Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins had yet to find his identifying groove on Saxophone Colossus, released in 1956, which is notwithstanding a keynote recording in the New Yorker's career, his breakthrough album, as it were.
In time would come the post-Coltrane tone poetry, and Bebop taken to its farthest limits, but in 1956, Sonny Rollins was a young man hugging the shore of jazz, as it were, watching what he was doing, not `going for it’ full-on as was his wont from the 1980s onwards.
So what you get on Saxophone Colossus is something that to this writer sounds pretty much like Stan Getz - pleasantly sensual, polite even, as in the restrained bonhomie of the opener St Thomas, with its gentle Caribbean lilt. He is added and abetted by Max Roach on drums, Tommy Flanagan on piano and Doug Watkins on bass and the whole thing is, well, perfectly fine.
That old sultry, melancholic standard, You Don’t Know What Love is, is treated with due care and reverence – it somehow seems a shame to hear it as instrumental given it contains arguably the most brilliant set of lyrics in The Great American Songbook, penned by one Don Raye (Gene de Paul wrote the music.) The song was originally intended for an unlikely destination indeed - the 1941 Abbott and Costello picture, Keep 'Em Flying for which it was sung by Carol Bruce. Not surprisingly, the song was deleted from the score of the comedy film prior to its release - Whatever else it may be, You Don’t Know What Love Is is magisterially gloomy, if one may coin a phrase. Yet the song was reinstated in a musical not long afterwards and Billie Holiday, Chet Baker interpreted the song. (Many years later, the late John Martyn sang a very creditable version over the end credits of The Talented Mr Ripley.)
But back to Sonny who on Moritat revisits Mack the Knife with verve and skill, while Blue 7, has an endearing, vaguely hesitant swing, concluding what is an appealing set of five tunes.
