Billboard : 04/27/1957
Jazz Special Merit Album

This one is aptly named, and Rollins‘ latest effort should really start musicians buzzing. The tenorman is one of the most vigorous, dynamic and inventive of modern jazzmen. Every track is packed with surprises, tho Rollins develops each solo with great architectural logic. The giant is most satisfyingly supported by the incomparable Max Roach, drums; Doug Watkins, bass, and Tom Flanagan – a modern Teddy Wilson – on piano. You Don’t Know What Love Is shows fantastic ballad invention, or try the fast Strode Rode. You can sell this.

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Miami Herald
Fred Sherman : 06/09/1957

Aptly named is the new Sonny Rollins production by Prestige. It’s called Saxophone Colossus and features a quartet: Rollins, Max Roach, Tommy Flanagan and Doug Watkins. The opening St. Thomas is a gasser with Rollins striding full toned, building the calypsonic mood to a stunning drum solo by Roach. The Flanagan piano picks it up later and spells out cleanly the melodic line of the Rollins original. I enjoyed the emotion in the treatment of Moritat (Mack the Knife of three-penny fame), but honors on the album go to the quartet’s work with Blue 7. The Watkins bass combines powerfully with the drums. A big number on a big record.

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Penguin Jazz Guide
Brian Morton & Richard Cook, 2010

Sonny Rollins said (1987): “For some reason, people speak as if that was my first record, as if I’d appeared in the world at precisely that moment. In fact, I’d been recording since 1949 and practicing 12 hours a day since I was in my teens. It was no surprise that something came of it!”

The Master. Arguably the most compelling improviser in the entire history of the music, Rollins has never settled into a permanent style. Even in his 70s, he continues to exert severe authority over his recorded output, rejecting anything that smacks of repetition or that falls a degree below first rate. The body of recording is quite astonishing, in both amount and quality, and selecting even three or four of his records is problematic.

His older brother was taking classical music lessons and Rollins himself began on piano, switched to alto saxophone, then settled on tenor. He recorded as a teenager with Bud Powell and J.J. Johnson, later with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, and worked in Max Roach‘s group for two years. For the last half-century he has been a leader in his own right. The approach is essentially melodic and even while Rollins is negotiating complex harmonic transitions, his improvising always sounds effortlessly logical.

The undisputed masterpiece from the mid-’50s period is Saxophone Colossus, and although Rollins plays with brilliant invention throughout the run of earlier records, he’s at his most consistent on this disc. St Thomas, his irresistible calypso melody, appears here for the first time, and there is a ballad of unusual bleakness in You Don’t Know What Love Is, as well as a rather sardonic walk through Moritat (alias Mack The Knife). But Blue Seven, as analyzed in a contemporary piece by Gunther Schuller, became celebrated as a thematic masterpiece, where all the joints and moving parts of a spontaneous improvisation attain the pristine logic of a composition. If the actual performance is much less forbidding than this suggests, thanks in part to the simplicity of the theme, it surely justifies Schuller’s acclaim.

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San Bernardino County Sun
Jim Angelo : 07/14/1957

Neither traditional advocate nor cool doctrinaire is Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus, who instrumentally asserts a modernist compromise with an authoritative, hard-swinging beat that flows smoothly into the delicate passages of ballads such as You Don’t Know What Love Is. Tremendous backing by Max Roach, the “Drummer Colossus” of current jazz. A great session.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 05/30/1957
The Tenor Saxophone Is at a Crossroads

The tenor saxophone is going through an interesting transition in jazz. Coleman Hawkins was the man who really made it into a solo instrument with a big, broad tone that cut through a brass ensemble and roared out of the reed section to dominate a band.

Hawk, with his classic version of Body and Soul, carried the concept of “running the changes,” or improvising endlessly on the chord changes of a tune, as far as it would go. True, there were other great soloists contemporary with him – Chu Berry, Dick Wilson, Ben Webster, Bud Freeman, to name a few, but Hawk was king.

Then came Lester Young, whose style was in many ways an inversion of Hawkins, as well as a considerable step ahead in the development of the technique for the horn. Where the Hawk was forceful, swinging straight ahead, with a full, open statement of all he was saying, Lester Young was soft, light, legato, behind the beat, and many times inferential rather than direct. This was so pronounced, that when Young followed Hawkins into the Henderson band he was asked to practice playing like Hawkins and when he couldn’t make it, Young departed. (Chu Berry took his place.)

It wasn’t until the framework of the Count Basie band – which supplied endless blues riffs of a simple individual structure molded into a complex framework, all of which swung with an effortless grace that has never been matched – that Young was able to emerge as a stylist. His career from then on utterly changed the tenor saxophone style. It was a rare tenor who was not directly influenced by Young. His exquisite economy of line, his unfailing swinging phrasing and his great melodic invention will stand as classic points in modern jazz. He was the first music bridge between traditional jazz and swing (he played with King Oliver) and the modernists. Without Lester Young there couldn’t have been a Gillespie or a Parker. Since the advent of Young, this style has been enlarged, specifically by Stan Getz, but we are now witnessing the development of a different approach.

In the work of such young men as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, the makings of a new style is simmering. Just exactly what it will finally become is not yet completely clear. It is clear, however, that it will include the use of longer lines of solo structure (a la Parker), a more intimate relationship to other instruments, particularly the drums, and a return to the central driving core of the Hawkins style – the straight ahead, non-inferential swinging. It will also, it seems, once the tone softens, be particularly adapted to melodic clarity in ballads. One of the best examples of all this to come along so far is a fine new LP called Saxophone Colossus on Prestige. It features Sonny Rollins and is the sort of LP you play over and over. It’s worth it.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 06/06/1957
Which Way Today’s Jazz Drummer?

Last week we had a few words on the development of jazz tenor saxophone from Coleman Hawkins to Sonny Rollins. Today’s subject is drumming.

The original function of the drummer in a jazz band was keeping time and furnishing comic relief. Drummers were comedians; they danced, did tricks (Baby Dodds rolled his stomach; Sid Catlett twirled sticks like a juggler), played on snares, wood blocks, bass drums and occasionally cymbals. They latter were mostly used for punctuation and special effects.

In dance bands the drummer hit the bass drum on 2 and 4, the off-beats, so the dancers knew where to put their feet in a fox trot. As the swing band grew, drummers like Chick Webb, Gene Krupa and most importantly, Jo Jones, changed it. They began a steady 4/4 time on the bass drum, hitting the sock cymbal (the one played with the left foot that goes chink-chink) on 2 and 4. Through the influences of Jones, Dave Tough and others, the emphasis shifted to the cymbal with a whirring sound (RinsoWHITE RinsoWHITE) which cut through the band sections creating excitement as well as establishing a beat.

In Woody Herman‘s Four Brothers band of 1947, Don Lammond was relieved of the responsibility of keeping time, and this task was shifted to the bass and guitar. Lammond was to use his drum battery as he pleased to play figures, explosions and fill-ins. As the result he established a new pattern in big-band drumming in which the bass drum was only used for punctuation.

At the same time drummers like Kenny Clarke, Max Roach and Art Blakey were developing the first approach to melodic, broken-line drumming in small groups. These three, especially the latter, have so influenced drummers today that you find men in cocktail units using the Blakey press roll to end choruses.

Almost all important drum work today is in small combos where the drummer again is time-keeper first of all. The influence of Blakey and his disciple, Philly Joe Jones, has overshadowed the important contributions of both Clarke and Roach. With Blakey and Jones the drums often dominate a group and seem played with a lack of regard for the other instruments. Clarke and Roach, on the other hand, appear to have gone beyond this to a point where drumming has become a melodic as well as a rhythmic task with full utilization of the possible sounds to be derived from the battery. Roach’s solos particularly on Max Roach Plus Four and Saxophone Colossus are remarkable exercises in rhythm and melody in which articulation in double time is not constant. Listen to these two LPs for an indication of what the future may have in store for jazz drumming.

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Saturday Review
Wilder Hobson : 05/25/1957

The tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins grows in interest and supple force (he is already in the forefront of the tribe) and it is especially pleasing to hear him take off on the basis of Kurt Weill‘s celebrated Moritat from “The Beggar’s Opera”. It is, indeed, fascinating to hear him pronounce that air before taking off – a lesson in the nuances of jazz phrasing. And the disc also, contains, among other things, a superb blues and a winning West Indian suggestion, St. Thomas. The supporting cast are the Messrs. Flanagan and Watkins, referred to in the previous record, and Max Roach, drums. One of the things I admire about Rollins is his steady effect of freshness, robustiousness, and inventive daring in a period when a good deal of jazz seems too polished to be alive.

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Down Beat : 06/27/1957
Ralph J. Gleason : 5 stars

Almost as if in answer to the charge that there is a lack of grace and beauty in the work of the New York hard-swingers comes this album in which Rollins displays humor, gentleness, a delicate feeling for beauty in line, and a puckish sense of humor. And all done with the uncompromising swinging that has characterized them all along.

The treatment of Moritat, for instance, or Blue Seven, show Rollins in particularly interesting statements and restatements of ideas. The latter tune is an especially compelling work. From the fascinating bass introduction, through the discontinuity of Sonny’s first chorus, the piano solo, the duet between Sonny and Max, on through the rest of the piece till the final fade out – it is all modern jazz of the first rank.

Rollins’ playing on the slow ballad, You Don’t Know What Love Is was a moving experience for me to hear. A gentle, easy, careful man – rather like a giant male nurse handling a particularly angry wound.

Flanagan‘s solo on this track is a thing of rare beauty. He has an unusually gentle tone on the piano. Watkins bass through the track and the entire LP is a continuingly deft, elemental, and propelling force.

Lest you should think I am overlooking Roach, I would like to say that this record contains, for me, some of the best drum breaks and solos I have ever heard.

Roach continues to be head and shoulders above every drummer in his musical conception of a drum solo, in his exploration of the potentialities of the instrument, and his unfailing good taste in the use of the sounds and combinations of sounds his explorations produce.

His solo on Blue Seven is, to me, the delineation in the very definite form of the direction the drum solo must go. Max allows full value to the tones he can draw from his battery; he thinks of figurations always in the musical terms and, in short, is the musical thinker on the drums that no other drummer has appeared to be, despite their excitement, their drive, and their overwhelming swing.

In no spot on this record does Roach appear to have made one sound without a logical reason for its being there. He understands the use of economy, too. And this is a virtue of which he is almost the only possessor.

I find this entire album excellent on all counts and for all persons concerned (the recorded sound is a gas, by the way). But I especially endorse it because of the object lesson in how to play the drums.

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Liner Notes by Ira Gitler

One of the Seven Wonders of the World was the Colossus of Rhodes, a bronze statue of Apollo, 100 feet high, which purportedly straddled the channel leading into the post at Rhodes. Erected about 280 B.C., it was felled by an earthquake in 224 B.C.

Sonny Rollins is unlikely to be toppled by an earthquake; he doesn’t live on Rhodes (or in California). His contributions to jazz are of a nature that places them above destruction by earthquakes or any other natural phenomena. To the contrary, Sonny’s playing has caused several noticeable movements on the seismograph of jazz in the past few years.

Of the five selections in this LP, three are originals by leader Rollins, one a ballad standard and the other a tune from a German musical play which became quite popular in the United States during 1956. Each of the five has its own distinctive flavor which makes the listening experience a varied one.

St. Thomas, named for one of the Virgin Islands is an ingratiating calypso melody that you will find yourself humming at unexpected moments. Sonny is one of the New York born jazzmen whose family lineage stems from the West Indies (Arthur Taylor, Mal Waldron, Kenny Drew, Cecil Payne and Ernie Henry are others) and he has heard this beat and type of melody from childhood. His solo is a delight in the way he phrases against, under and around the island rhythmic feeling. Max Roach shines in his featured spot, once again demonstrating his musical approach to the drums.

Chicago, the scene of Sonny’s study period in 1955, is payed homage to in Strode Rode: the Strode Lounge is a local jazz room. The punching minor theme, accented by Max, leads directly into a kinetic solo by Sonny that begins with a passage of pianoless backing. The impeccable Tommy Flanagan is as fluid as ever and fiery in a more overt manner than usual. Sonny and Max exchange thoughts in a bristling conversation before Strode Rode rides out.

Doug Watkins and Max Roach set the solid, medium down groove for Blue 7, a minor blues of power with solos by all. Sonny has several statements of meaning separated by the others’ solo efforts. Max’s fantastic polyrhythms and intelligent construction of ideas make his solo one of his best on record.

You Don’t Know What Love Is is the ballad standard; one which has not been overdone as yet. Add Sonny’s heartfelt version to those of Miles Davis and Dinah Washington as meaningful ones that come immediately to mind.

The German musical mentioned before is The Three Penny Opera and the song Moritat, or as it is popularly known, The Theme From The Three Penny Opera. Sonny shows how a jazzman can make something fresh and different out of material by his very approach and interpretation. When Louis Armstrong recorded it in a vocal and instrumental version, it quite naturally had a jazz feeling, but it was more directly in the realm of “entertainment.” Sonny seems to feel it in a Pres vein as much of his phrasing indicates.

The use of the word colossus brings to mind its adjectival derivative colossal, a word which has had its share of buffeting about among Hollywood’s celluloid hucksters in their press releases regarding many of the empty epics which pass across the screens of the nation. The dictionary says colossal is gigantic, huge, vast. When applied to Sonny Rollins’ talent it also signifies depth.