Customer Reviews

The Essential Sonny Rollins: The RCA Years

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For my money this is an excellent Sonny Rollins CD because it is a great recording and includes some of the best Sonny Rollins material after his sabbatical, including two of the best tunes from one of his best CDs, The Bridge--"The Bridge" and "God Bless the Child." There is also a clunker, "Don't Stop the Carnival," which is painful to listen to. Just about everything else on this 2-CD set (19 tracks), however, is splendid. If you want to hear some of Sonny Rollins' best work, here it is. After listening to The Bridge over and over again, I've been looking endlessly for more Sonny Rollins CDs that sound like it, and this is it! If you like The Bridge, you'll love this CD--guaranteed.

Sonny Rollins is famous for his time spent under a bridge (both an actual event and metaphor) in order to remake himself as a musician. The 2-CD set "The Essential Sonny Rollins" begins with the song entitled "the Bridge" and the classic "God Bless the Child" with great promise. Each has the distinctive Sonny sound and his unmistakable approach to soloing. Yet the first CD quickly degenerates into the pseudo-calypso tune "Don't Stop the Carnival", and the unsatisfing "If Ever I Would Leave You", and "Jungoso".

Sonny's power is his ability to keep our attention without having to issue a barrage of notes or relying on an especially powerful backing band. Instead, Sonny is at his best when he approaches the music without decoration. The first CD, instead of offering examples of his strengths, offers a series of tracks which simply do not highlight Sonny at his best with one of the tunes including a set of background singers who take away far more than they add.

Rollin's approach is such that he inquires without having to raise his voice while asking questions. The double album "Night at the Village Vanguard" is an especially apt example of this ability to improvise accessably and engagingly. The second CD inclues a better set of tracks. The overplayed standard, "All the Things you Are" takes on a new hue with the unique harmonizations from piano player Paul Bley. Sonny plays off this uniqueness without losing the listener. The Standards "Just Friends" and "Four" are both solid tracks that draw in the listeners attention because of Sonny's ability to do surprising things with old forms. Ultimately, both Sonny fans and jazz fans in general will enjoy this album but will be dissapointed in an album entitled "the essential..." when in fact the first CD squanders the opportunity to highlight some of the more powerful contributions of Sonny Rollins.