Sonny Rollins - Freedom Suite (1974 Japanese Milestone Vinyl LP Mono)

Vinyl: VG+
Sleeve: VG+
Obi: None

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Sonny Rollins - Freedom Suite | Vinyl LP Mono - 1974 Japanese Riverside/Milestone Reissue (SMJ-6044M, Victor Musical Industries)

Rollins was one of the most celebrated tenor saxophonists in America and couldn't rent an apartment in New York City because of the colour of his skin. His liner notes for this album were direct: "America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humor, its music. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity." The statement was too much for Riverside. The label pulled the album shortly after release and reissued it under the title Shadow Waltz with new, diplomatically softened liner notes by producer Orrin Keepnews. But the music on side A doesn't soften anything. The "Freedom Suite" opens with a short, almost childlike melody, the kind of phrase that could be a playground chant, and Rollins spends 19 minutes disassembling and rebuilding it across four sections. The trio moves from a brisk opening jaunt through a passage that sounds like a work song or chain gang melody, into a ballad where Rollins's tone turns husky and vulnerable, then back up into a final burst of pure bebop velocity. Pettiford and Roach are not accompanists here. They are equal voices.

Side B steps away from the political weight into standards: Noël Coward's "Someday I'll Find You," two takes of Meredith Willson's "Till There Was You" (this Japanese pressing includes both takes 3 and 4, one more than the original US LP), and "Shadow Waltz" to close. It's the lighter counterpart to the suite, but Rollins's playing on even the show tunes carries a tension and invention that lifts them well past routine interpretations. Pettiford and Roach had both played with Rollins on Monk's Brilliant Corners the year before, and the three musicians understand each other's rhythmic language at a level that makes the pianoless format feel not stripped down but wide open. Pettiford died in Copenhagen in September 1960, barely two years after this session, making Freedom Suite one of his last major recordings.

This is the 1974 Japanese mono reissue on Riverside/Milestone SMJ-6044M, number 8 in the Riverside Original Recording Series, made by Victor Musical Industries.