In 1959, Sonny Rollins retired from active participation in jazz, reemerging in 1961. Four records have been released under his name since then, and while each deserves greater consideration than can be given here a brief assessment of their general direction is overdue.

In an interview soon after his return, Rollins spoke of his admiration for orchestral saxophonists Sigmund Rascher and Marcel Mulé. Indeed all his records since 1961 have shown that his retirement, like his previous withdrawal in 1955, was devoted to the perfection of instrumental technique rather than to the development of new musical ideas. On all his four latest records Rollins displays an enriched tone and often makes use of slap tongueing and other tonal effects to a greater extent than before. He has also developed a method of playing two notes together which, he says, relates to the overtone structure of his instrument and which sounds more reliable than Coltrane’s method. Later records show that he is attempting to control the use of high harmonics and incorporate them into his effective range. These devices are usually employed with intelligent dramatic effect.

This concentration on instrumental problems has probably caused some disappointment among younger listeners and critics who, having become involved in the wealth of advance that took place during Rollins’s absence and in the mythological currents which came to surround him in those years, expected Rollins to re-appear either very much under Coltrane’s influence or with some parallel innovation. It is not surprising, though, that such a shift did not occur and the assumption that it would was based on insufficient knowledge of Rollins’s previous work. Firstly, one should note that Rollins, although he was one of the first musicians to borrow and develop aspects of Thelonious Monk’s playing—from which so many recent advances are ultimately derived—and although he has influenced many younger musicians, has never been one of the most important innovators in jazz, in the sense of contributing new harmonic or rhythmic elements to its vocabulary. It seems certain that John Coltrane will affect jazz in this way much more than Rollins has done. Secondly, Rollins’s style was clearly mature before his retirement and one should neither expect nor hope that such a rich and personal mode of expression would fall apart with the appearance of Coleman and Coltrane.