Sonny Stitt battling Sonny Rollins.
Doesn't get better.
When Charlie Parker died in 1955, a journalist suggested to Sonny Stitt that he might be ‘the new Bird’. Stitt’s reply was unequivocal: ‘Ain’t no new Bird, man,’ he snapped. ‘Bird’s dead.’ In fact, he’d been a close friend of bebop’s founding father, and a key member of the inner circle that included Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. But as an alto saxophonist, though his style had its own brilliance, he was inevitably seen as a Parker clone.
To disarm comparison, in the late 1940s Stitt switched to tenor sax, forming famous partnerships with the likes of pianist Bud Powell, and from then on alternated effortlessly between the two horns. Effortlessly and tirelessly: a fellow muso once observed that if you gave Stitt too much space, no one else would get a look-in. ‘He’ll play 20 choruses on alto, take a drink of water, then play 20 on tenor!’
What a jam.
Not to be forgotten:
Double Bass: Tommy Bryant
Associated Performer, Drums: Charlie Persip
Associated Performer, Piano: Ray Bryant
Open thread below.
