0:04

Hello everyone, Kirk here, still cranking away on

0:07

Strong Song Season 6 and still dropping bonus

0:09

episodes into the feed to tide you all

0:11

over while you wait. This is a bonus

0:13

episode from 2022 that was originally Patreon exclusive

0:15

and now is released to the wild. It

0:17

followed on to Episode 91, Strong Solo's Volume

0:19

1 and talked about two of the soloists,

0:22

really one of the soloists in particular from

0:24

that episode. If you haven't listened to that

0:26

episode, I'd recommend listening to it before listening

0:28

to this, but it's not a huge deal

0:30

if you could listen to this on its

0:32

own as well and it might even get

0:34

you interested in Sonny Rollins, one

0:37

of the soloists that I focused on

0:39

in that episode. Alright, I'm going to

0:41

throw it to my past self to take us away. This

0:48

month I'm going to be talking about some more

0:50

solos that I really like because one of my

0:53

episodes this past month in May was focusing on

0:55

solos and would you believe it that there are

0:57

more solos that I'd like to talk about than

0:59

I was able to fit into that episode. So

1:01

I actually really want to focus on the great

1:04

Sonny Rollins, tenor saxophonist. Sonny Rollins, one of my

1:06

saxophone heroes and someone who, because I talked about

1:08

him so much on that main episode, I probably

1:10

won't talk about him again for a while on

1:12

the show, but I do really want to just

1:15

share a few more of his solos and some

1:17

more thoughts on him since he's a

1:19

really important musician to me and I'd love for some

1:21

of you to maybe be introduced to Sonny Rollins or

1:23

to go listen to him again if you haven't listened

1:25

to him in a while because he's really one of

1:27

the greatest improvisers who ever lived. And

1:29

as a bonus, I also want to talk a

1:31

little bit more about Max Roach because I referenced

1:34

Max Roach's drum solo a bit

1:36

on the main episode about solos, but

1:38

I didn't talk about him as much

1:40

as I think Max deserves. So we're

1:42

going to get a side serving of

1:44

Max Roach here as we focused mostly

1:46

on Sonny Rollins. So let's start with

1:48

his 1956 album, Saxophone Colossus, which I've mentioned

1:50

is one of my favorite albums of all

1:52

time. And that's not just because of the

1:54

saxophone playing, that's also because of the drumming

1:56

by drummer Max Roach. This is actually some

1:58

of the best drumming you'll find. where

2:00

the saxophone player was the band

2:02

leader. So

2:07

like I mentioned, Sonny takes two solos on

2:09

this recording. He takes this first one, where

2:11

they're keeping that Calypso groove going, and then

2:13

there's a drum solo from Max, and then

2:15

afterward he plays this swing solo. There's this

2:17

swing kind of sax solo that's pretty burning.

2:19

But before that, there's a drum solo from

2:21

Max Roach that's just as good. It's such

2:24

a cool drum solo. Check it out.

2:41

So if

2:47

you're listening closely, you can probably kind of hear

2:49

what he's doing. He's keeping a really steady groove

2:52

going, and then building his solo on top of

2:54

that groove. So he's using his feet,

2:56

his right foot on the kick drum, and his left

2:58

foot on the high hat to keep this just steady

3:00

thing going. He's just playing like a kind of a

3:02

light four on the floor on the kick drum, and

3:04

a kind of two and four high hat kind of

3:06

bounce, like a high hat bounce in the high hat.

3:11

The basic groove that he's got is this nice

3:13

bouncy thing that he's doing on the tom, where

3:15

he just plays this groove. So

3:23

right off the bat he's introducing all these little extra hits.

3:36

And no

3:42

matter how busy his hands get, his feet

3:44

just keep that steady thing going. I

4:03

really like what happens there. You can actually hear him

4:06

turn his snares on in the middle of his solo.

4:08

So I mentioned this in the main episode, but that

4:10

groove that he's playing, he's got the snares turned off,

4:12

so his snare drum just turns into

4:14

another drum that's kind of similar to his toms

4:16

and it gives him that kind of rounded boom

4:18

sound rather than a snare sound, that pop sound

4:20

that you get when the snares are turned on

4:22

and the snares are snapping back against the bottom

4:24

of the drum whenever you hit them. And you

4:26

can actually hear him turn the switch to turn

4:28

the snares on and then his snare drum starts

4:30

sounding like a snare drum. It

4:35

happens right here. So

4:43

a cool thing to listen for is his hi-hat because

4:45

he keeps it going for most of the solo but

4:48

it drops out at times. Like right here, there's no

4:50

hi-hat. But then...

4:55

he starts playing it again. So

5:00

no matter how busy his hands are getting, you just focus on

5:02

that hi-hat, that 2 and 4 and it'll

5:04

keep you oriented in the groove. The

5:15

moment when Max Roach turns on his snares is also

5:17

where he kind of starts playing more of a swing

5:19

feel and the song really has kind of already made

5:21

that transition into swing, which of

5:23

course perfectly leads into Rollins' second solo.

5:33

Because now they're swinging, right? Bass

5:38

is walking, piano is comping, sounds like a

5:40

swing jazz tune. It's

5:46

a famous and widely studied drum solo and one that I wanted to mention

5:49

here on this bonus episode because I

5:51

didn't really have space for it in the main episode,

5:53

but it's really just as strong

5:55

of an example of Motific Development as

5:57

that Sonny Rollins solo. It's just

5:59

a drum solo. just yet another solo, but

6:01

this solo by Max Roach really really cool

6:03

and I love how it connects the two

6:06

parts of the song and actually performs a

6:08

switch from that Calypso groove into swing that

6:10

kind of corresponds with when Max turns his

6:12

snares on. Staying

6:28

on St. Thomas for a moment there's another

6:30

solo that I wanted to talk about that

6:32

actually wasn't performed by Sonny Rollins. It was

6:34

played by Joshua Redmond many years later in

6:36

the late 90s on his live album Spirit

6:38

of the Moment. So if you remember from

6:40

the main episode, Sonny Rollins' solo on St.

6:42

Thomas begins with this very well-known motif that

6:45

he then developed. So

6:56

that's Sonny. That's

7:00

very playful, very cool motif that

7:02

of course every young tenor saxophone

7:04

player would have learned. Joshua Redmond,

7:07

the next generation of saxophone players,

7:09

in 1992 was this young hotshot

7:11

tenor sax player who

7:13

would go on to become one of my

7:15

very favorite saxophone players. As a modern player,

7:18

Joshua Redmond and Chris Potter, two of my

7:20

main influences. I really love Joshua Redmond's playing

7:22

and he recorded this in 1992 live at

7:24

the Village Vanguard and

7:27

came out to play this song and he

7:29

does this extended solo intro to St. Thomas

7:31

that really speaks for itself. He doesn't tell

7:34

the audience that he's about to play St.

7:36

Thomas, well at least he doesn't tell

7:38

them in words. He tells them by playing this.

7:52

So when a tenor saxophone player walks up on stage

7:55

and begins playing these notes, you can

7:57

really only draw one conclusion from it and

7:59

I'm sure most people sitting in this

8:01

audience realized that Redmond was saying, guess

8:03

what everyone, it's St. Thomas time. So

8:16

he's been playing kind of out of time up to

8:18

this point, or at least he's not making it really

8:20

clear where the pulse is. But then here he kind

8:22

of transitions into playing in

8:25

time and playing through the form of the song.

8:33

And then you've got a pulse. So

8:54

this is a really showy and really impressive solo

8:56

on a number of levels, right? For starters, it's

8:58

technically very difficult to do what he's doing, just

9:01

to keep the pulse going to play that groove.

9:03

Okay. That's not too hard on saxophone if you

9:05

know what you're doing, but the jumping that he's

9:07

doing where he's leaping up to that high D

9:09

and his altissimo, that is actually hard to do.

9:11

It's a fun little trick. He's flutter tonguing. He's

9:14

like flinging himself all around the horn. He has

9:16

a very light touch and it's super fun to

9:18

listen to somebody with that kind of dexterity on

9:20

the instrument. But of course it's also interesting because

9:22

he's angering the whole thing around Sonny Rollins'

9:24

original motif from his solo. So he's playing

9:27

this game with the audience and kind of

9:29

showing them all of these different ways that

9:31

he can play with this idea that Sonny

9:33

introduced so many decades earlier. I

9:56

really love this solo. The first time I heard this solo, I

9:59

was in high school and. It just knocked me out.

10:01

It was the most fun I'd heard someone

10:03

have with the saxophone in that kind of

10:05

a solo setting. I wanted to

10:07

play exactly like this. I was so obsessed with the

10:09

solo. And I was playing alto sax at the time,

10:11

so I couldn't actually recreate all the sounds he was

10:13

making. The minute I got a tenor sax

10:15

in my hands a year later, I think I started

10:17

playing tenor. I think I first heard this

10:19

my junior year of high school, and my senior year was

10:22

when I switched from alto to tenor. And

10:24

I started playing tenor and was like, oh my gosh, yes,

10:26

I can finally play the low D. I can finally do

10:28

the thing. I immediately started trying to figure out how

10:30

to play that high altissimo D, which was something

10:32

I didn't learn how to do until much, much

10:34

later. But this solo just totally knocked me out

10:36

because I saw what he was doing. I felt

10:38

like he was communicating with me. I felt in

10:41

on the joke in this certain way. And I

10:43

really like that about the solo. I think that

10:45

it welcomes people in in a pretty cool way.

11:14

So staying on saxophone colossus for another little

11:16

bit here, there's another track on this album

11:19

that's just as famous as St. Thomas. It's

11:21

actually the last track on the album. The

11:24

blues written by Rollins and it's

11:26

called Blue Seven. This

11:38

is actually the melody that you're listening to right now,

11:40

such as it is. It's a pretty simple melody. But

11:44

what I want to point you toward is the way

11:46

that Rollins begins this solo. Man,

12:03

what

12:05

an opening chorus of a

12:07

blue solo. I

12:14

really almost talked about this song on strong solos. I

12:16

went with St. Thomas, it was a little bit more

12:18

fun, and he uses Notific Development

12:21

in a slightly more obvious way, but what

12:23

he's doing here is really cool, and it's

12:25

also a great example of using the full

12:27

ensemble to express something that no soloist could

12:30

ever express on their own. So

12:32

for starters, Blue 7 is a big

12:34

showpiece for Doug Watkins, the bassist on

12:36

Saxophone Colossus. It begins with just

12:39

him playing this killer, like, walk-in bass line

12:41

through a Bb blues, and it

12:43

really focuses on his bass line throughout the

12:45

recording, but he really plays by himself at

12:47

the beginning. So

12:55

Max is over there on the bell, he's also

12:57

playing the hi-hat, so he's playing a swing groove,

12:59

but you'll notice that Tommy Flanagan is not playing

13:01

piano, and he doesn't even play on the melody.

13:09

Rollins was actually fond of playing with just

13:11

bass and drums, it gave him more room

13:13

to work harmonically, but he actually uses Flanagan

13:16

very well on this recording, and I love

13:18

Flanagan's entry there at the start of Rollins'

13:20

solo, right at the start of the next

13:22

chorus. Here we go. So

13:39

that's some masterful comping by Flanagan and some

13:41

really nice phrasing from Rollins. I didn't want

13:43

to give anyone the impression that jazz comping,

13:45

or, you know, accompanying when you're improvising the

13:47

chords on piano or guitar, that comping has

13:49

to work that way, where you're only playing

13:52

in the spaces left by the soloist, because

13:54

that's not how it works. A

13:56

Good accompanist will play all over the place, they'll just

13:58

know how to kind of... Accentuate and

14:00

accompany the lines being played by the improviser.

14:02

But that's simply not the case that you're

14:05

only doing your job if you're playing in

14:07

the space. however, at the beginning of a

14:09

solo like this and particularly when the piano

14:11

hasn't played up to this points, this is

14:13

a really nice we'd do it because it

14:15

accentuates the piano and it brings out these

14:18

other colors and the ensemble that you haven't

14:20

heard yet. Visited

14:34

same thing as he's medicaid to schools.

14:45

Who Seven as a Real So stop or

14:48

it's a great track to go out on.

14:50

It's eleven minutes long, which is pretty long

14:52

for vinyl. It takes up almost the whole

14:54

second side of my vinyl copy of this

14:56

album, and it also features yet another great

14:58

drum solo from Max Roach. So

15:05

many listeners a solo alongside his solo from

15:07

St. Thomas you can tennis or to get

15:09

a sense of what sort of a mine

15:11

said he was in when he came to

15:13

his soul as because again he's keeping the

15:15

city thing going here is Simon says that

15:17

slang slang allowing that he's got going in

15:19

the ride along with that really heavy to

15:22

suck on the high has surveying thing that

15:24

has lengthened. That's

15:34

kind of his recurring motif. He's playing everything

15:36

in the spaces around that recurring swing figure,

15:39

these playing on the ride cymbal, Kind

15:47

of centers the whole solo and it makes it

15:49

really easy to grab hold of that and keep

15:51

up with what he's doing and follow his phrasing.

16:00

Max Roach is every bit as important of

16:02

a part of Saxophone Colossus as Sonny Rollins.

16:04

that's going on I'm talking about. It's really

16:06

those two solos though. He does some great

16:08

playing on the other tracks as well. So

16:10

good at this album Out it's a really

16:13

cool record may have. This has given you

16:15

a few things to listen for as you

16:17

find a way around it. but again there's

16:19

there's more teams on this album as well

16:21

and disband sound some some wonderful sounds and

16:23

work together to beautifully. So nineteen Fifty seven

16:25

a year after he recorded Saxophone Colossus, Sonny

16:27

Rollins actually got really into playing in a

16:29

trio. With a bass drums and tenor

16:31

saxophone and nobody plane courts which freedom

16:34

up harmonically, there's a legendary recording of

16:36

him live at the Village Vanguard actually

16:38

the same club adjuster Ribbon would plan

16:40

others decades later during that Zola version

16:42

of St. Thomas they talked about earlier.

16:44

Sonny Rollins live at the Village Vanguard

16:46

is a classic recording because Sunday was

16:48

experimenting with all this cool stuff with

16:50

the trio with bass, drums and saxophone

16:52

the full name of The Elements and

16:55

Night at the Village Vanguard and on

16:57

most of the tracks he's playing with

16:59

Wilbur were on. The Base and the great

17:01

Elvin Jones who have forced to become seen

17:03

as playing with John Coltrane's playing drums. In

17:22

the nineteen sixties rounds. went on to do

17:24

a bunch of other cool stuff is a

17:26

great ambulance his called the Bridge which doesn't

17:29

have any piano but does teacher gym. Hall

17:31

on the guitar surrounds us or is kind

17:33

of pushing away from the piano, bass, drum,

17:35

saxophone quartet models and kind of embracing other

17:38

ways of getting chords are not having and

17:40

cores that are answered great sounds. Tim Hall

17:42

on the electric guitar. So

17:57

The Bridge a great album fermenting sixty Two, but

17:59

I wanted to. Play one more Sonny Rollins

18:01

Solar an excerpt from one More Sonny Rollins

18:03

solo for All Of You from another album

18:05

is actually recorded in Nineteen Fifty Seven. There

18:08

wouldn't be released until a couple of years

18:10

later. It's an album that I've actually talked

18:12

about on a queue, an episode of Song

18:14

Songs and album called Sunny Side Up that

18:17

was led by Dizzy Gillespie and featured a

18:19

sextet with both Sonny Rollins and Sunny Step,

18:21

another great saxophonist both playing saxophone. So kind

18:23

of trading off and now can to. A

18:26

gimmick of the album was that there were

18:28

two guys name's any sense that mostly. Played

18:30

tennis they were mostly both playing tenor saxophone so

18:32

on at least one practicing said place else has

18:34

to say says also a great alto sax player

18:36

and one of the rare jazz is a sons

18:39

who shot a lot of mileage out of both

18:41

the also and the tenor saxophone. Shows

18:46

answering a question about battles between musician

18:49

and this is a famous battle between

18:51

Funny Seven Sonny Rollins on tenor sax

18:53

on the album second track called the

18:55

Eternal Triangle. Settle.

18:59

The story about how the for some I

19:01

heard the phrase us it's Sunny said one

19:03

whatever that means For however time I came

19:05

to appreciate how much read me wrong. So

19:21

vertical, it's so rhythmically hippie. So in the

19:23

pocket rounds is time. His conception of rhythm

19:25

is one of my favorite things about him.

19:27

He's one of them as rhythmically interesting and

19:29

exciting saxophonists who ever lived and for a

19:31

long time. the Eternal Triangle was basically all

19:33

that I associated with Sunny Side Up. I

19:35

owned the album and I would listen to

19:38

the Eternal Triangle stay open with on the

19:40

Sunny Side of the Street in that's funny

19:42

as to the some they saw as on

19:44

it's but I never really listened to the

19:46

other two tracks on the album, After Hours,

19:48

which is a nice slow blues. The comes

19:50

after the Eternal Triangle and in the final

19:53

track the standard i know that you know

19:55

which. They played really fast and was of

19:57

ten loose on the melody so I just.

20:00

The really stuck around and that was my

20:02

mistake because I know that you know. The

20:04

final track on Sunny Side Up features one

20:06

of the most Smoke and Sonny Rollins well

20:09

as I've ever heard see go through the

20:11

melody it seems like they almost cited by

20:13

year and then immediately go into the south

20:15

and section where the rhythm section just as

20:18

hits on one and Sunny just goes off

20:20

and they keep the stuff I'm going for

20:22

his and prayers solo. Listen to this stuff.

20:44

He just keeps going and going and going and

20:46

going and going. I mean wind him up and

20:48

watch him go actually transcribe this entire solo at

20:50

one point a music school. Don't ask me to

20:53

play it for you right now because they don't

20:55

think that I could but it might be a

20:57

fun one to relearn because just the stamina that

20:59

his demonstrating hear me? This is basically the polar

21:01

opposites of St. Thomas. He's not establishing motif is

21:03

that leaving lot of space for the bad. There

21:05

is no other pandered to him his for him

21:07

in getting out of the weights and he's just

21:10

like unleashing this avalanche of be baffled have a

21:12

very each after a thorough ever eaten of. Moving

21:14

perfectly to the changes:

21:16

Meniscus. Love.

21:25

That I want to leave you with with

21:27

a playful fourth. Had so many Cool idea

21:29

is to be cerebral, he can leave space

21:31

for young fumbles when it came down to

21:33

it for guides us has sauce. Metal.

21:53

Do it for this bonus money! So taking

21:55

an extra little look at Sonny Rollins, one

21:58

of my very favorite musicians. My favorite saxophone

22:00

and a player who had a huge influence

22:02

on me in terms of his conception, his

22:04

sound, his swing, his feel. I mean I

22:06

can play like any musician in the world.

22:08

I think I'd say like Sonny Rollins and

22:10

he I mean if I could play like

22:12

any drummer in the world, there's a fair

22:14

chance that it be Max Roach. So little

22:16

bit of extra Max Roach in here as

22:18

well. Thanks so much to all of you

22:20

for listening and thanks to all my patrons.

22:22

Just as a reminder, Strong Son's as a

22:25

totally listener supported so and if you want

22:27

to help me keep making it, go to

22:29

patreon.com/strong Songs and sign. Up If you become

22:31

a patron, you'll get access to the Season

22:33

Six premier. It's two weeks early on February

22:35

ninth and pretty excited about it and we're

22:37

almost of these insects. But for now, I'll

22:39

see you in two weeks for more. Strong,

22:41

some.