Replies

I liked Coleman Hawkins. (He did a charming album with Duke Ellington in the early 1960s, by the way, and if you ever get to hear Hawkins' work with the old, foundational Fletcher Henderson Orchestra - Henderson was really the man who set the basic guidepost for what became swing - you are in for a huge treat, especially if you get to smoke out their recordings when Hawkins and Louis Armstrong were feature soloists in the band.) I didn't think of Sonny Rollins as particularly abrasive so much as I thought of him as going for an earthy root in a contemporary mode and maybe a bit too firmly so, but I never held that against him - hearing the expanded CD version of his classic Village Vanguard sets with his original sax-bass-drums trio remains a revelation (particularly when Elvin Jones is the drummer), and the two volumes of Sonny Rollins, his Blue Note debut, are incomparable. Rollins had (and still does, for all I know, I've not heard the man lately, alas) a charming knack for sneaking back to a theme during an extended improvisation in places other than those you might expect him to do it. He also did some nice work with the Modern Jazz Quartet, as a bannered guest on one of their albums.

Tell you the truth, I almost wish I could step into a time machine and go back to just hang on the lower level and listen during the period when Rollins, dissatisfied, retired from active playing, spent his time practising and rethinking his music, and actually waded out to the Williamsburg Bridge in the wee small hours to practise. I have heard legend holding it that a lot of those practises were enough beyond these things that it would be a pleasure to just eavesdrop on the lower level...

He's one of my favourite tenormen but I also loved Stan Getz, Lester Young, the John Coltrane who made those remarkable Atlantic albums, Toby Hardwick (a tenorman with the Ellington orchestra of the 1930s), Charlie Rouse (Thelonious Monk's longtime tenorman), and Paul Gonsalves (Ellington's marathon tenor soloist of the 1950s and 1960s).

John Coltrane who made those remarkable Atlantic albums

Ah, you're one of the (very) few people I know who appreciate his Atlantic albums more than those he recored for Impulse. ...and I'm with you there. However, my favorite 'Trane still remains Blue Train (on Blue Note).

Yeah, (I think) I've checked out pretty much everything The Hawk ever recorded, and his seminal work with Fletcher is certainly no exception.

I haven't listened to Rollins in quite a while, so I think I'll check out one of the albums you suggested.