Billboard : 02/17/1958
Four stars

Recorded “live,” the boss of the “hard” school of modern tenormen, Sonny Rollins, turns in his usual high-level performances. With just bass – Wilbur Ware – and drums – Elvin Jones – for support, one hears the hard driving tenoring associated with this artist, but, in this case, Rollins gives indication of probing for newer and better ways to express himself. Ware and Jones both show signs of becoming important voices on their instruments. Sell to modern buyers inclined to volatile, open swing.

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Cashbox : 03/01/1958

Rollins, one of the most influential tenor sax men around, lends lyrical approach to six selections with the help of a trio consisting of himself, bassist Wilbur Ware, and drummer Elvin Jones. One of the tunes, Softly As In A Morning Sunrise, in which Ware and Jones have a lot to say is one of the stand out issues, as in Sonnymoon For Two, an original penned by Rollins. Top jazz addition.

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Audio
Charles A. Robertson : May, 1958

For twenty-three years, under the guidance of Max Gordon, the Village Vanguard has fostered fresh talent and forecast new trends in entertainment. By coincidence, the first recording date before a live audience on the premises marks the premiere engagement of Sonny Rollins as leader of his own group. In the two opening weeks, he tried working with a trumpet and two different rhythm sections. By the time engineer Rudy Van Gelder set up his equipment in the club, a compact trio, with Wilbur Ware on bass and drummer Elvin Jones, spotlighted the highly personalized Rollins’ tenor sax. It is an East Coast version of the instrumentation that worked so successfully on his Contemporary album, Way Out West.

Similarly calculated to please a varied public, the program lists three standards as settings for the original concepts and fresh melodic ideas of Rollins on Old Devil Moon, Softly As in a Morning Sunrise, beautifully paced by Ware’s long solo, and I Can’t Get Started. Two improvisations by Rollins, Striver’s Row and Sonnymoon for Two, show his impassioned and healthy feeling for the blues. His passages on a modern standard, A Night in Tunisia, are inventive, and Pete La Roca, a new drummer, sits in for a well-applauded solo with Donald Bailey on bass. Altogether, a happy session before a friendly and cooperative gathering.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 04/27/1958

Searing and red is the work of Sonny Rollins, hottest of the tenor men. His sax is spotlighted on A Night at the Village Vanguard. It’s trio work, rare for a reed man. Wilbur Ware plays bass and Elvin Jones is on drums for five of the six tracks. On a ripping treatment of Night in Tunisia, Rollins gets the beat from Don Bailey, bass, and Pete La Roca, drums.

This is pretty much a hard bop show with Rollins working with a live audience. It helps. Ware and Jones get in their best work on Softly as in a Morning Sunrise; a series of solos and then out with the duet. This album is for the jazz pro.

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Milwaukee Journal
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/08/1958
Rollins is ‘Not Important’ but Movement Is

Theodore Walter (Sonny) Rollins was born in New York City 30 years ago and is today the most important single influence on tenor saxophone players in jazz. What Rollins – and his running mate, John Coltrane – have done is obvious once you hear him. The tenor saxophone has once again been given an individual style, one which reflects influences, naturally, but which is not cast in the mold of a predecessor. The role of a pacesetter, stylist and major influence sets heavily on the broad shoulders of Rollins. He is a tall, sturdy man with an exotic cast to his features that is accentuated by a Vandyke, an aquiline nose and piercing eyes. He looks serious and he is serious – about his music.

“A performance is very important to me,” he told me recently. “As my wife can attest to, I’m bugged it things don’t happen right. It’s very serious to me. I try not to be too much aware of being an influence, but it’s somewhat disconcerting and it’s an added responsibility. I do have some friends I know, but it puts more pressure on me and I feel I have to produce. Much more pressure than when I was a sideman. Everything’s on my shoulders now! I have to sound good.

“I plan to do a lot of things yet. I want to do new things, improve my facility, make a little more extensive use of harmonies on the instrument. A lot of things I hear I can’t do exactly and there are millions of things to do. I like to think of myself as always changing and developing. I hear something and try to work toward it. I’m pleased when people tell me my records sound different from each other, but I have yet to make my favorite record. Some I like better than others, but I haven’t actually made a crazy record yet, one where I could say I was playing very good. I can’t listen to them more than a few times. When I’m playing I try to please myself and I’ve found that if I’m in any way satisfied with what I do the audience is generally pleased, too.

“I can’t say I really prefer any other tenor. There are so many. Two of my contemporaries, Coltrane and Frank Foster – are the boys I dig the most; then the older guys, the giants, like Hawk and Lester, Ben Webster and Don Byas. I could actually stop there. They are the guys who have done the most.”

What does Rollins think is the most important thing for young jazz musicians? “Practice,” he says. “The main thing is practice. Steady practice. Assuming there is talent, the next thing is development and it can come only from digging, from constant practicing over and over. In music you forget so quickly that unless you practice every day continuously you’ll let a lot go by that you have already learned. It’s not easy, but you have to practice every day. I practice as much as I can. The modern guys all do.

“But I’m not important. Nobody is. This movement is what is important. Jazz has gotten to very important to me. I used to do it without thinking about it but as life progresses it becomes more and more important. Jazz brings people together and anything that brings people together has got to be good.”

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Pittsburgh Courier : 03/08/1958
Harold L. Keith : 4 stars

Sonny Rollins is another gent of no mean inventiveness. On Prestige’s Tour de Force and Blue Note’s A Night at the Village Vanguard, Sonny’s talents are once again weighed and found not wanting from their sheer exuberance.

The Blue Note disc introduces Sonny’s new trio which consists of tenor sax, drums, and bass! Sonny improves on Old Devil Moon, A Night in Tunisia, I Can’t Get Started, Sonnymoon for Two, and Striver’s Row to mention five of the pieces.

The proof of Sonny’s greatness lies in this disc for the buff becomes so entranced at this man’s fantastic gifts that he is completely oblivious of the fact that there is no trumpet, no piano, no guitar, no any other accompaniment other than the deft sticks of Elvin Jones and Pete La Roca, and the steady plucking of Messrs. Donald Bailey (no relation to Jimmy Smith‘s Don Bailey), and Wilbur Ware.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 02/27/1958
Rollins, Coltrane Lead Sax Race

Jazz is a swift-paced art. The originator of the tenor saxophone as a solo instrument (Coleman Hawkins) is still with us and still playing with power and emotion, and the two men who followed him and created the distinct style of the late forties and early fifties (Lester Young and Stan Getz) are still active.

But the saxophonists to whom the young musicians of today listen most are Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, themselves youngsters. Rollins is a sort of gentle giant of a performer who likes to softly probe at the melody in alternation with a complex, double-time improvisation based on the Charlie Parker style. He has been heard in a number of top notch LPs in the past year but his newest one, like one other he has made, shows him playing with a trio (drums and bass) wherein he can be heard in depth.

The album is A Night at the Village Vanguard and it is not only of interest for the ballads and original numbers by Rollins but also for the presence of a remarkable drummer, Elvin Jones, brother of Thad and Hank (that is a most musical family) who is the most exciting drummer to appear since Philly Joe Jones (no relation). The first few times I played this album I actually didn’t listen to Rollins at all, but to the drummer whose technique and driving force are exceptional.

John Coltrane, the other main influence in tenor sax today, is featured in an LP, Blue Train, in which he is heard with a trumpeter (Lee Morgan) and a trombonist (Curtis Fuller). This LP has Coltrane’s two rhythm section associates from the Miles Davis Quintet, drummer Philly Joe Jones and bassist Paul Chambers, to help out. It is a fine example of Coltrane’s style.

He is more concerned at this point in his development with harmonic structure than Rollins is (Rollins is inclined on occasion to improvise on melody) and his playing seems based on a more complex concept. He utilizes the rapid phrases of the Parker-influenced musicians, but has extended his solo statements to a considerably longer degree. Since he is not dependent on his own playing for all the solo work (the other two horns perform admirably), Coltrane seems to have concentrated more emotion in his solos than Rollins has. However it is interesting to compare their approach to ballads; both have an intense lyric feeling.

Neither Rollins nor Coltrane, it seems to me, has yet achieved maturity of style. They seem still to be seeking. I have a suspicion they will make many more changes before they settle. Meanwhile, however, we are in the enviable position of watching them develop, album by album. It is fascinating.

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Down Beat : 05/29/1958
Don Gold : 4 stars

Recorded at New York’s Village Vanguard last year when Rollins was heading this trio there, this is an excellent example of Rollins at work. He has ample opportunity to stretch out here and he takes advantage of it, displaying the virtuosity which has inspired critical recognition.

In most instances, Rollins is capable of sustaining a mood through fluency and freshness. Moon, except for a series of fours with Jones, is all Rollins. Sunrise contains a masterly Ware solo. Row is characteristic Rollins, with sturdily-hewn phrases and flurries of notes. Rollins’ Sonnymoon, a blues-based riff, allows him to surge ferociously for five minutes before giving in to a series of fours with Ware. He continues to gallop through Tunisia and closes with Started, referred to in the notes as the “only ballad” in the set. Brief and barely balladic, it is another indication of Rollins’ relentless attack.

There is little to sooth Kostelanetz fans here, and attempts to hum along are not encouraged, but Rollins does manage to create and perpetuate a simulating tempest of his own (those last three words are vital). Ware is superb throughout. Jones, when he remembers he’s part of a trio and not a horn-laden group, contributes emphatically, too. But this is Rollins’ gig and he makes the most of it, despite sacrificing melodic content for the sake of virile drive.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

This LP constitutes a double premiere. For the first time Sonny Rollins is heard appearing before the public as leader of his own combo. For the first time the Village Vanguard, one of New York’s most proudly prescient night clubs, comes to life through the medium of an in-person recording.

Neither development will come as much of a surprise to anyone who has followed the career of Sonny Rollins as a sound in modern jazz or the Vanguard as a nursery of rising talent.

On a recent night, during the Rollins incumbency at the club, I caught its proprietor, Max Gordon, in a reminiscent mood. “We opened the Vanguard in April, 1935,” he said. “It was originally one of those real Bohemian hangouts. There wasn’t much music for the first couple of years — just a piano player. Then came The Revuers in 1938, with Adolph Green, Betty Comden and Judy Holliday, and with Leonard Bernstein at the piano. The Revuers stayed about a year, and after that we had a lot of folk artists and we began to go in for jazz in the early 1940’s.

“Those Monday night jam sessions — boy! did we have some stars! Nat “King” Cole, Earl Hines, Benny Morton, Vic Dickenson, anyone you can name. I ran into Dizzy Gillespie last summer at Newport and he said, ‘Man, when | see you, it reminds me how old | am.'” A photograph in the book Inside Jazz (formerly known as Inside Bebop) shows a February, 1942 jam session at the Vanguard with Dizzy, Vido Musso, Billy Kyle, Cootie Williams, and Charlie Shavers.”

“When The Revuers came back the second time,” recalls Gordon, “we had Eddie Heywood playing piano, not long after he had left Benny Carter‘s band. At one time he worked with a trio, using Albert Nicholaus and Zutty Singleton. Then we had Art Hodes‘ trio with Maxie Kaminsky and all the great blues folk singers like Josh White and Leadbelly.

In the late 1940s and the early 50s, jazz generally took a back seat at the Vanguard, except for the Dixie spots, it had moved uptown, first to the 52nd Street and then to the Broadway clubs. But in May, 1957, Gordon decided, in his own words, to “refresh the whole entertainment setup.” Since that summer he has used a provocative mixture of the greatest in modern jazz, from Chico Hamilton and Stan Getz to J.J. Johnson, interspersed with verbal entertainment who, in one way or another, were hip enough or sufficiently jazz-associated to please the audiences who had come primarily to inspect the music; men like Mort Sahl and Irwin Corey, who, in their respective categories, may well be the two funniest men alive, and Jack Kerouac, whose occasionally jazz-tinted adventures in his novel, On the Road, led to his employment at the Vanguard, reading some of his own writings to a jazz background.

That Sonny Rollins could fit into such a scene was logical and perhaps inevitable. Gordon had been listening to Rollins on records and then had gone to hear him during Sonny’s tenure with Miles Davis. When Sonny decided to branch out on his own, he offered him the use of the hall.

Sonny spent his weeks at the Vanguard experimenting, toying briefly with the idea of using a quintet. For the first week he had trumpet, piano, bass, drums and himself. The second week he dropped the trumpet and brought in a new rhythm section. Still not feeling that he was getting quite the right presentation, he wound up with the economy-sized combo that turned out to be the most satisfactory to him – the tenor sax-bass-drums trio heard on these sides.

Sonny’s sidemen on five of these six tracks are both familiar to the followers of recent developments in jazz. Wilbur Ware, first heard with Thelonious Monk after he breezed into town from Chicago, has previously been heard on Blue Note with Hank Mobley, BLP 1560, J. R. Monterose, BLP 1536, Lee Morgan, BLP 1538 and Sonny Clark, Dial “S” for Sonny. Elvin Jones, third member of this distinguished Michigan family that produced brothers Thad and Hank, was featured on Thad’s Blue Note album, BLP 1546.

On A Night in Tunisia, which was recorded the same evening but with a different personnel, Sonny used bassist Donald Bailey from Baltimore (not related to the Jimmy Smith drummer of the same name) and Pete La Roca on drums.

From the start it is apparent that Sonny’s motive in whittling down his unit to the compact trio heard here was the concentration of attention on his own personality, an aim well justified by the results when, with no complex arrangements to impede him and nothing but drums driving and bass beating behind him, he tears into four minutes of improvisation on Old Devil Moon, and only gives up momentarily during a series of fours with the drummer. For the last minute or two this track develops into a protracted coda built around the tonic, a device Sonny employs to dramatic effect.

Sonny‘s own announcement introduces Softly As in a Morning Sunrise, in which Wilbur’s own line behind Sonny’s melody is a feature of the first chorus. Sonny’s horn then grabs the spotlight in a performance that reflects his volatile personality – the flurry of notes at the end of the first eight measures is typical. Wilbur then has a long solo, brilliantly conceived and stupendously recorded (courtesy of Rudy Van Gelder). Elvin maintains the kind of beat one would expect from a member of the Jones family, both in his solo and in his fours with Sonny, as well as in the trio passages. Striver’s Row, a Rollins original that closes this side, is a medium-bright performance based on a familiar chord sequence.

The second side opens with Sonnymoon for Two, a simple repeated riff based on the blues, in a descending phrase. The Rollins horn is in control for a full five minutes, impassioned and inventive, before Wilbur relieves him with a series of fours.

A Night in Tunisia, the Dizzy Gillespie composition known in jazz circles for fifteen years, is taken at a faster tempo than usual. Sonny pulls a surprise by changing the melody of the customary interlude between the first and second chorus, while retaining the original pattern of its chord changes. Later on he blows some phrases from Dizzy’s current big band arrangement of the tune. Drummer Pete La Roca, who was discovered at a Jazz Unlimited session in New York, has an impressive solo.

I Can’t Get Started is the only ballad track of the session. The Vernon Duke standard is taken at a slow tempo to which Sonny applies his forceful tone and individual melodic ideas without destroying the original concept of the tune.

Blue Note was happy to have the friendly cooperation of Max Gordon and the Vanguard in the making of these sides, just as jazz fans are happy to have the Vanguard as one of New York’s foremost havens of contemporary jazz – and just as all of us are delighted to see Sonny launched on the road to what should be a brilliant and successful new phase of his career.