Tone Poet Review: Sonny Rollins - A Night at the Village Vanguard - The Complete Masters
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- Опубліковано 27 тра 2024
- Recently, the folks at Blue Note released a 3LP set of Sonny Rollins' A Night at the Village Vanguard in their Tone Poet series. It includes all the takes from that day in November 1957, and it's presented in a phenomenal package as always.
Purchase link!: amzn.to/4dQiBJ2
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If you're new to my channel, what you can expect from me is a vinyl collector's approach to the jazz genre. For years, I've only collected vintage pressings and prioritized originals of Blue Note, Prestige, Savoy, Bethlehem, Riverside, New Jazz, and more classic labels. Lately, with the resurgence of the medium and more collectors coming to the space, the music industry has taken notice and prioritized putting out high quality reissues of some of the best albums ever recorded. Subscribe to my channel to watch me navigate how to rationalize how I used to buy vs. how I buy vinyl records today.
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This was the absolute BEST Video on any Tone Poet release!
Thanks for this really thoughtfully put-together, informative, and comprehensive video essay.
15 or so years ago, I bought volume 1 on CD and a bit more recently, on vinyl. It was one of those records that you put up with mediocre SQ because the performances are so strong.
When this Tone Poet version was announced, I was surprised to learn that all previous versions had been made from a copy of the original master tape, and that the original 7.5 ips master tape was used for this set. Upon its release, reviews uniformly noted the SQ improvement over any previous version. So I was excited about the possibility of hearing this brilliant music in higher fidelity.
I was absolutely floored. Everything sounds cleaner, warmer, and more alive. Soundstage and instrument separation are better.
I'd say this is an absolute must-buy for instrumental jazz fans. Partly because it is very, very rare these days that a better tape of an original session is discovered and used to make a new LP with SQ that far surpasses all previous versions. Partly because the set is so well put-together, as your video so ably demonstrates, including the informative booklet. Partly because the alternative takes are not at all throwaways like on some other "complete" box sets. Each of the alternative takes is amazing to listen to.
And mostly because this one set gathers all three volumes of a historically important and absolutely joyful live recording featuring Sonny and master sidemen.
This set is fantastic! Team Tone Poet has yet to miss!
I heard the same distortion on the cymbals (disk 1) and it could the be nature of the technology used at that time. For the pressing to be so transparent to reveal more than just tape hiss is amazing.
Obviously the cymbal transient overloaded the mc preamp at those points. It happens! Recorded at a lower level you would get more hiss on the entire session captured.
Great one, nice job!
Thanks for the excellent review. This my favourite Tone-poet release to date.
Superb video!
Probably the best jazz reviewer on UA-cam! Great review! Now I’m itching to grab a copy!
Great review!
Dude, I love the Elvin jones drums louder here. The entire sounds of this is amazing compared to my original and reissue.
Please WCB tell us about Blue Note Classic Series lp"s like Herbie Hankook speak like a child
This my prized possession, if not one of them along with the Joe Henderson evening with. Also of course the RSD Rollins and Tatum.
I have this and am very pleased. Great review. I wish they would release a Joe Henderson mode for joe or inner urge tone poet
I believe the different takes of the same songs would be from different sets
I believe ware and jones sub’d in actually. Jones just got fired and was packing heat when his brother asked him if he wanted to go out and get drunk. They ended up and the vanguard where Sonny asked him in the spot to play. Apparently jones didn’t even know they were being recorded till somewhere in the middle of the show
the 7-1/2 ips tape is the absolute first generation master, the original work-part. So layers of tape-to-tape dubbing and EQ or compression applied have now been circumvented.
THAT is why it's to crucial that the raw tapes were used. Later dubs won't even come close to the clarity possible here.
good evening there is surely a service door, to bring in the furniture etc. you need authorization to record or a portable navra by the stairs…
I gotta go to New York 11:09
Great video WCB.
Does anyone know of any plastic sleeves that fit this behemoth ?
I use 14” X 14 1/4” sleeves from BagsUnlimited for smaller box sets and slightly oversized jackets like this one. It will fit loosely but at least it will be protected.
@@haroldm4600 Thank you Harold for such a helpful reply! I shall pick some up. All the best
Fantastic idea! My only thought was that thick shrink it comes in but this sounds way better
Vinyl storage solutions has a 13 in sleeve that perfectly
I bought copies of both the Freedom Weaver and Vanguard sets when they released. Very impressed with the quality of both. Vanguard especially I have heard 100s of times before in the full takes, but this new release is on another level.
How is your new Luxman turntable doing?
Loving it! I’m still toying with the best speaker placement and tow-in but I’m basically rediscovering all my records again
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 your info would mean that might not be true. Interestingly 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.