Having said that, I found both the biographical tribute and the musical tribute to be really uninspired and disappointing. This was the one opportunity to explain to the country why, among all of the thousands of jazz musicians in the world, it was Sonny Rollins who was being honored on that stage. Even in just a couple of minutes with the opportunity Bill Cosby had in his introduction and in the video tribute, there was so much that could have been said that wasn’t. Here are some of the things I would have said:

“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.

“But Sonny was never content to rest on his laurels and, in fact, was never satisfied with his own work, even though his colleagues and peers came to respect, admire and laud him as one of the true masters of modern jazz. One of the things that makes Sonny Rollins so special among jazz artists has been his true humility and belief that he can always improve, always learn more. This quest led him famously to the Williamsburg Bridge, where he spent two years in self-imposed retirement to practice and improve his skills. This quest to be innovative, to improve, to experiment, to pioneer, has also led Sonny in many other directions, and continues to lead him to this day. Not many people realize it, but the first record album in the United States to use the words “Bossa Nova” was the Sonny Rollins album “What’s New?” Not many people realize that it was Sonny Rollins who composed and performed the music to the original movie Alfie. Not many people realize it, but it is Sonny Rollins who is regarded all around the world – in France and England, in Japan and Russia, in South America – almost everywhere – as one of the true treasures of American jazz and one of the great musicians the world has produced in the past century. It is wonderful, exciting and long overdue that Sonny Rollins is finally receiving this same recognition in the United States.”

What I wrote off the top of my head just now attempts to put Sonny’s place in history in perspective, which the tribute last night did not. If I wanted to take more time, I’m sure I could do better, but you get the point. As far as the musical tribute, it was just a bunch of guys up there playing a bunch of songs and doing a bunch of improvisations that also lacked perspective and, in my opinion, missed an opportunity to connect with a national audience. There could have been something to either explain the music or to connect the music to Sonny, but instead it was just a bunch of guys playing. To me it was a missed opportunity and, frankly, pretty boring. There was a later tribute to Yo-Yo Ma that was much more compelling, exciting and interesting. Sonny deserved more, but he also deserved what he received – the honor from the Kennedy Center and a place among the world’s most important and inspirational performing artists of the past half-century. Congratulations once again to one of our true jazz heroes.

As Rudolf pointed out, that copy of Giants Steps sold for $600 and met the reserve price, so I guess it’s not finding its way into my collection. Speaking of Coltrane, that copy of Tommy Flanagan, The Cats, New Jazz 8217,  did not sell. It had a top bid of $510.07, but did not reach the seller’s reserve. It’s kind of funny when you think about these things in perspective: Who could have ever imagined when this record was first issued and could be purchased in a store for $3 or $4 that 50 years later someone would actually turn down more than $500 for the very same record?

In case I don’t get a chance to post later: Tonight, CBS TV in the U.S., Kennedy Center Honors, featuring Sonny Rollins, one of our true greats.

“There are many people in this room who could do this better than me: Jimmy Heath, Joe Lovano, Ravi Coltrane, Jim Hall. But it’s appropriate because I’m just a fan. I discovered Sonny Rollins when I was about 15, 16, about 50 years ago. I loved jazz, and I fancied that someday I might be good enough to do it. And I bought my first Sonny Rollins LP. I listened and listened, I listened the grooves off of it. I subscribed to Down Beat magazine and I kept thinking: if I read every edition, sooner or later I will find one article that will explain to me what in the hell I just heard. It was unbelievable, and it still is. Decade after decade after decade, this man explores the far reaches of the possibilities of what has lovingly been called the devil’s horn. His music can bend your mind, it can break your heart, and it can make you laugh out loud. Still today after all these years, if I wake up in kind of a bad humor, or I’m worried about something, if I put on Sonny Rollins’ version of ‘Brown Skin Girl,’ I will laugh out loud.

I have thought so much about his unique gifts. He has done things with improvisation that really no one has ever done. In complexity and creativity, he rivals Coltrane. On one of the three CDs I listened to to prepare my mind for this, the Road Shows 2 album [that] has a lot of the tracks from his 80th birthday concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York, I was just aghast at how good he still is. There’s a duet, which is more of a duel with Ornette Coleman, who probably has the most extreme capacity to go beyond normal chord structures and tonal assumptions of any saxophone player. So Sonny just gets right out there with him. Then when he plays beautiful music… Another one of the CDs I listened to today was called Old Flames. I played that one because it’s a bunch of love songs that Sonny recorded in my first year as President. One of them, Duke Ellington’s beautiful ‘Prelude to a Kiss,’ Jimmy Heath arranged and conducted… It’s so beautiful. And then I listened to The Freedom Suite, which he recorded almost 54 years ago, in February 1958. A propos of what the former speaker said [referring to emcee Renee Fleming’s earlier remark: “He’d take a song you’d known all your life and in soaring solos of improvisation strip away the familiar and reveal new universes of wonder”], there are also, at the end of The Freedom Suite, three different takes of ‘Till There Was You,’ and they’re all different.

This man is a marvel. He was born with a strong body and a brilliant mind and a passion for jazz. He knew when he made jazz his mistress he would never be bored, but he would never conquer. And he decided he would spend his life trying again, every single day. At 81, he told me tonight, he said ‘I still practice every day.’ Every day. I said, ‘I love that 80th birthday gig at the Beacon.’ He said, ‘I wasn’t very good.’ Some musicians that are really good grace us because they keep playing. Sonny Rollins’ great gift to all of us, whether you know a lick about jazz or not, is that he keeps growing. And he still does.

A few weeks ago, physicists in Switzerland at the superconductor supercollider, the Hadron Supercollider, fired some subatomic particles called neutrinos through the mountains to a magnet in the Italian Alps, and it appeared that they arrived before they left. That is, it’s the first known experiment in physics since Einstein propagated his theory of relativity where anything with matter and mass appeared to travel faster than the speed of light. People who know a lot more about this than I do are still trying to absorb what this means and whether the experiment is accurate. But if it is, it may mean not just that we don’t know where we are and what time it is—something I often feel when I’m in Washington—it may mean that there is after all a whole fourth dimension to reality. Long before the scientists fired the neutrinos, Sonny Rollins believed there was another dimension to reality. In jazz music, his Mark VI Selmer tenor with his old Berg-Larsen mouthpiece is our superconducting supercollider. He has given us a gift, and reminded us that whatever hand we’re given to play, we’re supposed to play it to the very end and keep growing. Thank you, my friend.”

AP Video

all you have to do is comment on the Jazz Collector site — anywhere on the Jazz Collector site — from the time the contest opens until it closes. This time we have 14 eligible contestants and they are: Bethellodge; Don-Lucky; Michel; RL1856; Paul H; Bob Brooks; Doug; BLIPP; GW; Brian; Geraint; Charlie; Keith Fiala, and Max. And, drum roll please, the winner is: Brian.

Congratulations, Brian. We are happy to ship the record free wherever you are. Just sent an email to al@jazzcollector.com and we’ll get it out ASAP. For everyone else, stay tuned. We’ll be posting another free record contest either later today or tomorrow.

This is a later pressing and it is in M- condition. We have it on the turntable now and it’s quite nice. We’re on the West Side Story side, Tonight, Maria, I Feel Pretty, Somewhere. It is what you would expect. Nice swinging jazz with some playfulness with the time signatures, some nice percussive Brubeck and, as always, terrific Paul Desmond. The other side features Brubeck in a Carnegie Hall concert with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic from December 1959, almost exactly 50 years ago. If you’re in the U.S., check out the Kennedy Centers Honors show on CBS tomorrow and let us know what you think. Mel Brooks will also be among the honorees, so you’ll get to laugh as well as enjoy the music. In order to be eligible to win this LP, all you have to do is comment on the Jazz Collector site any time between now and Jan. 11, when the contest will close. As always, we provide the free record with free shipping anywhere in the world to the lucky winner.

Jason Sweet, Bethellodge, Blipp, Ron Rue, Bob Brooks, Doug, Michel, Maarten Kools, Geraint, Don-Lucky, Ceedee, Hyder, Ian Thomas and Troy Grooms. As always, there will be one winner, selected at random by the lovely Mrs. Jazz Collector. Here we go. The names are written down . . . strewn about the desk . . . mixed up . . . mixed up again . . . and again . . . here comes Mrs. JC . . . her hand is in the pile . . . she is choosing a name . . . and that name is . . . Bob Brooks.

Congratulations, Bob. This is a great record and, we’re sure, it will make a nice addition to your jazz collection. It’s also free and we even pay for the shipping. Just send an email to us at al@jazzcollector.com and we’ll make the arrangements to ship the record to you. For everyone else, you can start commenting on the site now and still be eligible for our next giveaway, which we will announce either later today or early tomorrow. We’re still deciding on something interesting and appropriate.