Tenor Madness by Sonny Rollins from ’The Complete Prestige Recordings’ Disc 5

Subscribe to the Craft Recordings newsletter to stay in the loop on our latest reissues: Sonny Rollins first recorded for Prestige as a teenaged sideman on a 1949 J.J. Johnson session. Seven and a half years later he made his eighteenth and final session for the label. In the intervening period, the promising but uncertain young tenor player from Harlem had matured into a full-toned and powerful artist who was already beginning to be recognized as one of the truly great improvisers in the entire history of jazz. These seven very full compact discs–offering a total of 90 selections and totaling almost 490 minutes of music–show the rapidly developing young saxophonist as a sideman with his close friends Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, as well as with J.J. Johnson and Art Farmer, and as a leader on ten sessions that feature such jazz immortals as Monk, Max Roach, the legendary Clifford Brown, Kenny Dorham, Tommy Flanagan, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, John L