God Bless the Child (Sonny Rollins’s version)

Sonny Rollins (tenor sax), Jim Hall (guitar), Bob Cranshaw (bass) and Harry Saunders (drums). From the album The Bridge (1962).

From 1960, Sonny Rollins alternated forays into the last trends with returns to more familiar terrain. For a time he was one of the most experimental musicians, in his album Our Man in Jazz he explored the avant-garde with a quartet made up of Don Cherry, Bob Cranshaw and Billy Higgins and played with Paul Bley, but never made the definitive leap to free jazz. However, in 1966 he recorded an album playing this kind of music.

Also in 1966 he composed the soundtrack for the film Alfie. In 1968 Rollins retired again to study yoga, meditation and Eastern philosophies. He returned until 1971 with renewed energy and released a series of successful albums for the Milestone label mixing contemporary jazz and the jazz fusion of the time. He also recorded an album and toured with McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter and Al Foster when acoustic jazz became fashionable, but this stage was fleeting.

Cranshaw makes an introduction with the double bass and stright away enters Rollins to expose the theme. Then comes the drums and then the guitar. It is precisely the latter that keeps sounding until Rollins returns. Then Hall begins his solo at medium-slow tempo by recreating himself on every note he plays and building attractive phrases. Rollins comes back to perform a broad solo with few and expressive notes, and suddenly Hall takes the initiative, but Rollins returns with a melancholic melody that ends the theme.