''A Night at the Village Vanguard'' is a

live album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by tenor saxophonist

Sonny Rollins Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a ...

released on

Blue Note Records Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Capitol Music Group. Established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis, it derived its name from the blue notes of jazz and the blues. Or ...

in 1958. It was recorded at the

Village Vanguard The Village Vanguard is a jazz club at Seventh Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. Originally, the club presented folk music and beat poetry, but it became primarily a jazz ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in November 1957 from three sets, two in the evening and one in the afternoon with different sidemen. For the afternoon set, Rollins played with Donald Bailey on bass and

Pete LaRoca Pete "La Roca" Sims (born Peter Sims; April 7, 1938 – November 20, 2012, known as Pete La Roca from 1957 until 1968) was an American jazz drummer and attorney. Born and raised in Harlem by a pianist mother and a stepfather who played trumpet, ...

on drums; in the evening they were replaced respectively by

Wilbur Ware Wilbur Bernard Ware (September 8, 1923 – September 9, 1979) was an American jazz double bassist.Feather, Leonard & Gitler, Ira (2007) ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz'', p. 674. Oxford University Press He was a regular bassist for t ...

and

Elvin Jones Elvin Ray Jones (September 9, 1927 – May 18, 2004) was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era. Most famously a member of John Coltrane's quartet, with whom he recorded from late 1960 to late 1965, Jones appeared on such widely celebrate ...

Recording

The recording was made by

Rudy Van Gelder Rudolph Van Gelder (November 2, 1924 – August 25, 2016) was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Theloni ...

, and was the first live recording made at the Village Vanguard.

Reception

The

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

review by

Scott Yanow Scott Yanow (born October 4, 1954) is an American jazz reviewer, historian, and author.Allmusic Biography/ref> Biography Yanow was born in New York City and grew up near Los Angeles. Since 1974, he was a regular reviewer of many jazz styles an ...

states: "This CD is often magical. Sonny Rollins, one of jazz's great tenors, is heard at his peak... Not only did Rollins have a very distinctive sound, but his use of time, his sly wit, and his boppish but unpredictable style were completely his own by 1957." Music critic

Robert Christgau Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...

highly praised the album, writing: "Rollins is charged with venturing far out from these tunes without severing the harmonic moorings normally secured by a piano. He does it again and again – but not without a certain cost in ebullience, texture, and fullness of breath. Impressive always, fun in passing, his improvisations are what avant-garde jazz is for." The album was identified by Scott Yanow in his

Allmusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

essay "Hard Bop" as one of the 17 Essential Hard Bop Recordings. ''

The Penguin Guide to Jazz ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' is a reference work containing an encyclopedic directory of jazz recordings on CD which were (at the time of publication) currently available in Europe or the United States. The first nine editions were compiled by ...

'' gave it a maximum four stars plus crown, and included the album in its “core collection”, concluding that "these are record ng which demand a place in any collection".

Re-releases

More material from the recording session was discovered in 1976 and released as the double album ''More from the Vanguard''. In 1987, the material from the original and double album was reconstructed in chronological order as two

compact discs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octobe ...

. On September 14, 1999, the

remastered Remaster refers to changing the quality of the sound or of the image, or both, of previously created recordings, either audiophonic, cinematic, or videographic. The terms digital remastering and digitally remastered are also used. Mastering A ...

album was reissued by Blue Note as part of its Rudy Van Gelder series.

Track listing

''All tracks from the evening sets except as indicated.''

1987 reissue track listing

''All tracks from the evening sets except as indicated; program in chronological order as presented originally.''

Personnel

*Sonny Rollins —

tenor saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while th ...

—

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

*Donald Bailey — double bass on afternoon set *

—

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

— drums on afternoon set ;Technical *

- recording *

Reid Miles Reid Miles (July 4, 1927 – February 2, 1993) was an American graphic designer and photographer best known for his work for Blue Note Records in the 1950s and 1960s. Biography Reid Miles was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 4, 1927 but, fo ...

- cover design *

Francis Wolff Francis Wolff (April 5, 1907 – March 8, 1971) was a record company executive, photographer and record producer. Wolff's skills, as an executive and a photographer, were important contributions to the success of the Blue Note record label. Care ...

- cover photography

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Night At The Village Vanguard 1958 live albums Blue Note Records live albums Sonny Rollins live albums Albums produced by Alfred Lion Albums recorded at the Village Vanguard