Further reading: www.burnette-rock.com
Download: Not currently legally available
Brothers Johnny and Dorsey Burnette and guitarist Paul Burlison had been cutting up the Memphis area for a good five years before they entered Owen Bradley’s famed Nashville studio in July 1956. A few months previously, former schoolmate and work colleague Elvis Presley had hit Number 1 in both the album and singles charts. The Trio were choking on his exhaust. Over the next few days, however, they laid down a series of tracks that hold their own with a lot of The King’s best.
The Trio had signed to Coral on the strength of a string of wins on The Ted Mack Amateur Show in New York. ‘One of the reasons we signed with Coral instead of Capitol,’ Burlison remembers, ‘was that they gave us a free hand on the material we wanted to record.’ Burlison brought a Tiny Bradshaw track, Train Kept A-Rollin’, to the band’s attention; but more importantly he told Bradley about an accident he’d recently had with his Fender Deluxe amplifier. ‘I dropped it between the band-room and stage one evening. That night I got this weird, fuzzed-up sound from it. After the gig I took the back off and found I’d knocked a tube loose.’ Bradley was wise enough to employ this primitive, ear-grabbing tone on both Train Kept A-Rollin’ and Honey Hush, while Johnny B. let rip over the top with a backwoods, rockabilly shout that made Presley sound positively tame.
‘I played a 1952 Esquire with a treble sound that could kill crabgrass,’ recalls Burlison, ‘but I listened to and played everything. In fact, Latin music is one of my favourites.’ And there, on the self-penned Lonesome Tears In My Eyes, you hear his Hispanic stylings, while Johnny exercises the melodic control that would later serve him as a teen idol – garnering hits with Dreamin’ and You’re Sixteen. Unfortunately, fraternal rows and a lack of will on the record label’s part meant that this 10-incher never got off the ground, and the group would founder only a year later. Nevertheless, Burlison is still revered as a sonic pioneer by players as important as Clapton, Mick Green and Jeff Beck; and many of the riotous numbers included here (Lonesome Train, All By Myself) are staples to this day for any self-respecting roots rock’n’rollers.
Sonny Rollins
Saxophone Colossus
Saxophonist comes of age …
Record label: Prestige
Produced: Bob Weinstock and Rudy Van Gelder
Recorded: Van Gelder’s Recording Studio, Hackensack, New Jersey; June 22, 1956
Released: Autumn 1956
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Sonny Rollins (ts); Tommy Flanagan (p); Doug Watkins (b); Max Roach (d)
Track listing: You Don’t Know What Love Is; St Thomas; Strode Road; Moritat; Blue 7
Running time: 39.31
Current CD: Concord 1881052
Further listening: Way Out West (1957); Live At The Village Vanguard (1959)
Further reading: Sonny Rollins: The Cutting Edge (Richard Palmer, 1998); Open Sky (Eric Nisenson, 2000); www.sonnyrollins.com
Download: iTunes
Sonny Rollins vied with John Coltrane for the title of top tenor saxophonist of his generation, including one meeting on record (released as the title track of Rollins’ Tenor Madness) only a month before this classic session was recorded. The two were highly individual stylists, and both are widely regarded as the ultimate exemplars of their instrument in jazz.
‘I wasn’t like the guy who started out, played for years and years, found a style, and then somebody heard him and got him a record date and everybody liked him,’ he insisted. ‘That’s not my story. My story is that from the time I was a teenager, I was on records with great musicians.’
In common with most of his peers on that scene, he began using heroin in 1948, and was jailed for a time in 1950 and again in 1952. He eventually kicked the habit in 1955, and resumed his career at a new level.
The previous years had allowed him to develop his ideas and musical understanding, work through some of his technical deficiencies, and take in invaluable lessons from musicians of the highest calibre (including Charlie Parker and Miles Davis). The shedding of his dependency on heroin can be seen as the final step in that process, leaving him ready to make the ascent to the next level of personal and artistic maturity.
He is notoriously self-critical of his playing, especially on record, but those recordings – from all points of his long career – contain some of the most brilliant and imperishable jazz ever committed to tape, and none more so than Saxophone Colossus.
The album’s best known cut is St Thomas, an infectious calypso based on a traditional melody which became the most celebrated of his Caribbean-derived tunes, and has remained a trademark in his repertoire ever since.
Rollins approached all of the tunes through a coherent development of melodic fragments into spontaneous but logically extended improvised choruses. He employed a sophisticated degree of architectural development which was not simply a variation on the accepted bebop model of improvising on the harmonic material (chord changes) of the tune (a process often known as ‘running the changes’), but an alternative approach, employing a variety of patterns and devices, and much variation of rhythm, shape and texture.
The results impressed the critics, but Saxophone Colossus was also the record which really established Rollins as a major jazz name with the public, and remains an undisputed classic.
Miles Davis
Birth Of The Cool
Young bop trumpeter and hip arrangers invent cool jazz.
Record label: Capitol
Produced: Pete Rugolo
Recorded: New York; January–April 1949 and March 1950
Released: February 1957
Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)
Personnel: Miles Davis (t, ar); Kai Winding, J J Johnson, Mike Zwerin (tb); Junior Collins, Sandy Sielgelstein (French horn); Bill Barber (tb, ar); Lee Konitz (as); Gerry Mulligan (bs, ar); Al Haig (p); John Lewis (p, ar); Joe Schulman, Nelson Boyd, Al McKibbon (b); Max Roach, Kenny Clarke (d); Kenny Hagood (v); Gil Evans (ar)
Track Listing: Move; Jeru; Moon Dreams; Venus De Milo; Budo; Deception; Godchild; Boplicity; Rocker; Israel; Rouge; Darn That Dream
Running time: 35.57
Current CD: Capitol Jazz 5301172
Further listening: Miles Ahead (1957); Porgy And Bess (1958); The Complete
