Blow!

A new phase in Sonny Rollins’ career began in 1957. He started what was at the time an almost blasphemous trend of recording for a number of different labels. His pioneering spirit yielded a few genre-defining albums, and his performances were also at a peak during that year, in which Down Beat magazine proclaimed him the Critics’ Poll winner under the category of “New Star” of the tenor saxophone.

This newfound freedom can be heard throughout the innovations on the tracks presented here. Not only are Rollins’ fluid solos reaching newly obtained zeniths of melodic brilliance, but he has also begun experimenting with alterations in the personnel from tune to tune.

In the tunes here, Rollins was working along a couple of, for him, relatively unexplored avenues. In his own words, “almost every album I’ve been on so far has been blowing eight choruses each on four or five tracks” and so he wanted very much to work in ters of shorter numbers, “more sense of form” and control.