Sonny Rollins Contemporary Box-set and other new jazz re-releases
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 лип 2024
- In this video I present the new Sonny Rollins box-set "Go West - The Contemporary Records Albums" and other newly (re)released jazz albums with Clark Terry, Ron Jefferson Choir (both from Sam Records), Ahmad Jamal plus Kenny Barron.
Link to Sam Records: samrecords.fr/shop/
My visit to Sam Records and interview w. founder/owner Fred Thomas: • Sam Records - intervie...
Hi discovery of your Channel, and thanks for box Set Sonny Rollins,i'm a french saxophonist ,and this records of Sonny was my first contact with Horn of the saxophone Colossus , BEGINNING long story of love with Sonny since 50 years now and this Amazing Records !!
Thanks again , i'm a New fan of
your Channel ( subcriber now )
🎵🎶
Thanks for your comment - and for subscribing!
Wish I played an instrument myself. I think that helps to understand the music better - but I don't. However I have a son that plays piano, clarinet, guitar etc. - it seems he's got the talent I didn't get 🙂
@@Claus-CaptainPhoenixCorner in french we have an expression who Said : Cats make Cats not dogs, thanks for your answer , my next video will be BILL EVANS ,a VERY great pianist, for me the lonely piano player be able to play like a classical music player🎶🎵
@@Claus-CaptainPhoenixCorner i call my record shop to order THE box Set, ( vynil) thanks again 🎵🎶
Cool jazz records. I'll be checking them out. Thank you
Great video. I really enjoy your channel. I also think it's great that you let us know that you purchased these albums yourself. In my opinion there is a real issue where content makers are getting free albums to review. If this is not called out, there is a doubt around the integrity of the video and review. Keep up the good work.
Captain Phoenix, great choices you have selected and thanks for sharing them with us. I've ordered the Sonny Rollins. I live in America and unfortunately, my copy hasn't shipped yet. Hopefully soon. Looking forward to your next segment my friend.
Thanks Tony 🙂 - I'm sure you'l like the Rollins box and hope it will arrive soon.
BTW: I was offered a 15% discount (app. $ 20) because of the rip-offs - very fair.
Ron Jefferson was a drummer with Les McCann in the early 60's.
Thanks - I'll check Les McCann (whom I don't know either...) out 🙂
Great stuff. The alternative takes have been released before
Thanks Scott - I didn't know but they are great (could be the takes they had chosen for the albums as well).
I just listened to a 10h French podcast radio show on Sonny Rollins (yes, 10x 1h, covering 1951-2001!!!). A torture, but I'm like that, I dive into an artist and I listen to everything, or almost. To have my own opinion. My opinion of Rollins is that he seems very overrated to me.
As a player/improviser
First of all as a player/improviser, he does not seem to me better than Johnny Griffin, Sonny Stitt, Roland Kirk, Phil Woods, Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Hank Mobley... but enjoys a much greater notoriety... and unjustified in my opinion. Ok he plays well, but not better in my opinion than the musicians above. Listen to Eternal Triangle which puts Rollins and Stitt together. Here they are VERY evenly matched technique wise but it is Rollins who is the more famous today. There is a lot of study done on Rollins' solos and they are generally accepted to be examples of strong overall thematic construction and development. This somewhat implies that others just play randomly. I'm not entirely convinced by that argument. If you like it, its a strength, if you think its an excuse for repetition, you'd think not.
As a composer
At the level of the composition, he did not compose anything, everyone knows that his hit ''St Thomas'' is a Caribbean folklore already recorded by Randy Weston in 1955 under the title ''Fire Down There''. St Thomas is an example of cultural transference. It is infact originally The Lincolnshire Poacher. An old english folk tune. It was taken to the Carribean presumably on the slave ships but possibly even earlier by the pirate ships (appropriate given its title). It gets transmuted into a Carribean Folk tune and then Rollins recalls it from his childhood being sung by his mother and renames it after the Island. I had assumed St Thomas was what his mother called it, but the Ted Heath Band, a British Big Band of the 1950s had a big(ish) hit with 'The Lincolnshire Poacher' done presumably as a 'ripost' to St Thomas. His ''Tenor Madness'' is a composition by Kenny Clarke published in 1947 under the title ''Rue Chaptal''. His other compositions from the 50s... well, Oleo, Airegin etc... it can in no way be compared to the compositions of Trane, Bird, Monk or Shorter... One thing that always struck me that I've heard no one else mention is that the Alfie theme is merely a reworking of the intro to 'Singing In The Rain!'
Sound and artistic vision
I find this a curious aspect. Early on, in the 50s his sound was distinct enough but it became more distinctive later. It is an odd sound for tenor but its one I hear more and more players now using. I'm not quite sure how its done or if there is a physiological reason for it. I have found it to be an aquired taste. Moreover, his playing and his sound are terribly degraded after 1966 (36 years). Something happened on that bridge, he lost his mind. He seems to have been traumatized by the arrival of Ornette, Trane, Ayler... In the 60s he tried to be freer than Ayler, more calypso/blues than Ornette, and more mystical than Trane, but without succeeding because so superficial... Then in the 70s/80s he tried his hand at funk, disco... with really ridiculous and corny results... Did he want to be funkier than James Brown himself? More disco than Chic and Nile Rodgers? On ''SAIS'' from the ''Horn Culture'' album, one example among many, just picking up a random piece between 1966 and 2001....It's a shame. He plays out of tune, out of rhythm, with an absolutely disgusting sound. It is a lack of respect towards himself, the other musicians and the listener. No normally constituted musician would have agreed to let this recording be released. The problem with Rollins is that EVERYTHING IS LIKE THIS after 1966. He even said himself that he was high on marijuana when he recorded his solo album ''Soloscope'' at the Museum of Modern Art. from NYC...Also listen to the result, it's ridiculous and disrespectful towards the listeners...
Ego and money
Also, on the radio show, they say he was paid today's $300,000 for himself to record the Nucleus album (listen to the result!!!!), and that for his concerts, his Financial claims were unrealistic, only big festivals could afford it. He played with the Stones but didn't want to tour with them because, according to Mike Jagger himself, he wanted too much money! I am not making anything up here. In a blindfold test published in downbeat in 2006, he doesn't recognize ANY saxophonist, even taking James Carter for Don Byas! Totally mind-blowing and revealing!
Conclusion
In conclusion Sonny Rollins is for me the archetype of a narcissistic complacency encouraged by the fans and the milieu which has placed him on a throne since 1956 and his (very average) album ''saxophone colossus''. You have to be quite arrogant to glorify yourself as a ''saxophone colossus'' at 26 years old when BIRD had just died the previous year.