By the fall of 1957 Sonny Rollins had left Miles Davis and gone out on his own. Max Gordon, who had opened the Village Vanguard in 1935, had heard him on records and with Davis, and offered him the room. Leonard Feather, in the original notes, follows how the band took shape there. The first week it was a quintet, with trumpet and piano. The second week the trumpet went and a new rhythm section came in. Then Rollins settled on just tenor, bass and drums, with nobody playing chords behind him.
This LP constitutes a double premiere.
Leonard Feather, original liner notes
It was the first record made live at the Vanguard, and Feather counts it as the first time Rollins was heard in front of an audience leading his own group. The day was Sunday, November 3, 1957. Rudy Van Gelder brought his machines into the club, with Alfred Lion producing. Rollins played an afternoon set with Donald Bailey on bass and Pete La Roca on drums, and the evening with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones. The log for the day runs to 20 takes. Six made the record, five of them from the evening.
Side one opens with "Old Devil Moon." Rollins improvises for about four minutes, then trades fours with Jones. On "Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise," Ware plays a line under the melody in the first chorus and later takes a long solo; Feather praises how it was played and how it was recorded. Three weeks earlier Sonny Clark had cut the same song for his trio record, BLP 1579. "Striver's Row," a Rollins tune on a familiar set of chords, is medium-bright and closes the side.
Side two begins with "Sonnymoon for Two," a simple blues riff that Rollins works on for about five minutes before Ware takes a run of fours. Blue Note also put it out on a 45. "A Night in Tunisia" is the afternoon track, taken faster than usual, with Rollins changing the interlude between choruses and La Roca taking a solo. Feather writes that it was recorded the same evening as the rest; the session listing and Wikipedia both place it in the afternoon set. The record ends with Vernon Duke's "I Can't Get Started," the only ballad.
The sleeve is Reid Miles's design around a Francis Wolff photograph. The Jazz Discography Project dates the release to 1957, Wikipedia to 1958. Most of the unused takes came out in the 1970s on More from the Vanguard. It was Rollins's last date for Blue Note.
