Sonny Rollins: Ballads

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * * * )

The great tenor saxophonist is now in his early-70s, but not resting. His last album, the modestly titled This Is What I Do won him a Grammy for best jazz instrumental album.

This collection is a quietly persuasive selection of ballads from the mid-50s when he was just starting to make his name.

The other players include pianists Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver and Wynton Kelly, drummers Max Roach and Elvin Jones, and bassists Paul Chambers and Wilbur Ware, a roll call of jazz genius in itself. And Rollins can make magic (with trumpeter Donald Byrd) on material, such as the unlikely but richly melodic How Are Things in Glocca Morra? from the stage play Finian's Rainbow.

One of an excellent Blue Note midprice Ballads series which includes titles by Sarah Vaughan, Cannonball Adderley, the guitarist Grant Green who is newly fashionable in trip-hop jazz circles, and Dinah Washington.

Label: Blue Note/EMI