Much as Dizzy Gillespie brought the backbeats and vamps of R&B and Afro-Cuban music to bear upon the harmonic complexity, rhythmic propulsion, and innovative melodic language of Charlie Parker; much as John Coltrane kept pushing the envelope of bop into transcendent new realms of self-expression; and much as Miles Davis retained his singularity of expression through a series of stylistic changesΓÇöwith nary a backward glanceΓÇöso Sonny Rollins continues to reinvent himself. At an age when most musicians would be content to tread water, Sonny Rollins enters his sixth decade as a professional musician in resplendent form. This Is What I Do is the work of a musician at his peak, a 21st century visionary, still evoking the joy of discovery in his listeners, still searching for new challenges.
How does that old saw go? Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue. Such is the dancing, folkish, laid-back formula for Sonny's joyous recital on This Is What I Do. So while Rollins departs from the steamy, four-to-the-floor bebop accouterments that distinguished long stretches of his previous Milestone studio recordings, 1996's Plus 3 and 1998's Global Warming, This Is What I Do represents the very essence of jazz.
"It's true, there's no straight-ahead bebop playing on this," Rollins admits, "and that wasn't something I was even conscious of until someone pointed it out to me. Not that I'm trying to play anything but bebop, but it's good, because I'm always fighting this thing where people are trying to categorize me, and sure, of course, I love bebopΓÇöthat's my roots and everythingΓÇöbut I think that I'm a very eclectic player, right? So when I record, there are different parts of me that come out each time."
And the resulting This Is What I Do is pure Sonny Rollins. Like Louis Armstrong and all the great jazz improvisers, Rollins has a unique gift for transforming the most unlikely of songs into extraordinarily expressive vehicles for jazz extrapolation. Journeying even further out west, Sonny offers chanting, affectionate variations on standards drawn from the South Seas reveries of a Harlem youth who spent many a Saturday afternoon at the cinema: "Sweet Leilani" (the 1937 Academy Award-winner from Waikiki Wedding as sung by Bing Crosby) and "The Moon Of Manakoora" (introduced by Dorothy Lamour in another 1937 potboiler, The Hurricane), the former a bluesy island song, the latter sounding like a kissing cousin to another unlikely Rollins standard, "The Tennessee Waltz."
Then there are two gloriously inflected ballads: the soulful, bluesy Rollins original "Charles M.," and an expansive reading of the standard "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square." Finally, there's the opening track, the dancing, celebratory "Salvador," which reflects Rollins's calypso roots in the Caribbean, but with a pronounced touch of samba, and his trio fanfares on the down-home funk of "Did You See Harold Vick?," wherein the tenor saxophonist celebrates the special blend of sanctified cornbread grit and modern jazz intellect that was Harold Vick in a radiant performance alive with affectionate quotes, brilliant harmonic permutations, and riveting rhythmic syncopations.
But then, rhythm has always been Rollins's business. Born Theodore Rollins on September 7, 1930, to a most musical New York family, he gravitated to the tenor saxophone in high school, inspired by the likes of Coleman Hawkins and Louis Jordan. "I always had a strong rhythmic thing," Rollins recalls, "and that big soundΓÇöthat was there from the start." And so it was that Rollins attracted the attention of such formidable musical champions as Bud Powell (with whom he first recorded in 1949). In due time the young Rollins attracted the attention of Thelonious Monk, who took him under his wing and nurtured his talent, as well as Miles Davis, who proved the perfect foil on their Prestige recordings together.
Soon, Rollins was recording frequently for Prestige and drawing comparisons to Charlie Parker, but the young man nearly suffocated under the weight of his demons, and after a spiritual sabbatical in Chicago, he joined forces with Clifford Brown and Max Roach in 1955 in one of the most definitive hard bop ensembles of its day. In short order, the young tenor man hit his musical stride and began issuing forth masterpieces that defined the mid-to-late
'50s, such as Work Time, Sonny Rollins Plus 4, Saxophone Colossus, Way Out West, The Freedom Suite, and Live At The Village Vanguard.
Rollins and John Coltrane defined hard-bop tenor in the '50s, and cemented their legend on their only recorded encounter, Tenor Madness, but by 1959 Rollins was dissatisfied with his progress, and took a famous sabbatical that often found him practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge. When he returned to active recording with the Bridge, it launched a fervent period of experimentation on recordings such as Our Man In Jazz and East Broadway Rundown, wherein Rollins explored the implications of the new freedom as epitomized by musicians he himself had inspired: Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. By decade's end Rollins took one final hiatus in Japan and India studying yoga and spiritual texts, returning to begin a fruitful association with Milestone Records in 1972 on Next Album, a period of spiritual and artistic growth during which his sound became richer and more textured, his harmonic/melodic conception grew ever more complex, and his range of rhythmic inflections more varied as he expanded his artistic outreach to include new generations of musical styles and song formsΓÇöas documented on his majestic 2-CD compilation Silver City.
With This Is What I Do, Sonny Rollins's restless artistic journey continues apace. And while we the listeners may alight upon this newest and most satisfying example of Rollins's recorded output with deep pleasure, for the musician, his mind is already racing ahead, as he seeks more profound means of expression as an improviser, and new ways to expand upon his current repertoireΓÇönever satisfied, always contemplating how better to portray his muse and draw listeners deeper still into the vortex of his creativity. "There are so many different ways to approach a piece of music in my mindΓÇöI think the permutations are endless. And that's why you always have to practice as much as possible so that you'll be there when this thing comes. Because if you're not practicing, you're not going to be there when the revelation comes.
"Sometimes when I'm soloing, what I'm trying to do is to establish something to go on from there. You see, this is my dilemma: I'm a guy who makes things up as I go along, so nothing is ever going to be finished. There are so many layers. It's just like the musical overtone seriesΓÇöyou play one note, but there's another note there at the same time. You can hear the next level. And that's how I feel about improvisingΓÇöthere's always another level to get to."
