Tommy Flanagan

Saxophone Colossus

Sonny Rollins · 1956

Saxophone ColossusSaxophone ColossusSonny Rollins · 1956 (1956) was recorded in nearly one take. In dialogue with Max RoachMax Roachマックス・ローチ and Tommy FlanaganTommy Flanaganトミー・フラナガン, Rollins fused bebop, calypso, and blues into a single grammar. 'St. Thomas' derives from a Virgin Islands folk song — Rollins's ancestral home.

Giant Steps

John Coltrane · 1960

In May 1959, Tommy FlanaganTommy Flanaganトミー・フラナガン played on John ColtraneJohn Coltraneジョン・コルトレーン's Giant StepsGiant StepsJohn Coltrane · 1960 session. His solo struggled to keep up with the unprecedented chord changes of the title track — a legendary moment Flanagan would later acknowledge as "an accident."

— John Coltrane: His Life and Music, Lewis Porter, 1998

Giant Steps

John Coltrane · 1960

Saxophone Colossus

Sonny Rollins · 1956

Blues for Dracula

Philly Joe Jones · 1958

Blues-ette

Curtis Fuller · 1959

On the title track of Coltrane's 1959 Giant Steps, pianist Tommy Flanagan reportedly hadn't fully absorbed the tune's dense chord changes before the take, and his solo trails off into near silence. The album's signature piece is remembered as much for its accompanist's hesitation as for its harmonic breakthrough.

The Soul Society

Sam Jones · 1960

Tenderly

George Benson · 1989

Roots

Prestige All Stars, The · 1958

Letter From Home

Eddie Jefferson · 1962

By 1989 George Benson was known for pop and R&B hits, but Tenderly was an acoustic standards date. The drum chair went to Louis Hayes, a hard bop drummer who had been working the same way since the late 1950s.

Blues-ette

Curtis Fuller · 1959

Moanin'

Art Blakey · 1958

Kelly Blue

Wynton Kelly · 1959

New York, N.Y.

George Russell Orchestra · 1959

Brought in to rebuild the Jazz Messengers in 1958, Benny Golson recruited the new lineup — Bobby Timmons on piano among them — and wrote most of Moanin'. The tune that ended up defining the record was the title track, written by the pianist he had just hired. Golson was gone within months.

Deciphering the Message

Makaya McCraven · 2021

Bass on Top

Paul Chambers · 1957

Interplay For 2 Trumpets And 2 Tenors

Idrees Sulieman, Webster Young, John Coltrane, Bobby Jaspar With Mal Waldron, Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, Art Taylor · 1957

The Soft Land Of Make Believe

Frank Minion · 1960

Paul Chambers's name is stamped on a mountain of hard-bop sessions, the immovable anchor of the music. Yet when Kenny Burrell chose him for his 1956 debut as a leader, the reason was almost anticlimactic: "Paul was my student." In Detroit, the definitive bass had been the guitarist's pupil.

— Statement stmt-kenny-burrell-on-paul-chambers