Sonny Rollins Quartet – Tenor Madness

By the time this LP was released, Sonny Rollins already had such albums under his name as Worktime and Sonny Rollins Plus 4, in addition to his sideman exploits with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. Even the critics who had been slow in recognizing what fellow jazzmen already knew – that here was a young giant in our midst – could not help see the light. Tenor Madness, in which he was joined by the rhythm section from the Miles Davis Quintet, further substantiated and underlined his rapidly rising stature. The material is an effective mixture of Rollins’ playing attitudes with an intriguing original, “Paul’s Pal,” and the mining of unusual material such as “My Reverie” and “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” And, of course, there is the celebrated title track featuring the two titans to emerge in the Fifties, Rollins and his guest, visiting in the studio that day, John Coltrane.