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Sonny Rollins emerged from a three-year retirement in 1961 and soon signed with RCA Victor, remaining with the label until 1964. It was one of his most creative periods, and if the music is sometimes less focused than in the period from 1956 to 1959, these were years of musical adventure and whimsical exploration when Rollins seemed to challenge the limits of his own mastery. That sense of ferment is apparent in the sudden shifts in group architecture. The first recordings here have Rollins leading a quartet with the guitarist Jim Hall, a group of stunning empathy in which the understated Hall sounds like Rollins's perfect foil,
Sonny Rollins emerged from a three-year retirement in 1961 and soon signed with RCA Victor, remaining with the label until 1964. It was one of his most creative periods, and if the music is sometimes less focused than in the period from 1956 to 1959, these were years of musical adventure and whimsical exploration when Rollins seemed to challenge the limits of his own mastery. That sense of ferment is apparent in the sudden shifts in group architecture. The first recordings here have Rollins leading a quartet with the guitarist Jim Hall, a group of stunning empathy in which the understated Hall sounds like Rollins's perfect foil, deftly matching his lyricism and his rhythmic invention. The most startling music, though, comes from the live recordings with a quartet that included former Ornette Coleman sidemen Don Cherry and Billy Higgins. Together they shatter two of Rollins's best-known tunes, "Oleo" and "Doxy," into a thousand pieces, reassembling and reinventing them in extended group improvisations that represent a stunning rapprochement between hard-bop swing and free-jazz dialogue. It's some of the greatest music in the Rollins canon and a neglected landmark of early free jazz. His quixotic side may be most evident in a session with Coleman Hawkins joining Rollins's quartet (with pianist Paul Bley) in one of jazz history's strangest intergenerational meetings. Both camaraderie and competition seem to arise, with Rollins at times plumbing the tenor's oddest sonorities. The later sessions have Rollins returning to something like his classic mold, using relatively conventional rhythm sections, including the young Herbie Hancock, as a springboard for solos of majestic power. --Stuart Broomer
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Manufacturer: RCA
Release date: 15 July 1997
Number of discs: 6
EAN: 0090266867523 UPC: 090266867523
Tags: Jazz (1), Usa (1), T (1), John Coltrane (1), American (1), Miles Davis (1), Hard Bop (1), Horace Silver (1), Paul Chambers (1), Wynton Kelly (1), Doug Watkins (1), Art Taylor (1), Henry Grimes (1), United States (1), Herbie Hancock (1), David Lee (1), The Rolling Stones (1), Sonny Rollins (1), Donald Byrd (1), Thelonious Monk (1)
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