Record of the Day: Sonny Stitt, “Kaleidoscope”

Sonny Stitt
“Kaleidoscope” (Cd Prestige 00025218606028)

Stan Getz said, “If you want to play with Sonny Stitt, you have to work hard. He doesn’t let you rest. You have to really work hard or he’ll leave you at the starting gate.”
Words that are more pertinent than ever in the case of a virtuoso musician like Stitt, a saxophonist capable of playing thousands of notes.
holding his own against Charlie Parker but also delivering melodic phrases full of expression and singability.
Sonny’s lightning-fast technical ability made him one of the most successful saxophonists of his era, aided by his remarkable prowess on tenor, alto and baritone saxophone.

Stitt’s discography is of cyclopean dimensions since he recorded continuously for anyone willing to pay him, accumulating titles for dozens of different record companies with inevitably discontinuous results, sometimes pure routine. This Prestige album is however among those of excellent quality; it collects recordings from 1950 that present us with a young Stitt, eager and in great shape grappling with stainless pages such as “Liza”, “After You’ve Gone”, “Ain’t Misbehavin'”, “Imagination”, “Cherokee” and “S’wonderful”, accompanied by various formations where names that are a guarantee stand out, such as Art Blakey and Shadow Wilson on drums, Bill Massey on trumpet, Gene Ammons on sax, Junior Mance on piano, Tommy Potter on double bass.

The album features top-notch bebop, with unstoppable energy, which allows Stitt to craft solos of astonishing virtuosity but which never rely solely on finger skill and pass with supreme skill through melodic paths of no small complexity. His phrasing allows him to avoid bop clichés, making his interventions always interesting and of notable intensity.

There are also two pleasant (but not essential) South American interludes with “Cool Mambo” and “Blue Mambo” where Stitt crosses swords with the Latin American percussions of Humberto Morales, while we can easily do without the only sung track on the album, “To Think You’ve Chosen Me”, which in addition to not being a great song serves up Larry Townsend’s saccharine vocal performance; however, it is a small flaw in a truly very good album.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical subjects.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: Un disco per ogni giorno dell’anno” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.