Jazz Icons: Sonny Rollins Live in ’65 & ’68

“Age is inescapable. When you’re young, no matter how brilliant or talented, you are hampered by a lack of perspective. With time comes wisdom, but gone are other ineffable qualities. If you are lucky, in the middle somewhere there is a golden period of confluence. In jazz, these truisms are embodied by the giant of the tenor saxophone, Sonny Rollins. Born in 1930, Rollins is in every respect the last of a generation of jazz titans—a contemporary of and collaborator with the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown. To this day, Rollins is considered one the greatest living saxophonists. Indeed, he is often hailed as the greatest musical improviser on the planet, a man whose horn is a pure extension of his heart. But no discussion of Sonny Rollins can avoid the question of how time has changed his art. Conveniently for critics, Rollins himself has chopped his performing life into obvious chapters. In the early ’50s he was a valued sideman (with Davis and Monk, among others) and a promising composer. His emergence as a leader in 1956 was definitive: he recorded the all-time classic Saxophone Colossus at 25 and then pioneered the piano-less saxophone trio shortly thereafter. By 1959, however, he went into a self-imposed sabbatical period, famously practicing nightly on the Williamsburg Bridge to regain his sense of musical purpose. He returned with a newly adventurous spirit—stirring it up with a guitar-based band, Latin music, the avant-garde—only to ‘retire’ again around 1970. His return in ’72 brought an engagement with pop rhythms and textures, but also a fascination with solo saxophone playing. …”
Jazz Icons: Sonny Rollins Live in ’65 & ’68
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