Description
When it was first heard in the late Fifties, The Freedom Suite created a considerable stir. It remains a most impressive work: more than 19 minutes of the varied, inventive, impassioned development of a theme by a single horn supported only by bass and drums. (It is of course an essential element that the horn is one of the greatest of all tenor saxes, and the supporting duo scarcely less top-ranked.)
The remaining tracks display early examples of a less sensational but highly effective weapon in the Rollins arsenal: his brilliant reshaping of fairly unlikely pop material, including in this case a pair of waltzes.
With Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach
