''The Solo Album'' is a live album featuring a solo performance by
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
saxophonist Sonny Rollins recorded at the Sculpture Garden of the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
in New York City and released on the
Milestone
A milestone is a numbered marker placed on a route such as a road, railway line, canal or boundary. They can indicate the distance to towns, cities, and other places or landmarks; or they can give their position on the route relative to so ...
label in 1985.Sonny Rollins discography accessed 23 September 2009
Reception
Calling it "a major disappointment" and " e of the few complete duds of Sonny Rollins' career,"
Allmusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
reviewer Scott Yanow describes the album as a "rambling live session" that "sounds as if Rollins were merely warming up, playing whatever came into his mind without any thought of developing a coherent statement". While Yanow's retrospective view differs dramatically from the generally favorable critical reaction accorded the album's release, one contemporary reviewer, jazz historian and ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the U ...
'' critic
Leonard Feather
Leonard Geoffrey Feather (13 September 1914 – 22 September 1994) was a British-born jazz pianist, composer, and producer, who was best known for his music journalism and other writing.
Biography
Feather was born in London, England, into an u ...
, foreshadowed Yanow precisely and passionately. Stating that the album, "complete with fleeting quotes from '
Pop Goes the Weasel
"Pop! Goes the Weasel" (Roud 5249) is a traditional English and American song, a country dance, nursery rhyme, and singing game that emerged in the mid-19th century. It is commonly used in Jack-in-the-box toys and for ice cream trucks. The song ...
', '
Jim
Jim or JIM may refer to:
* Jim (given name), a given name
* Jim, a diminutive form of the given name James
* Jim, a short form of the given name Jimmy
* OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism
* ''Jim'' (comics), a series by Jim Woodring
* ''Jim ...
', '
Mairzy Doats
“Mairzy Doats” is a novelty song written and composed in 1943 by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston. It contains lyrics that make no sense as written, but are near homophones of meaningful phrases. The song's title, for example, i ...
' and a dozen other sources, suggests what one might hear if any Rollins-like saxophonist were caught warming up in the dressing room," Feather went further, taking some of his colleagues to task:
It is alarming that a genuine colossus of jazz, rightly hailed 25 years ago as an emperor, can remove his raiments and be seen by responsible critics as fully clothed. What is happening to critical responsibility? To Sonny Rollins? To jazz? One star.
Feather was not entirely alone; '' High Fidelity'' cited "Rollins' obvious discomfort and nervous flitting about," which "ultimately grinds ''The Solo Album'' down to the level of a hip parlor game." Still, theirs was decidedly the minority view. ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' critic
Jon Pareles
Jon Pareles (born October 25, 1953) is an American journalist who is the chief popular music critic in the arts section of ''The New York Times''. Others sounded a similar theme, including '' Saturday Review's'' John Swenson, who described the album as "nearly an hour fRollins develop ngstunning solo ideas that rank with some of the best playing of his career," ''
The Providence Journal
''The Providence Journal'', colloquially known as the ''ProJo'', is a daily newspaper serving the metropolitan area of Providence, Rhode Island, and is the largest newspaper in Rhode Island. The newspaper was first published in 1829. The newspape ...
's'' Jim MacNie, who called it "an amazing tour de force," and ''
The Boston Phoenix
''The Phoenix'' (stylized as ''The Phœnix'') was the name of several alternative weekly periodicals published in the United States of America by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts, including the ''Portland Phoenix'' a ...
'', which named it one of the top 10 jazz albums of 1985.
The reviewer for ''The Saxophone Symposium'', a periodical of the
North American Saxophone Alliance
The North American Saxophone Alliance (NASA) is an organization for saxophone players from around North America.
History
Following the lead of their colleagues in France, who created the Association of French Saxophonists in 1971, the North Ame ...
, described his "considerable time spent" with Rollins' album as " obably one of my most intense recent listening experiences," while '' Musician's'' Chip Stern called the album "a wondrous thing, like the peak of some inscrutable mountain parting through the clouds for the first time," noting its emphasis of "melodic rhythmic development over the harmonic," and ascribing to Rollins' improvisation "a stately thematic inevitability that would do Mozart proud."
Track listing
:''All compositions by Sonny Rollins''
# "Soloscope, Part 1" - 28:15
# "Soloscope, Part 2" - 27:55
:*Recorded at the Sculpture Garden of the Museum Of Modern Art, NYC on July 19, 1985
Personnel
*Sonny Rollins -
tenor saxophone
The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while ...