SONNY ROLLINS- FREEDOM SUITE ETCETERA

Freedom Suite (1958): This near twenty-minute long number is an improvised jazz-blues was the first extended instrumental piece of protest music. Typical of the idiom in which it was written it uses a basic line-up of sax, bass (Oscar Pettiford) and drums (Max Roach) to use a melody (as well as a few straight forward lyrics) and turn it inside out in a series of variations, developing an ambience that strikes the emotion as well as the intellect. Emily Bonnell, writing for Jazz FM, refers to how “powerful and inspiring” the composition is and suggests its length is a mark of the trials and tribulations of a long suffering black race. The reference point for Freedom Suite is probably not contained in one single event but the school segregation issue in 1957 at Little Rock and the Brown.v. Board of Education case is certainly a part of the discontent expressed within the piece. In 2002 tenor saxophonist David S. Ware recorded a new version of Rollins’ piece with his quartet (piano being the added instrument), maintaining the integrity of the original piece but veering into different areas, doubling its length. In the same year Branford Marsalis recorded a version that was much closer to Rollin’s original on his album Footsteps of Our Fathers. The other side of the album was non-political featuring popular show tunes. The record company quickly reissued the record, retitling it ‘Shadow Waltz’, and in an ill-judged attempt to sanitise the message replacing Rollins’ sleeve notes. In 1959 Rollins took a musical sabbatical and practised for more than two years on the pedestrian pavement of the Williamsburg Bridge, practising all day and into the evening. In 1962 his ‘comeback’ album, for his new label RCA, would be called The Bridge. His band was extended to a quartet to accommodate guitarist Jim Hall. Rollins went on to become one of the most esoteric of all jazz musicians, flying from the Great American songbook to experimenting with Latin rhythms to the avant-garde with the greatest of ease. On the way he played alongside Coleman Hawkins and ‘modernist’ Paul Bley on the Sonny Meets Hawk! LP. In 1966 Rollins signed for Impulse! Records, releasing three albums including the soundtrack to the 1966 film ‘Alfie’. A TV documentary in 1968 asked ‘Who is Sonny Rollins?’- a good question since, after his ‘comeback’ there were no more studio albums until 1972 as he took another sabbatical and studied meditation, yoga and Eastern philosophies in an ashram in the Mumbai district of India, returning to perform in Norway in 1971. In 1974 Rollins added bagpipes to his band (Rufus Harley) and in 1978 he and other jazz ‘stars’ performed a concert on the White House lawn at the request of jazz enthusiast President Jimmy Carter. In 1981 he would add uncredited sax to three songs on the Rolling Stones album Tattoo You. A documentary film was made in 1986 entitled ‘Saxophone Colossus’ showing his quintet performing in New York, a performance of his Concerto for Saxophone and Symphony in Japan, and a collaborative work with Finnish pianist Heikki Sarmanto. A dedicated environmentalist, Rollins released an album called Global Warming in 1998. In 2001 he witnessed 9/11 close at hand when he was forced to evacuate his apartment a few blocks away from the World Trade Centre. Rollins continued playing around the world and releasing music, archiving recordings of hundreds of his concerts, his private archive being