Sonny Rollins: Way Out West [CRAFT RECORDINGS]

Why you'll love it

This 180g reissue is cut all-analogue from the original master tapes by Bernie Grundman. AllMusic says the album established Rollins as jazz's top tenor saxophonist, and it was his first record with just bass and drums behind him.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• All-analogue lacquers cut by Bernie Grundman from the original master tapes
• Stereo mix

About the album

A New Yorker flies to Los Angeles, puts on a Stetson and an empty gun belt, and records an album of cowboy songs with two West Coast musicians he has never played with. It sounds like the start of a joke, and the punchline is one of the great jazz records of the 1950s.

Producer Lester Koenig started the session at Contemporary's studio at 3 a.m. on March 7, 1957, to fit everyone's schedules. Johnny Mercer's "I'm an Old Cowhand" trots along to Shelly Manne's clip-clop wood blocks, "Wagon Wheels" rolls on for ten easy minutes, Duke Ellington's "Solitude" glows, and Rollins' own "Come, Gone" and "Way Out West" swing hard. With no piano, Ray Brown's bass carries the harmony and Rollins has all the room in the world.

William Claxton shot the famous desert cover, which was Rollins' own idea. Four hours in, Koenig noted, the tired trio declared themselves just getting warmed up, which is not a phrase we have ever heard from anyone at 7 a.m.

Also at Kops: more Sonny Rollins on vinyl · browse Classic Jazz

Tracklist

Listen

On Contemporary / Craft Recordings (cat# CR00434), a reissue of the 1957 album.