New Sonny Rollins Album

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Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins has just released Sonny, Please -- his first studio recording in five years -- on his own Doxy label, and has signed a licensing agreement with Universal Classics & Jazz International for worldwide distribution and marketing of the CD. (In a separate pact, JVC will license the CD for release in Japan.) Universal Classics & Jazz International will release the CD digitally in America and Europe on November 21, with a traditional CD release date to follow on January 23, 2007. According to Wulf Muller, London-based Vice President of International Marketing for Universal Classics & Jazz International, "We are very pleased and excited to be affiliated with Sonny Rollins in his new label venture, and feel very strongly about the marketing possibilities for this eagerly anticipated new CD."

After nearly 35 years with Milestone Records, and after the death in 2004 of his wife Lucille, who had been his manager and co-producer, Rollins decided to "take a more proactive stance [in handling his own business affairs]. . . . The business seemed to be going in the direction of artist-owned labels, and so I made the leap." In late 2005 he established Doxy Records, naming it for a famous composition of his that had first been recorded by Miles Davis 50 years earlier.

Rollins recorded Sonny, Please shortly after returning from a sold-out Japanese tour in November 2005. The CD captures his working band "at a good pitch, " as he puts it. "Anytime you do a string of performances, it tightens up the ensemble, and the band was playing well--very high-powered. Toward the end of the tour, the group really began to come together, and as a result I began to be able to play much more fluently."

"Sonny is really playing on this record, " concurs Clifton Anderson, Rollins's longtime trombonist who also served as the new CD's producer. "Each track has its own beautiful distinction, yet there's a clear continuity throughout the recording. I'm sure this is because Sonny was more involved at every level of this project than I've ever witnessed before."

In addition to Anderson, the group is comprised of bassist Bob Cranshaw, an esteemed Rollins collaborator since 1959; guitarist Bobby Broom and drummer Steve Jordan, both of whom had worked with Sonny on prior occasions in the 1980s; and the percussionist Kimati Dinizulu, who joined the band about six years ago.

The CD program is a fine mix of Rollins originals("Nishi, " "Remembering Tommy, " "Park Palace Parade, " the title track) and standards from his boyhood ("Stairway to the Stars, " "Serenade, " "Someday I'll Find You").

Rollins intends to use Doxy as a vehicle for releasing choice items from his extensive archives of live recordings. His final Milestone CD Without a Song (The 9 / 11 Concert), which came from a 2001 Boston concert recording in those archives, won a Grammy earlier this year for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo (for the track "Why Was I Born?").

"Before any archival materials come out on Doxy, however, I'd first like to do a new studio or live recording, " says Rollins. "Both are possibilities. I would definitely like to do some more playing before releasing any archival stuff."

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