Checking Out Some More From Sonny Rollins

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As you might expect I’ve been in a bit of a Sonny Rollins head lately, lots of great memories of seeing him live. When he would do a week-long gig at the Vanguard or Half Note, I would see him just about every night, every set, usually going with my friend Dan Axelrod. One of the great things, out of many great things, about Sonny was that he never seemed to play the same way each night, even though he would have a set song list for the entire week’s gig. He was always pushing himself to find new ways of expression. Anyway, being in this head, I’ve spend some time perusing YouTube in the past few weeks, looking at vintage Rollins performances, interviews and tributes. Here are some of my favorites. Please feel free to share yours in the comments section.

My One and Only Love

I’m Old Fashioned

Don’t Stop the Carnival

If Ever I Would Leave You

The Jazz Video Guy has some great interviews, including

Art Tatum and the Great American Songbook

Finally, Dan sent me this amazing article from The Nation

Sonny Rollins Lived To See Justice for His Wrongly Convicted Father

Podcast: Celebrating Sonny Rollins

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This week’s theme: Sonny Rollins. Featured artists include Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Richie Powell, George Morrow, Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Percy Heath, Kenny Clarke, George Cables, Bob Cranshaw, David Lee, Ray Brown, Shelley Manne, Barney Kessel, Hampton Hawes, Leroy Vinnegar, Ben Riley, Jim Hall, Ray Bryant, Red Garland, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, Wade Legge, Kenny Dorham, Tommy Flanagan.

In addition to this podcast featuring Sonny Rollins, I’ve also done several Sonny-themed podcasts in the past. Here’s a list:

April 21, 2025, Sonny and Trane, Trane and Sonny

Nov. 11, 2024, Rollins Plays Rollins

May 27, 2024, Sonny Rollins, European Tour, 1959

Jan. 29, 2024, Random Rollins

June 26, 2023, Sonny Rollins, Prestige

The one from June 26, 2023, was  the third show I ever did and the first themed show after two introductory shows.

Podcast: Alto Madness

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This week’s theme: A cornucopia of alto sax recordings. Featured artists include Charlie Parker, Art Pepper, Sonny Stitt, Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods, Gene Quill, Marshall Royal, Johnny Hodges, Charles McPherson, Jackie McLean, Herb Geller, Eric Dolphy, Lou Donaldson, John Handy, Hal McKusick, Paul Desmond and many more.

Sonny Rollins

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Back in 2011, when Sonny Rollins finally received his long-overdue recognition from the Kennedy Center Honors, I wrote the follow words on Jazz Collector, expressing what I felt should have been expressed at the tribute:

“Jazz is a unique art form in that it enables – in fact, it requires – the artist to perform on the fly, as part of a unit of other musicians and without a safety net, and it demands not only immense technical skill, but a mind that can constantly plumb the depths of creativity to avoid cliché and deliver something new, exciting, clever, unique and, at times, innovative. In the mid-1940s there was a revolution in jazz that came to be known as bebop, led by musicians such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. Sonny Rollins came along as a teenager at the tail end of the bebop revolution and he was able to fuse the concepts of this new generation with the ideas and masters of the previous generation, such as Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young, to bring the art of jazz improvisation to levels that the music has rarely seen, before or since. If you listen to some of the masterful Sonny Rollins albums of the 1950s, such as Worktime or Saxophone Colossus, you will hear an artist who was able to set new standards of improvisation – in creativity, in humor, in conception, in technique – that truly changed the course of jazz history and influenced every single jazz musician who came afterwards. With one or two exceptions, Sonny Rollins was without peer as an improviser, as a genius in creating music that was fresh, bursting with energy and ideas, and always inspiring. Read more

Podcast: Reverse Crossover

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This week’s theme: Jazz recordings of songs from the pop/rock, television and even maybe a little Yiddish. Artists include George Benson, Freddie Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Grady Tate, Ray Barretto, Richie Cole, Bobby Enriquez, Jimmy Rushing, Zoot Sims, Stephane Grappelli, Martin Taylor, Sonny Rollins, George Duke, Roland Kirk, Rosemary Clooney, John Oddo, Seve Lukather, Jackie McLean, Tony Williams, Hank Jones, Charles McPherson, Sonny Criss, Tal Farlow, Cedar Walton.

The Records (But Not the Music) Are Over

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A couple of months ago, I received an email from longtime reader and sometime contributor to Jazz Collector, Stuart Levine. The email was as follows: “After decades of collecting Jazz vinyl, I made a decision to sell all my LPs with the exception of just a few. And having just moved back to Japan, I must now resist the temptation to buy over here. I’d like to write about the choices I made, which I think will be interesting to your readers. May I do so and send you my writing?”

Of course. The same invitation is open to anyone. Stuart reminded me that it is almost 10 years to the day since we published an earlier article – Adventures in Jazz Collecting, Tokyo Style. Couldn’t help but notice that there were 54 comments on that article. Bravo to Stuart and all of the commenters. Ah, the good old days.

Anyway, the article arrived the other day, along with the title Stuart suggested title, so, without further ado, may we present:

The Records (But Not the Music) Are Over

By Stuart Levine

Well, I did it. I sold my jazz record collection. Now approaching 70, I’m trying to downsize and just not finding the opportunity to listen to my LPs. You see, for years I’ve been living in Japan with my wife and two daughters, while all this time storing my records and audio equipment back on the West Coast. The irony is that I’m in the land (or rather, on the island) whose people love our American art form of Jazz, yet I, myself, can’t listen to my own records. I don’t want to bore anyone with details as to why not, but suffice it to say that living quarters are tight there and sound travels easily. Read more