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Customer Reviews of Volume 1

rollins is what jazz is all about.........
sometimes the long shadow of thelonious monk makes it easy to forget that there were other great jazz composers around during the forties and fifties. it seems fairly obvious now that charlie parker and herbie nichols were first rate composers but what about rollins? one of the unquestionably great soloists, his compositional output seems strangely ignored given the fact that some of his truly great solos had both a discernible grounding in the initial melody and his departures had a compositional logic of their own. perhaps it was the tendency to throw in a few nondescript blowing themes on recordings that has seen some of his great tunes languish in obscurity.

the opening track on this recording, "decision", is typical of an inspired rollins tune. there is a quirky indecision to it which rollins and trumpeter donald byrd really nail. it's syncopations are suggestive of monk but the piece differs in that it lacks the deceptive simplicity of some of monk's classics. what is most pertinent is how rollins thrives on the melody's fragmented material and the tunes unconventional thirteen bar structure (now that's what i call a blues). taking the repeated two note pattern as an initial motif, his solo is another fine lesson in abstraction and departure along the same lines as st. thomas, one of jazz's great moments. in comparison, the generic "bluesnote" and "sonnysphere" find rollins rather shrugging off his solos. in the latter, there is a sense that rollins is quoting some long forgotten tune and even relying on stock phrases at points to pique his imagination. he plays well in both - just without the intensity that an invigorating compositional stimulus could provide.

these lesser performances give the punch in the teeth to the oft-made assertion that jazz is not about the material. evidently, jazz is not all about the material but to merely treat the melody as a time-honoured frame to the real action encompassed within is to do it an unjustice that, more often than not, can lead to an audible orthodoxy in the solos somewhat removed from a player's personal style. a fine-lined distinction most definitely but if the material is strong enough that it demands the soloist's attention, than personality can be at the service of a solo being an individual interpretation of an individual piece. the most obvious reference point is monk whose compositions were so characterful that he would often perform variations on the melody as his solo contribution. his famed outburst of "don't play bebop over my tunes" to an unnamed trumpeter encapsulates the ideal of what jazz can be if the material is allowed influence the performer's character as much as the performer's character influences the piece. it is a synergistic process and in his greatest moments, rollins finds a fine balance between monk's ceaseless melodic invention and charlie parker's flights of imagination.

there is enough vintage rollins on this disk to make it a worthwhile purchase - in spite of my convictions, i will always allocate time for rollins to blow over any old fodder. unfortunately, i have only to assess the contributions of the other musicians to reaffirm my above argument. pianist wynton kelly has a funky elegance to his playing whether on the knotty "plain jane" or on the album ballad "how are things in glocca mocca". likewise, donald byrd is blues-by-numbers on trumpet. compared to the leaders deep authority on the ballad, his boisterous melodic quirkiness on "decision" and his free-flowing inspiration on "plain jane", these guys are representative of genre playing (in this case the blue-note-hard-bop style) that is ultimately damaging to jazz as a continually changing creative medium. sonny rollins is a monument to the inspiring vagaries of jazz performance of any time and when his incredible spontaneity is at the service of a fine composition, than he demands to be heard as a prototype of what jazz is all about.

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A Solid Album
Sonny Rollins' first effort for Blue Note is a solid, if not stellar, album. Recorded on December 16, 1956, "Sonny Rollins Volume One" features Donald Byrd on trumpet, Wynton Kelly on piano, Gene Ramey on bass, and the great Max Roach on drums. Roach, by the way, brings much needed cohesion to the recording. (At this time Rollins was member of the Max Roach Plus Four, so they knew how to play well together.) Unfortunately, Byrd and Rollins don't always mesh, and Sonny often pulls along Kelly. Otherwise, it's a spirited session featuring four Rollins originals, recorded (as always) impeccably, and now remastered too, by Rudy Van Gelder. It just seems that an album sandwiched between three of the greatest jazz albums of the 1950s ("Tenor Madness," "Saxophone Colossus," and "Volume 2") would be better, but then we all have to be entitled to an off day. If only my off days could be as successful....