Music Arcades: Sonny Rollins: Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders

I'd completely I forgot I had this album.

That could explain why I've hardly ever played it. It's in mint condition — cover and vinyl — and, what's more, it's an original issue on the Contemporary label (the cover is made out of that old, really stiff and durable card), not the reissue on Boplicity.

The reason I know that there was a Boplicity reissue is that, tucked inside the sleeve, I found a feature on Rollins from issue 19 of Wire Magazine (now The Wire), 1986, that focuses on Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders and A Night at the Village Vanguard.

When I found that, yes, I still have this record, I couldn't think when I might have got it. I guess the sleeve insert gives some clue. As with Mingus Ah Um, I may have been guided towards Rollins by Jazz Masters of the 50s.

But as weak trickles of memory make their way to me, I think I was underwhelmed by the record. It didn't blow hard and wild enough for me; too polite. Rollins has also suffered the career disadvantage/mistake of not dying a long time ago: 50 years after this record came out, he's still playing (who else is there, apart from Mose Allison, three years older than Rollins at nearly 82, who's still treading the boards at that stage of life). I'm only slightly more than half Rollin's age — 15 years older than he was at the time of Contemporary Leaders — but even though hard and wild are less essential to me at my age, I still feel kind of the same. Mind you, the record sounds gorgeous coming through my stereo.

And eMusic has an astonishing 67 Rollins albums available for download. I'll be sampling them, starting with Saxophone Colossus come Thursday when my quota of downloads 'refreshes'.