Rare Sonny Rollins & Kenny Dorham Available Here
Okay, here’s an interesting one for you. Back in the early 1970s there was this this guy in New York who had a massive collection of audio tapes that he would record from radio broadcasts. For a while he would issue these tapes on bootleg LPs under a variety of names. I have at least a couple of dozen of these issues, under labels such as Alto Records and Ozone and Session Disk, by a large number of artists such as Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins and many others.
He also, apparently, had tapes that were never issued in any format — and we’ve discovered one of them here. Not only that, but it’s quite a legendary performance by a legendary group of artists: Max Roach with Sonny Rollins and Kenny Dorham, recorded Dec. 12, 1956 at the Cafe Bohemia just seven months after the tragic accident that claimed the lives of Clifford Brown and Richie Powell.
This is the story: One of our friends and faithful Jazz Collector readers visited with the guy who had the tapes back in the 1970s and made a copy, on a reel-to-reel tape, of two
tracks that were recorded on this evening by the group, which also included Ray Bryant and George Morrow. The tracks are: Daahoud and I Feel a Song Coming On. They are pretty amazing, particularly I Feel a Song Coming On, which was a highlight of the LP Sonny Rollins Plus Four, Prestige 7038. Anyway, our friend is now making this music widely available for the first time. If you’re interested, you can purchase the music at a Website he set up at www.norgran.com. It’s hard to believe that URL was available, right? Anyway, we have no financial stake in this, we’re just publicizing it because we would like our friends at Jazz Collector to have access to this great music. If you do purchase it, let us know what you think of the music by commenting on this post.
…I really love live recordings, too me that is what Jazz is all about ! I just ordered a copy and will leave a review once it arrives.
In the meantime, like many I have been struggling to get my hands on a copy of that new Ella Fitzgerald box “Twelve Nights In Hollywood”… Even Amazon says 1-3 weeks, but it never seems to be in stock anywhere. I finally gave up, and ordered it directly from the label (Verve / Hip-o-select) at:
http://www.hip-oselect.com/default.asp
It just arrived today, and I ordered it Monday ! (Sweet) So far, no regrets… Ella is solid, and the book is filled with some great historical content. My only complaint is the way they have packaged the CD’s. Once again, they sleeve into the package… For those of us who attempt to keep their CD’s as scratch free as possible, this type of packaging is not the best choice ! (Similar to the complete Louis Armstrong – Hot Five’s & Hot Seven’s box or the more recent Miles Davis – Kind of Blue 50th Anniversary Box…)
Not too shabby ! …My copy just arrived yesterday. It’s short and sweeet, to say the least but it’s certainly one of those performances we all wish we had been there for. The quality is quite resonable, and it leaves you wanting more. It would have been nice to have the graphics printed along with the CD for $25, but you certainly can’t judge the proverbial “book by it’s cover” in this case. I can’t wait to see what they offer next on http://www.norgran.com.