It’s weird; while the popularity of vinyl has resulted in a lot of classic albums being reissued, most of those reissues are not the improved kind. They’re typically just the album as it was when it last got released on CD or digitally, except now on big pieces of grooved plastic.
But the good people at Blue Note Records are bucking this trend with Sonny Rollins’ A Night At The Village Vanguard: The Complete Masters, which is not only bringing this album to record players for the first time in years, but with improved sound quality that’s present on the new CD and digital editions as well.
Photo Credit: Francis Wolff
Recorded November 3rd, 1957, A Night At The Village Vanguard features the iconic jazz saxophonist mostly playing with bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Elvin Jones; though it also, for some reason has two tracks from the afternoon show, when he played with bassist Donald Bailey and drummer Pete La Roca.
Now, if you’ve listened to this album at any point in the last (counts on fingers…) sixty-seven years, or any of the classic studio albums Rollins recorded around this time (Way Out West, Volume 2, etc.), then you know what to expect from this new version of A Night At The Village Vanguard. Mostly.
For starters, this version of A Night At The Village Vanguard — which is part of Blue Note’s Tone Poet Series — has been remastered from newly discovered master tapes, and the results are an improvement over the previous edition, which came out in 1999.
Though how much of an improvement obviously depends on how you listen to it. While people who use their phones with earbuds won’t notice much of a change, people who have real stereos, good speakers, and a thing for sound quality will feel justified in replacing their old CDs with this one. It’s not a revelation by any means, but the sound is cleaner and has slightly more depth.
As for the vinyl crowd, well, given that the previous vinyl version of A Night At The Village Vanguard was just six songs long…
This new version…
also reconfigures this classic live album. While the previous CD edition opened with “A Night In Tunisia” from the afternoon show, that track is now the sixth (or fifth if you don’t count the intro), while this new version opens with “Old Devil Moon,” which was the ninth track on the previous version.
It’s a jarring change, one made even more so by the fact that the album opens with Rollins introducing “Old Devil Moon” (and thus this album and concert) by saying, “We’d like to carry on now…”
As for the music itself, A Night At The Village Vanguard, as I said earlier, mostly has Sonny working with, and off of, bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Elvin Jones. Who are not the people who played bass and drums on any of the now classic Rollins albums I mentioned earlier, nor any others that came out before Vanguard.
In fact, this album is the only to feature Rollins and Ware together; Jones, for his part, didn’t appear on another album of Sonny’s until 1967’s East Broadway Run Down.
No matter. If there’s one constant in Sonny Rollins’ career, it’s not been his collaborators. Instead, it’s been that — like fellow sax master Dexter Gordon — Rollins could collaborate with anyone, and bring out their best.
Photo Credit: Francis Wolff
It’s something you hear throughout A Night At The Village Vanguard, be it on the sparkling “Sonnymoon For Two,” the smooth and smokey take on Jerome Kern’s “All The Things You Are,” the peppy version of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Woody ‘N You,” or the swingin’ original, “Striver’s Row.”
All of which makes A Night At The Village Vanguard, quite simply, an exemplary album, live or otherwise, ranking alongside Sonny’s personal best (Saxophone Colossus, Tenor Madness) and the best live albums jazz has to offer (Dexter Gordon’s The Squirrel, John Coltrane’s Afro Blue Impressions).
As excellent as A Night At The Village Vanguard: The Complete Masters may be, though, the live album purist in me can’t help but wish it wasn’t better. Or rather, that it was more pure.
Specifically, I wish A Night At The Village Vanguard: The Complete Masters was the complete show. Which, obviously, doesn’t exist since, if it was, it would be part of, well, The Complete Masters.
I also wish it was just the nighttime show. I’m not sure why this has the afternoon version of “A Night In Tunisia,” and then the nighttime version two songs later.
And while we’re on the subject, it’s too bad we’ve never gotten A Day At The Village Vanguard. Though only if it was also that whole show.
But, whatever.
As is, A Night At The Village Vanguard is still excellent. And that’s true whether you get the vinyl, the CD, or the digital files. Just make sure you get yourself a good stereo, too.
SCORE: 8.5/10
