Sonny Plays Samba!

To say the unexpected has come true would be an understatement. I wake up not only to see Rollins rising from the grave, but also a latin jazz record at my doorstep. The edges dusted, the fine print reads: Sonny Plays Samba!. The record label is scrubbed out, but in a dorsey green Times-New-Roman font the track list goes as follows:

1. Desafinado (Take 1)

2. Desafinado (Take 2)

3. The Girl From Ipanema

4. Autumn Leaves

5. A Pretty Voice Is Nothing

6. If Nothing Is All It Can Say

To say that the cast is not all star would be a plain lie, with Sonny on tenor sax, Max Roach on drums, a surprising choice of Piazzola, on bass concertina, instead of a bassist, and Paul Methney on guitar; no pianist needed, apparently. There are more names too, but I'll get to it.

It’s an interesting choice of players for sure, but Max adapts to the style easily, every track masterfully modulating between son and rumba clave patterns (among other things), on time yet drenched in this sense of relaxation. Piazzola takes a back seat for the majority of the record, a shame really, considering his concertina playing (the closest thing being a bowed contrabass) perfectly delivers in tone what it cannot in birdflight virtuosity.

The speed of Desafinado’s first take is to not be scoffed at. At a whopping 380 bpm, the claves introduce Sonny’s breakneck chops at a speed reminiscent of his own piece B’Quick, no doubt flexing his skill. The drums and bass run a Tumbao boogie as the entire piece blazes through the latin-jazz standard, only briefly touching on the head near the end, and stream of consciousness punch in the gut that elaborates to the point of near verbosity.

The claves rolling over Metheney’s articulate strums, Desafinado’s second take takes a step back to enjoy the scenery. Metheney, much like Piazolla, sadly takes a backseat for the majority of the record, but here is when he shines through, a performance that could never be dedicated to the sheets, a performance between the lines of staves and clefs. Much love to that cat that, resembling George Benson, resembles him in sound if just for a moment

On The Girl From Ipanema, one immediately recognizes the symbiotic relationship between Stan Getz’s and Sonny Rollins throughout the entire piece. Not a moment in the song do they let go of each other, and man, do they kill it, doing what can only be assumed to be two solos occuring at once, not trading off, at once, around the 2:43 minute mark.

Autumn Leaves, on first hearing (and second, and third, and all subsequent hearings), is a let down. Sonny Plays Samba!’s all star cast is, sadly, brought down by newcomer baritone saxophonist John Soren. Green in the ear and a little green in his tone, an otherwise smooth rendition of Autumn Leaves is brought down by the uncomfortable fear in Soren’s quavering sound. While each player on the album sets their character on full display (under the tint of slow waves and cracked coconuts) in every song, the baritone quavers, unsure of itself throughout. The saving grace of the piece comes when the band abruptly ends the piece at 2:45 minutes, overwhelmed with the sound of the quartet laughing and Sonny’s piercing words, “Kid, you an actor or somethin’?”

A surprise entrance from another risen from the grave, Piazzola comes in at the end of the penultimate track, If Nothing Is All It Can Say, with an improvised concertina solo that can only be described through the tenor lick in which he enunciates over, an entire set of chromatic notes so well placed that one would think it to be its own, baroque even, established scale. A beautiful album (I must say), that is, curiously capped off with the cat that lacks. Ripping from Piazzola’s rich articulations and scale, he imitates rather than improves, and his squeaky tone resembles that of a deer caught in the headlights, scrambling towards the static sound signifying the end.

Finishing the album, I sit in the silence of buzzing vinyl, of seren green. You would think one like me would have read it all, heard it all, become all jazz. There was new here, and there was old, not more or less- enough. I looked up the young John Soren to find that he had grown old and frail and renowned and reviled - this very album his apparent “magnum opus”. Listening back, I tried my best to hear the “genius”, the “pureness” of a baritone like his, and heard nothing but a bitter noise - listened so hard that the flickering static crooned it’s own melody - and a weak, weak player.

I am self - aware in this apparent ignorance, at least, and in that I find a resignation letter with my name written neatly at the bottom. Though I feel sadness in my soon-to-be absence from critique, I can at least find comfort that my jazz, the jazz of the 50’s, always contained some semblance of truth to its name; one that, even if unconsciously, reached out and flew me to the ever expanding sonic horizon, one I had hopelessly perceived as static.