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I entirely agree that Sonny made his mark early, and would indeed have been remembered even if he'd disappeared before Saxophone Colossus or Night at the VV had ever happened. I love early Newk.sonnymobleytrane said:For me the stuff right before he took his first famous break from the Jazz world is the Greatest stuff (Stockholm 1958 is a great recording if you can find it)....but again I have been listening to the real early stuff and loving it,
I mentioned in the YouTube thread that this period right before his first sabbatical (the recording is Stockholm 1959 rather than '58) is for me just about as good as jazz gets.
I'm guessing that swampcabbage's reference to the stuff with Kenny Clarke and Henry Grimes is also from that 1959 European tour, rather than from the early '60s -- there's a live club bootleg from that tour from Aix En Provence where Kenny's filling in for Sonny's drummer, who got into some sort of ... something ... with Sonny and either quit or was fired.
Sonny and Kenny are absolutely devastating on these tracks. On one track they do a very long and killing exchange of fours, and Kenny finally does something to kind of wrap things up, and you hear Sonny say to him afterwards something along the lines of "Hey, what happened: I thought we were gonna STRETCH!"
By the way, If you love Sonny, you just must go immediately to listen to this piece from a few months ago on NPR -- I promise you'll love it or your money back:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9701347