Billboard : 11/18/1957
Special Merit Jazz Album

The public has yet to catch up with musicians in their appreciation of this superb tenor saxophonist, who combines the best of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Charlie Parker. This set is as good as most he has turned out lately, and especially illuminating in that his vehicles include eight quality standards. One of them, Toot Toot Tootsie, shows the man’s unusual musical wit. Dealers who show this will be able to sell the other Rollins albums as well.

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Cashbox : 11/30/1957

The noted tenor saxist once again displays why he is considered one of the best artists around on the instrument. Rollins receives expert assistance from such jazz mainstays as Sonny Clark (piano), Percy Heath or Paul Chambers (bass), and Roy Haynes (drums). The group renders strong interpretations of The Last Time I Saw Paris, Toot Toot, Tootsie, Every Time We Say Goodbye, and six others. Waxing has the ingredients for strong approval from the jazz buffs. Inventive sessions.

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American Record Guide
Martin Williams : January 1958

Tenor saxist Sonny Rollins belongs to the line which includes Johnny Dodds, Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker, not to the cooler line which includes Jimmy Noone, Johnny Hodges, and Lester Young. That he has long been a much better-than-good soloist can be heard on several of the Monk and Davis sets above, but the growing maturity and discipline which showed on Saxophone Colossus (Prestige 7079) and Way Out West (Contemporary C-3530) was coupled with a rare power and immediacy. The Sound of Sonny is almost a portrait of a man relaxing after his triumphs. It is made up of brief performances of nine pieces with a rhythm section. One of the chief virtues of his playing on the Prestige and Contemporary sets is that it shows his willingness to meet the pressing problem of extended solos with a directness and sense of unfolding structure that few jazzmen, except certain pianists, have ever shown. Thus one might here expect statements of compactness and concentration. Instead we often do not get much past the manner (even the mannerisms) of his playing (and some of his wit) and the track is over. Certainly he is not helped by some trite piano.

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Audio 
Charles A. Robertson : January, 1958

At his previous recording dates, Sonny Rollins has been asked to exhibit as many facets of his personality as possible, usually alternating the complexities of a long ad-lib number with the lighter treatment of a popular tune. This last side comes to the fore, as he fronts a quartet of pianist Sonny Clark and drummer Roy Haynes, with Percy Heath and Paul Chambers sharing duties on bass, on eight standards and Cutie, an original ballad. In this capacity, he is unexcelled among today’s crop of tenor saxophonists. With a sense of time as accurate as a bass player, he has the control to give direction to his instrument in imaginative and singular lines. His sound has matured to a fullness of warmth and lyricism that can only be compared to a Coleman Hawkins or a Ben Webster, had they been born twenty years later. Rollins plays It Could Happen to You unaccompanied, and gives new form to The Last Time I Saw Paris, Mangoes, and the Al Jolson favorite, Toot, Toot, Tootsie, in a program of songs not too often heard.

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Oakland Tribune
Russ Wilson : 01/12/1958

Generally regarded as the outstanding new man on tenor saxophone, Rollins displays the varied facets of his style in eight numbers with rhythm accompaniment and another which he does solo.

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Pittsburgh Courier : 11/16/1957
Harold L. Keith : 4 stars

The third Riverside release up for comment is that of The Sound of Sonny on which Rollins is supported by the basses of Heath and Chambers, the drums of Roy Haynes and the pianissimos of Sonny Clark.

Here’s another testimonial to the generally accepted fact that Sonny is evolving into one of the legendary figures on the tenor sax. Dig him on Just in Time and Cutie. Sonny’s remarkable feel for his instrument, plus an inimitable tone set him apart from the rest of his ilk. A great album for the collectors of jazz.

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San Bernardino County Sun
Jim Angelo : 01/18/1958

Intense and robust it the deep-toned tenor of Sonny Rollins, a “post-bop” sax man who displays his multi-faceted talents on The Sound of Sonny. He swings lightly on The Last Time I saw Paris, achieves a haunting, moody atmosphere on What is There to Say, and enunciates with brusque authority the bouncy novelty Toot Toot Tootsie. Ballads such as Dearly Beloved and Every Time We Say Goodbye are handled with tasteful understanding and delicacy.

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San Francisco Chronicle
Ralph J. Gleason : 11/17/1957

A well recorded, excellently played collection of nine numbers featuring the vital young tenor saxophonist with a rhythm section. It is one of the delights of listening to Rollins that he consistently picks unusual pop tunes to record. This time it’s Toot Toot Tootsie, a gas of an oldie from the Twenties.

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St. Paul Recorder
Albert Anderson : 01/17/1958

On the other Riverside album, Sonny Rollins shows why he is considered the most fast-rising of the young saxmen. The strong-toned tenor sax star runs through a fine session on The Sound of Sonny Rollins. However, one cannot say that on the platter Rollins sounds solely like himself. At times, he sounds like the old master, Coleman Hawkins, at others, a bit like the “Bird” (Parker), and on occasion, like Lester Young. But on one number specifically Sonny shows individuality, fine wit, and musicianship. This is a thing called Toot Toot Tootsie, on which he really takes off. This album will sell, there is no doubt about it. It is slanted directly to the solid modern jazz crowd.

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Down Beat : 12/26/1957
Dom Cerulli : 4 stars

The Riverside set finds Sonny in less of a hard blowing groove, and in more of an easy-swinging one. There’s a lightness, a buoyancy in his playing that runs through the album. Even such a threadbare piece as Toot, Toot, Tootsie gains a new lease on life in his horn.

I particularly enjoyed What Is There to Say?, because, somehow, I have connected that tune with an asthmatic tenor band, and Sonny’s sensitive, yet gently moving treatment has erased the unfortunate connotation from my mind. His final cadenza is strongly lyrical.

I found Dearly Beloved and Every Time a shade less inspired than the others. Cutie is intriguing, and Sonny’s unaccompanied It Could Happen to You is startling and meaty; a frightening concept which succeeds because of Rollins’ taste and musicianship. Mangoes, which could become a standard in the jazz repertoire, bounces along saucily.

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Liner Notes by Orrin Keepnews

In the Summer of 1957, when this album was recorded, Sonny Rollins was in the most exciting position a creative artist can possibly occupy: he was swiftly rising to the top in his field. There seemed room for only one argument about his standing in the current jazz picture: was he the bright new star of the year on tenor; or was he already an established master, to be ranked close to the very best on his instrument?

This “problem” was specifically illustrated in the 1957 Down Beat poll of thirty-one of the world’s leading jazz critics. Tabulation of ballots revealed one quite unprecedented result. In the “New Star” category, a clear cut victory among tenor men had been scored by Rollins. But in the general voting, enough other critics had rated Sonny as the tenor (without any reservations about “newness”) to place him second only to so long-standing a star as Stan Getz.

This double-barreled splash marked a quite fitting entrance into the big time for one of the most impressive new jazz figures in many years. There can be no doubt that Sonny is already an artist of major significance; the only question concerns how large his stature and importance can eventually become. As this LP ably demonstrates, Rollins has a big, deep-toned, “funky” tenor sound of the sort that was considered rather out of date in the earlier days of modern jazz, but now – partly because of the resurgence of Coleman Hawkins, but very largely because of the impact of Sonny himself – has come back into favor. He also has a wealth of fresh and intriguing concepts and approaches to jazz. One of these is a frequent tendency to deliberately play out-of-meter during a solo. Actually, to depart from the strict construction of beats, measures and bars is no more drastic a liberty than the basic practice of varying melody and harmony in jazz improvisation; and of course it is not uncommon in current jazz. Some musicians shy away from broken meter simply because you can get to feel pretty foolish if you end up by losing your way, or mislaying the rhythm section’s beat. Sonny, however, employs it to an extent and with a degree of effectiveness that raises this device to an art, and may in time turn it into something of a Rollins trademark.

Rollins belongs, by and large, to the so-called “post-bop” or “hard-bop” school. At times he has been accused of playing with excessive hardness and harshness. This charge may originally have had some degree of accuracy. But is it never safe to make pat statements about a swiftly maturing artist, and by now it should be clear that Rollins commands a great and growing store of warmth and lyricism. It is true that, like most men who possess true creative fervor, he does not always permit easy or comfortable listening. Critic Ralph Gleason has noted that Sonny’s “unusual style” includes “unexpected twists of phrase, a discontinuity of line, great use of space and prolongation of notes,” and refer to his tone as “blustering, sometimes like a great angry shout.” This is apt, if partial (no one writer is easily going to pin down the full essence of this musician); actually, Rollins is far-ranging enough almost to sound as if he were several very dissimilar men. He can swing lightly (as on The Last Time I Saw Paris), can be quite brusque in his interpretation of a tune like the old Al Jolson specialty, Toot, Toot, Tootsie, and can achieve a moody feeling suggesting Ben Webster at his best on a ballad like What Is There to Say.

As is so often the case with apparently meteoric risers, Sonny has been around for several years: playing, learning, improving. Born in New York in September, 1929, he first studied piano, then took up alto, finally switched to tenor at the age of seventeen and just a couple of years later was working and recording with such as Bud Powell, Art Blakey, Tadd Dameron, and Fats Navarro. By 1955, when he was playing alongside the late Clifford Brown in Max Roach‘s quintet, Sonny was still only mildly known to critics and public, but musicians had already tabbed him as a man to watch, and young tenor players were busily picking up on his “hard” or (if you prefer) “non-cool” style. Rollins had become a pacesetter: not only was he leading the way towards a new sax sound, but an alarming number of young saxophonists were arbitrarily adopting his almost immobile playing stance!

By 1957, critic Whitney Balliett had termed him a likely successor to the mantle of Charlie Parker, and Gleason had written that Sonny was “revolutionizing” jazz tenor. The Down Beat results made it clear that a bandwagon was about to roll. But Rollins seems a deeply serious musician, and in no danger of being ruined by adulation. IN the Summer of ’57, he had left Roach and was at times in a featured spot with Miles Davis‘ group, but had expressed an intention to concentrate primarily on further study and on writing for a while. He knows he is good: he’d have to be most insensitive not to realize that – and the confidence to be heard in his horn is probably an important part of his effectiveness. But he seems to realize intuitively that being very good carries its responsibilities, and that he is obligated – both to the music and to himself – to become as good as he possibly can. Unless they find some as-yet-unrevealed way to trip him up, Sonny Rollins appears an excellent bet to be one of the biggest.

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In this album, Rollins is working along a couple of, for him, relatively unexplored avenues. In his own words, “almost every album I’ve been on so far has been blowing eight choruses each on four or five tracks” and so he wanted very much to work in terms of shorter numbers, “more sense of form” and control. It was also his idea to emphasize standards, most of them outside that limited number of tunes that jazzmen work over so frequently these days, such as the old and unlikely Tootsie and the new and unlikely Mangoes (a recent Rosemary Clooney hit) and Just in Time (a current show tune).

To support him, Rollins chose Sonny Clark, a very promising young pianist from the West Coast, who has worked with (among others) Buddy DeFranco; Roy Haynes, an extremely tasteful drummer who has played with the best – Bird, Miles, Getz, etc. – and since 1953 has provided sensitive backing for Sarah Vaughan.; and Percy Heath, a bassist of unsurpassed tone and technique best known as a member of the Moderd Jazz Quartet. When MJQ commitments took Percy out of town, Paul Chambers, one of the most notable of the younger bassists and currently working with Miles Davis, took over quite ably for the final session.

The quartet format is departed from on only two occasions: The Last Time I Saw Paris “strolls” without piano; and It Could Happen to You is a rare, bold tour de force – played entirely by an unaccompanied tenor.