2011 photograph of Sonny Rollins in performance (photographed by Tom Beetz, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license)
Once again I find myself doing my best to keep up with the efforts of Craft Recordings to remaster many of the finest jazz albums of the past. Most recently I wrote about two Craft releases this past March. One of these was The Birth of Bop, a 30-track anthology of the generous number of bebop performers that recorded for Savoy. More focused was the remastering of the Contemporary Records album Art Pepper meets The Rhythm Section on which Pepper performed with Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums, all of whom date back to the Miles Davis Quintet recording sessions with Prestige that began in November of 1955.
This past Friday saw the latest Craft release of remastered Contemporary albums. Go West!: The Contemporary Records Albums is a three-CD box set that accounts for all of the recordings made by saxophonist Sonny Rollins for Contemporary. To be fair, this involved only two Rollins albums, Way Out West and Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders. The “leaders” on that album were pianist Hampton Hawes, guitarist Barney Kessel, Leroy Vinnegar on bass, Shelly Manne on drums, and, on two tracks, Victor Feldman on vibraphone (identified on the album as “vibraharp”). Way Out West, on the other hand, was a trio album with Ray Brown on bass and Manne on drums. The third CD accounts for alternate takes of tracks from both of the Contemporary albums. The entire collection is also available on three vinyl discs and for MP3 download.
Unfortunately, my only writing about Rollins took place during my tenure with Examiner.com, when I covered his performance in Davies Symphony Hall for the 30th Annual San Francisco Jazz Festival in the fall of 2012. I have a vague memory of having seen him earlier at Herbst Theatre, when I observed to a man sharing a box with me that there were some “Stockhausen moments” in Rollins’ improvisations. (For as long as I can remember, I have entertained the fantasy that Karlheinz Stockhausen kept a “secret stash” of jazz albums in his basement!)
I was already familiar with the Go West! content through the box set The Freelance Years: The Complete Riverside & Contemporary Recordings, a five-CD box set, which is still available. However, I appreciated the opportunity to home in on the Contemporary side of that collection; and I was definitely not disappointed. The cowboy songs on Way Out West are clearly tongue-in-cheek; but I have always relished their muted sense of humor. The more traditional offerings on the Contemporary Leaders album have a more than generous share of wit; but there is also a sincere honoring of what makes a standard a standard, so to speak.
Rollins is still alive, but he retired in 2014 “due to recurring respiratory issues” (as reported on his Wikipedia page). His appearance at Davies took place during his last season of public performances. I definitely appreciated the opportunity to listen to him in performance (at least) once. I was also struck by his close relationship with Thelonious Monk, which I learned about when reading Robin D. G. Kelley’s Monk biography. Rollins may not have been as arcane as Monk, but his recordings reveal an extensive (and frequently adventurous) capacity for improvisation. I seem to have accumulated quite a few of his albums, and I treasure them all.
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