This Is What I Do (Milestone Records)
Sonny Rollins
Released October 24, 2000
Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album 2002
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=WtvgjAyoNd8&list=RDAMVMWtvgjAyoNd8
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/6zBEaC277DwIiRVeBPnSAm?si=mWE-_IfDSf-ykGdPc8olSw
About:
Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem not far from the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep of his idol, Coleman Hawkins. After early discovery of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, he started out on alto saxophone, inspired by Louis Jordan. At the age of sixteen, he switched to tenor, trying to emulate Hawkins. He also fell under the spell of the musical revolution that surrounded him, Bebop.
He began to follow Charlie Parker, and soon came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his musical mentor and guru. Living in Sugar Hill, his neighborhood musical peers included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor, but it was young Sonny who was first out of the pack, working and recording with Babs Gonzales, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty.
“Of course, these people are there to be called on because I think I represent them in a way,” Rollins said recently of his peers and mentors. “They’re not here now so I feel like I’m sort of representing all of them, all of the guys. Remember, I’m one of the last guys left, as I’m constantly being told, so I feel a holy obligation sometimes to evoke these people.”
In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene, through his work with Miles, Monk, and the MJQ.
Miles Davis was an early Sonny Rollins fan and in his autobiography wrote that he “began to hang out with Sonny Rollins and his Sugar Hill Harlem crowd…anyway, Sonny had a big reputation among a lot of the younger musicians in Harlem. People loved Sonny Rollins up in Harlem and everywhere else. He was a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians. Some thought he was playing the saxophone on the level of Bird. I know one thing–he was close. He was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas. I loved him back then as a player and he could also write his ass off…”
Sonny moved to Chicago for a few years to remove himself from the surrounding elements of negativity around the Jazz scene. He reemerged at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence. His trademarks became a caustic, often humorous style of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that found him hailed for models of thematic improvisation. It was during this time that Sonny acquired a nickname,”Newk.” As Miles Davis explains in his autobiography: “Sonny had just got back from playing a gig out in Chicago. He knew Bird, and Bird really liked Sonny, or “Newk” as we called him, because he looked like the Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitcher Don Newcombe. One day, me and Sonny were in a cab…when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you’re Don Newcombe!” Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn’t thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening…”
In 1956, Sonny began recording the first of a series of landmark recordings issued under his own name: Valse Hot introduced the practice, now common, of playing bop in 3/4 meter; St. Thomasinitiated his explorations of calypso patterns; and Blue 7 was hailed by Gunther Schuller as demonstrating a new manner of “thematic improvisation,” in which the soloist develops motifs extracted from his theme. Way Out West (1957), Rollins’s first album using a trio of saxophone, double bass, and drums, offered a solution to his longstanding difficulties with incompatible pianists, and exemplified his witty ability to improvise on hackneyed material (Wagon Wheels, I’m an Old Cowhand). It Could Happen to You (also 1957) was the first in a long series of unaccompanied solo recordings, and The Freedom Suite (1958) foreshadowed the political stances taken in jazz in the 1960s. During the years 1956 to 1958 Rollins was widely regarded as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz.
Rollins’s first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late `61 withdrew from public performance. Sonny remembers that he took his leave of absence from the scene because “I was getting very famous at the time and I felt I needed to brush up on various aspects of my craft. I felt I was getting too much, too soon, so I said, wait a minute, I’m going to do it my way. I wasn’t going to let people push me out there, so I could fall down. I wanted to get myself together, on my own. I used to practice on the Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge because I was living on the Lower East Side at the time.”
When he returned to action in late `61, his first recording was appropriately titled The Bridge. By the mid 60’s, his live sets became grand, marathon stream-of-consciousness solos where he would call forth melodies from his encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs, including startling segues and sometimes barely visiting one theme before surging into dazzling variations upon the next. Rollins was brilliant, yet restless. The period between 1962 and `66 saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, yet he grew dissatisfied with the music business once again and started yet another sabbatical in `66. “I was getting into eastern religions,” he remembers. “I’ve always been my own man. I’ve always done, tried to do, what I wanted to do for myself. So these are things I wanted to do. I wanted to go on the Bridge. I wanted to get into religion. But also, the Jazz music business is always bad. It’s never good. So that led me to stop playing in public for a while, again. During the second sabbatical, I worked in Japan a little bit, and went to India after that and spent a lot of time in a monastery. I resurfaced in the early 70s, and made my first record in `72. I took some time off to get myself together and I think it’s a good thing for anybody to do.”
In 1972, with the encouragement and support of his wife Lucille, who had become his business manager, Rollins returned to performing and recording, signing with Milestone and releasing Next Album. (Working at first with Orrin Keepnews, Sonny was by the early ’80s producing his own Milestone sessions with Lucille.) His lengthy association with the Berkeley-based label produced two dozen albums in various settings – from his working groups to all-star ensembles (Tommy Flanagan, Jack DeJohnette, Stanley Clarke, Tony Williams); from a solo recital to tour recordings with the Milestone Jazzstars (Ron Carter, McCoy Tyner); in the studio and on the concert stage (Montreux, San Francisco, New York, Boston). Sonny was also the subject of a mid-’80s documentary by Robert Mugge entitled Saxophone Colossus; part of its soundtrack is available as G-Man.
He won his first performance Grammy for This Is What I Do (2000).
Track Listing:
1. Salvador (Sonny Rollins) 7:55
2. Sweet Leilani (Harry Owens) 7:01
3. Did You See Harold Vick? (Sonny Rollins) 9:19
4. A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (Eric Maschwitz / Manning Sherwin) 8:06
5. Charles M. (Sonny Rollins) 10:19
6. The Moon of Manakoora (Frank Loesser / Alfred Newman) 5:44
Personnel:
Sonny Rollins: tenor saxophone
Clifton Anderson: trombone (2 to 5)
Stephen Scott: piano
Bob Cranshaw: electric bass
Jack DeJohnette: drums (1, 2, 4, 6)
Perry Wilson: drums (3, 5)
Recorded May 8-9 (tracks 1, 2, 4 and 6) and July 29, 2000 (tracks 3 and 5) at Clinton Recording Studios, New York City
Producer: Sonny Rollins
Co-Producer: Lucille Rollins
Recording Engineer: Troy Halderson
Assistants: Mark Fraunfelder and Jeremy Welsh
Remix Engineer: Richard Corsello
Mastering: George Horn
Review:
For those who believe that Sonny Rollins’ best days as a recording artist are well behind him: think again. This Is What I Do is an unmitigated triumph, a performance that will impress anyone who takes the art of jazz seriously. As the six cuts on the disc attest, Rollins is clearly not content to rest on a half-century of improvisational brilliance. Aside from his intelligence, savvy, and hard-earned experience, Rollins continues to emanate a sense of bravado as well as a willingness to take risks that vitalize the music as a whole.
The first thing that is evident on “Salvador,” the opening track, is Rollins’ sound, which cuts through the rest of the band (including the electric bass of Bob Cranshaw) without being overly harsh. He states the theme repeatedly, but never exactly the same way twice, and eases into an extended flight. Thriving on the cyclical, repetitive structure of the composition he plays with remarkable assurance, and goes down a variety of paths without losing the thread that holds the patchwork together. Drummer Jack DeJohnette and Cranshaw enliven pianist Stephen Scott’s estimable solo with some rhythmically fluid accompaniment, and then Rollins returns for a brief, exclamatory turn going back to the theme.
“Did You See Harold Vick?” is a mundane funk tune that serves as a starting point for a Rollins marathon. At first including some brief chordal remarks by Scott and then with just Cranshaw’s sparse, droll comments and drummer Perry Wilson’s efficient back beat, Rollins solo gets tougher and more insistent as he goes along. There is a stark, pointed quality to his improvisation even as he ambles through speech-like phrases and spits out an occasional flurry of notes. The most remarkable cut on the disc is Rollins’ twisted performance of “Sweet Leilani.” The tune, taken at a deliberately slow tempo, manages to sound both sacred and profane, with touches of gospel as well as blues declarations that are suggestive of a long, libation-filled night. With the rhythm section providing solicitous support, Rollins’ solo purrs, growls, mumbles, and shouts. Reeling across bar lines, he makes a compelling statement that speaks of both elation and wariness. Sometimes he hangs back and dwells on a note or a phrase for what seems like an eternity; or, he goes into overdrive and can’t get the notes out fast enough. Scott follows with a turn that is nearly as persuasive, and then, clamoring for the last word, Rollins reappears, this time imposing a warped magnificence on the music that makes everything complete.
Davis A. Orthmann (All About Jazz)
