time in Japan, and the fans still want to hear it. And I do hope to play with some of my old friends again. Tommy Flanagan was on a recent album, Falling in Love with Jazz [Milestone 9179]- I'd like to play with Max again, too. We were going to do something, but had problems with the proposed venue. But I would like to play with Max and some of the others, while we're all still around."
One can only hope that such encounters come to pass, and lament that similar reunions did not occur while Blakey, Davis, Monk, and the other departed giants who assisted in the coming of age of Sonny Rollins were still among us. They are all present here on this audio Bildungsroman [generally, something such as a novel dealing with one person's formative years or spiritual education], this document of one musical pilgrim's progress from promise to lasting mastery.”
As you would imagine, it was almost impossible to select an audio track from the bounty of riches that is the boxed collection Sonny Rollins-The Prestige Years, but in the end we had to go with Sonny's Pent-Up House because it features Brownie on trumpet along with Richie Powell on piano, George Morrow on bass and Max Roach on drums.
If anyone asked me for my list of Desert Island Recordings [these days, one hopes it has access to WiFi], chief among them would be More Swinging Sounds Shelly Manne and His Men, Vol. 5 [Contemporary C-3519; OJCCD 320-2].
No cooler sounds were ever played that the five [5] tracks that trumpet and valve trombone player Stu Williamson, alto saxophonist Charlie Mariano, pianist Russ Freeman, bassist Leroy Vinnegar and drummer Shelly Manne laid down at Contemporary studios in Los Angeles on July 16th, August 15th and August 16th, 1956.
To my ears, the unison sound/timbre of trumpet and alto sax that Stu and Charlie achieved on these recording was the epitome of Cool; it literally sent chills up my spine then and it has the same effect on me today.
The crowning glory of the music on that album was the fifth track - Bill Holman’s Quartet - A Suite in Four Parts.
Its four movements constitute 15:36 minutes of pure rapture; it is everything that Jazz should be: cleverly constructed compositions that unleash moving solos in a variety of tempos with plenty of room for the drums to stretch out [is my bias showing again?].
The sleeve notes contain these annotations about the piece.
“Of Quartet, Bill Holman writes: "Originally Shelly's idea was a long piece for the group, possibly with several sections, moods and tempos, long enough to extend the written parts and yet have space for blowing.
My interpretation: a jazz piece written especially for this group with its personality in mind; predominantly written, not too technically difficult to impair the jazz feeling, lines written to be played with a jazz feeling. Several sections to give contrast, form and continuity necessary for a piece of this length
.
Construction: 1st and 4th parts built mainly on traditional blues progression, very closely related thematically. 2nd part related to first and fourth, but to lesser degree. 3rd part melodically unrelated, but drum figures imply theme from 1st and 4th. Shelly improvises drum intro, develops theme. The four sections correspond broadly to the four movements of the classical sonata form. This form used, not because it is a classical form (...) but because it has proved itself, thru centuries of use, capable of supporting (as framework) a composition of this length.”
I thought it might be fun to employ Parts 1,2,3 and 4 of Shelly quintet’s masterful interpretation of Bill Holman's Quartet to individual tributes to the artistry of Shelly Manne and Bill Holman, Charlie Mariano [1923-2009], Jazz Photography in Holland from 1947-1967 and A Salute to Lester Koenig, founder of Contemporary Records [1918-1977], respectively, so as to provide you with some visual variety while you listen to this quite marvelous, extended composition in its entirety.
“Thielemans recorded ‘Bluesette’ in 1961, after working in George Shearing’s quintet [since 1952]; his first hit had him playing guitar and whistling, but he subsequently became the pre-eminent harmonica player in Jazz, with a facility and depth of expression that rivals any conventional horn players.”
- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
“Belgian multi-instrumentalist Toots Thielemans’s ability as an improviser on the harmonica is unsurpassed.”
- Christopher Washburne
“I can say without hesitation that Toots is one of the greatest musicians of our time. He goes for the heart and makes you cry. We have worked together more times than I can count, and he always keeps me coming back for more. Toots, you will live forever.”
- Quincy Jones
Sometimes I like my Jazz to be uncomplicated.
No convoluted tune structures; no abstract harmonies with raised, augmented or diminished 9ths, 11ths or 13ths; no weird time signatures – just simple, easy to hear melodies.
Jazz that I can snap my fingers to with solos that I can readily memorize and whistle to myself.
I’m not referring to easy listening or “cool Jazz,” a modern form of the music that unendingly oscillates between two chords to the point of tedium and boredom.
The Jazz I’m talking about is a form of the music that is uncomplicated and straight-forward; produced more from the heart than the mind.
When I’m in such a mood, I often turn to Jean “Toots” Thielemans and he rarely disappoints.
Stunningly inventive, there is always a light and joyous touch to everything Toots plays.
Toots solo development uses melodic lines which are based on familiar materials including many allusions to themes from other songs.
His harmonica solos in particular just seem to float away, filled with an exuberance and rhythmic purity that you’d never expect to hear coming out of what some consider to be a “toy instrument.”
If, as Louis Armstrong says, “Jazz is who you are,” then Toots Thielemans must be one “happy, joyous and free” individual, because that what comes out in his music.
The details of Toots career are easily researched on the internet, but here’s an overview of his early years that may not be readily available.
It’s written by Gerry Macdonald and forms the introductory portion of the liner notes to the 1974 Captured Alive LP that he produced for his own label, Choice Records [Stereo CRS 1007]. It has since been reissued on CD as Images on Candid [71007].
“During the summer of 1951, I was playing a gig with my small group in a club north of Montreal. Between sets, Gordie Fleming (later to become Canada's star accordionist) and I were sitting at the bar listening to the music of the George Shearing Quintet coming over the ever-present (in those days) table radio next to the cash register. Suddenly, we heard a new sound; good grief, a harmonica with George Shearing! The tune was "Body and Soul," and in those few minutes Toots Thielemans made himself known to us.
A year or so later, I had moved to New York and there, alive and in person, at the old Downbeat Club (54th Street and 8th Avenue) was Toots with his harmonica, sitting in with a group of jazz all-stars.
I still couldn't quite believe what I heard, yet there it was. Even though one should presumably just listen to the music, I remember being struck with the facility Toots had with such an "impossible" jazz instrument. It was, and remains, a joy to listen to this man interpret whatever musical piece he encounters—he seems unaware of the instrument as an obstacle. [Italics mine]
Toots Thielemans was born in Brussels, Belgium, April 29, 1922. His first musical exposure was accordion playing in his folks' cafe, so this was the instrument he chose at age three (how do you lift an accordion at age three?). At age 18 he started listening to jazz records and bought a harmonica as a hobby. Then a friend left a guitar at his house and he began trying Django Reinhardt choruses. Soon, according to the bio material he gave me, he "became good...!
In 1948 he came to the U.S. as a tourist and "sat in with cats on 52nd Street." An agent heard him, which led to an engagement with Benny Goodman in London and Europe. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951, played around for a while and then joined George Shearing for six years.
It was in 1962 that Toots wrote "Bluesette." This tune has since become a standard, and Toot's own version, on which he whistles along with his guitar, is recognized by almost everyone, although many are not familiar with his name or his harmonica work. Since then, Toots has been freelancing in studios, being involved mostly with jingles and film music. Occasionally, he does a jazz date. …”
Toots passed away on August 22, 2016 at the age of 94, but thankfully he left us with quite a few “Jazz dates” and you can see many of these Jazz recordings in the slide montages that make up the following video tributes to Toots.
The first is “Toots In Portrait” on which he plays harmonica on Secret Love with Herbie Hancock, piano, Ron Carter, bass and Ronnie Zito, drums.
The second is entitled “Toots On Record” on which he plays guitar and whistles while performing his famous composition, Bluesette, with the Quincy Jones Orchestra.
Toots keeps his Jazz down-to-earth and, in so doing, makes it always fun to listen to, whatever the context.
