Sonny Criss - 1966 - This Is Criss!

Sonny Criss

1966

This Is Criss!

01. Black Coffee 7:52

02. Days Of Wine And Roses 3:20

03. When Sunny Gets Blue 5:42

04. Greasy 2:28

05. Sunrise, Sunset 2:52

06. Steve's Blues 6:23

07. Skylark 5:11

08. Love For Sale 6:26

Alto Saxophone – Sonny Criss

Bass – Paul Chambers

Drums – Alan Dawson

Piano – Walter Davis

Recorded By – Rudy Van Gelder

Recorded in Engelwood Cliffs, NJ; October 21, 1966.

In 1966 producer Don Schlitten imported Sonny Criss to New York for a recording session with a rhythm section handpicked for their ability to swing and for their understanding of the bebop methods that drove Criss. Determined to enhance the career of an alto saxophonist he considered an overlooked genius of the modern era, Schlitten thus provided the circumstance for one of Criss's great albums. To many listeners, This Is Criss! was a revelation; it presented a fully matured soloist who had overcome the uneven conception and time problems that many of them remembered from his brilliant but erratic earlier work.

Another one of the great overlooked jazz albums of the sixties by one of the great overlooked alto players of the bop years, Sonny Criss at the peak of his playing in 1966. Another winner of the Downbeat award for “Talent Deserving Of Wider Recognition”, Criss spent several years of the previous decade playing and recording in Paris, apparently to escape L.A. Sounds as good a reason as any. In fact no reason at all is as good as any. Beverley Hills Bop anyone? Perhaps if he had followed the well-worn path to New York things would have turned out differently.

Walter Davis’s piano is an unexpected bonus, another player deserving of more attention. Paul Chamber and Alan Dawson complete the essential members of Criss’s A Team. You will not have heard a lot more of Criss, as he died at the age of only fifty in 1977, as a consequence of serious illness.

The alto is a fascinating instrument, capable of mind-mangling speed, slowed only by the inventiveness of the player. The upper register has a beauty of its own, though my heart belongs to bari. Having grown up a guitar player, I find the range of the saxophone thrilling. It’s not easy to cover all the notes in three octaves on a six string fretboard, whereas it just flows under the fingers of the saxophone, an instrument that belongs up there with the greatest inventions of all time, alongside the jet engine and the mobile phone. Above them, in my view.