Sonny Rollins - Volume 2 (1957)

Note: the CD I listened to was the mono 1999 Rudy Van Gelder Edition.

Other than the sequential name and Rollins himself, this album has very little to do with its predecessor. Recorded four months after Volume 1 with different musicians and instrumentation, this album is noteworthy for the variety in material, a mixture of swinging original material, more angular modern jazz compositions from Thelonious Monk, and standards from the Great American Songbook. Monk wrote and plays on two tunes, providing his unusual phrasing and harmonies, while the remaining tunes with Horace Silver are more blues-inflected hard bop.

Something about this album makes me believe a great lineup isn't the same thing as a great album. Volume 2 is certainly not terrible by any means, but these days I prefer Volume One. It just feels more cohesive, swings harder, and takes advantage of more satisfying material. But ask me next month and I may say the exact opposite. That's the beauty of music.

Rollins - tenor saxophone
J.J. Johnson - trombone
Horace Silver - piano
Thelonious Monk - piano
Paul Chambers - bass
Art Blakey - drums

Original liner notes by Robert Levin.

Reviews/ratings:

• Billboard: "another essential volume for the modernist collector."
• HiFi & Music Review: "most deeply fulfilling"
• Audio: "It is as complete a picture of Rollins, both from his most difficult and his more easily accessible angles, as is likely to be encompassed on one record."
• DownBeat (★★★★★): "something of interest (and quite often genius) on every track, may well be the wailing set of the year."
• The Penguin Guide to Jazz (5th ed., 2000): ★★★⯪
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★★⯪
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★★★☆

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks: Don't miss any of these six tracks, but my top picks are Why Don't I and Poor Butterfly.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Newk's Time (1959)
Volume One (1957)

Sonny Rollins - Volume 1 (1957)

Note: the CD I listened to was the mono 2003 Rudy Van Gelder Edition. The album was originally titled "Sonny Rollins" but the Volume 1 tag was added once Volume 2 was later released.

A straight-ahead hard bop album, combining blues-based themes and driving swing with the exploratory style of Rollins. At 26, Rollins had developed his own jazz vocabulary, Donald Byrd and Wynton Kelly were just starting out, and Max Roach was already an established figure in jazz circles. So you've got three different levels of experience forming a solid quintet. Byrd sounds fantastic and holds his own. It was the debut for Rollins on the Blue Note label, but he was releasing many seminal recordings on several labels at the time, including Saxophone Colossus (Prestige), Way Out West (Contemporary), and the Monk/Rollins recordings on the Prestige and Riverside labels.

Rollins - tenor saxophone
Donald Byrd - trumpet
Wynton Kelly - piano
Gene Ramey - bass
Max Roach - drums

Original liner notes by Leonard Feather. 2003 liner notes by Bob Blumenthal.

Reviews/ratings:

• Billboard: "some of the most vigorous and creative blowing of recent months by the tenorman all the young cats are digging."
• CashBox: "Smooth work.
• DownBeat (★★★★☆): "Recommended"
• Audio: "the most important new voice on the tenor saxophone"
• The Penguin Guide to Jazz (5th ed., 2000): ★★★☆
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★★☆
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★★★☆

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks: Four originals by Rollins and a cover of How Are Things In Glocca Morra. Don't skip any.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None.

Previously revisited for the blog:
Newk's Time (1959)

Sonny Rollins - Newk's Time (1959)

BLUE NOTE 25 "BEST" ALBUMS MONTH* (JULY 2026)

Note: the CD I listened to was the 1990 reissue.

Released in 1959 but recorded in late 1957, Newk's Time shows why Rollins had become one of the defining voices in hard bop. Rollins plays with a confidence that makes his technical brilliance seem too easy. It's a great album that is rarely the first one mentioned in discussions of the era, which says more about the high standard of the period and artists than about the record itself. However, it continues to sell modestly as the album has seen decades of reissues and audiophile editions. I guess some records never really disappear; they simply wait for some incredulous critic to declare them underrated.

In the 1950s, Rollins mainly recorded for the Prestige label (his most recognized/acclaimed album is Saxophone Collossus); Newk's Time is the third of only three albums released by Blue Note. Not long after this album was released, Rollins began his famous Williamsburg Bridge sabbatical. Also around this time, Rollins appeared in Art Kane's A Great Day in Harlem photograph (1958). For a number of years, he was the last surviving musician from the photo before passing away at age 95 on May 25, 2026.

Rollins - tenor saxophone
Wynton Kelly - piano
Doug Watkins - bass
Philly Joe Jones - drums

Original liner notes by Joe Goldberg.

Reviews/ratings:

• Downbeat (★★★½): "This is in the main a blowing session. But since Rollins blows with such enormous vitality and virility, some of it is rich stuff."
• CashBox: "6 immensely gratifying performances"
• HiFi Review (Stereo Review): "One of the more consistent Rollins albums in recent months, this one underlines the influential tenor saxophonist's extraordinarily hot playing."
• Billboard (★★★★): "shows off some of his best work, and is enjoyable listening to boot."
• The Penguin Guide to Jazz (5th ed., 2000): ★★★★
• The Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide (1999): ★★★★★
• The Virgin Encyclopedia of Jazz (1999): ★★★★★

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks: My top pick is the unusual treatment of the 1943 show tune The Surrey With The Fringe On Top which utilizes only Rollins and Jones. Other favorites include Tune Up, Blues For Philly Joe, and Namely You.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None

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*In 1987, the European offices of Blue Note records compiled a list of the 25 Best Blue Note Albums in an effort to promote sales of classic Blue Note albums released on CD for the first time. Albums selected for the list were originally released in the years 1953-1967.

At the time, the Blue Note label had been subsumed by the EMI group. This allowed the selections to be made from other EMI labels, namely Capitol, United Artists, and Liberty. Therefore, the list-makers were able to look outside the Blue Note label and squeeze in titles by artists such as Miles Davis, Chet Baker, & Count Basie. It reads more like "albums we had the rights to, by 25 well-known jazz artists," making the list as much about artists as albums. As a marketing tool, it makes sense. As a starting place to build a Blue Note collection you could do worse. Of course, you could also do much better. But the thing exists, it caught my attention, and here we are.