Freedom Suite

Performer: Sonny Rollins
Artist: Max Roach; Oscar Pettiford
Distributor: Universal Distribution

Notes: Personnel: Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone); Oscar Pettiford (bass); Max Roach (drums). Recorded in New York, New York in February 1958. Originally released on Riverside (258). Includes liner notes by Orrin Keepnews. Digitally remastered by Tom Size (1989, Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, California). Personnel: Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone); Max Roach (trumpet); Oscar Pettiford (bass instrument). By February of 1958, when Sonny Rollins recorded FREEDOM SUITE, his political consciousness had risen to match the poetic scope of his music. In addressing his place as a creative artist and an African-American, Rollins recognized that both aspects of his being existed under second class circumstances, and that it was time for this country to review these inequities. In recording with bassist Oscar Pettiford and drummer Max Roach, Rollins aligned himself with the modern jazz innovators who best exemplified his righteous brand of freedom. Pettiford is particularly inspired on trio and duo versions of "Till There Was You," where he displays an uncanny knack for enunciating lyrical syncopations without losing the flow of the beat or a sense of harmonic structure. His ringing half notes on the head to "Will You Still Be Mine?" set up a vibrant series of Rollins/Roach exchanges, while his charming solo distills the melody into its most swinging components. But it is "Freedom Suite," with its stunning stops and starts, extended variations, thematic interludes and exhilirating denouement, that invites the most superlatives. Rollins' sense of sustained melodic invention is remarkable, as is his cyclical formal structure. The opening theme, with its affectionate parody of a formal overture, sets the band in motion, as if motifs and contrasting themes criss-cross and collide in a swinging trialogue. A waltz figure and dramatic extended cadenza introduces one of Rollins' most touching ballads, richly tinted in smoky shades of blue, with some joyous buck and wing by Pettiford and Roach. Finally, a reprise of the waltz theme gives way to a climactic chase, inspiring some of Roach's most fervent, singing breaks, before a return to the opening theme ties it all up.

"Saxophone colossus" is not a bad description for a tenor player who is one of the greatest living jazz artists. Sonny Rollins made his first record date at the age of 19 in the late 1940s, and unlike Parker and Coltrane, the magnitude of his talent was immediately apparent. After strip-mining the hard-bop vein in the early '50s, he absorbed from Monk the notion of using the melody rather than the changes in his improvising. An urbane, sardonic counterpart to Coltrane's incantatory searcher, Rollins is capable of playing hour-long unaccompanied solos of flawless invention with the most powerful sound ever wrung from a saxophone.

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