Sonny Rollins

East Broadway Run Down is the last album Sonny Rollins recorded before a six-year withdrawal from the studio. It is also the furthest he went toward free jazz in the 1960s. Made for Impulse! in 1966, it puts the tenor saxophonist in a pianoless trio with the bass and drums of John Coltrane's quartet. On the long title piece he pushes his sound into raw, noisy territory.

The session was recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on May 9, 1966. Bob Thiele produced, with Rudy Van Gelder as engineer. Jimmy Garrison plays bass and Elvin Jones drums throughout. Trumpeter Freddie Hubbard joins only on the title track. The album came out in January 1967, with liner notes by Nat Hentoff.

East Broadway Run Down fills the whole first side, more than twenty minutes of moody, open-ended playing in which Hubbard's trumpet is the only other horn. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz points to the record as the furthest extent of Rollins' use of noise elements in his playing. Blessing in Disguise, another Rollins original, stretches over twelve minutes for the trio alone. The album ends with a short reading of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song We Kiss in a Shadow.

DownBeat gave the album five stars in its review of June 1967, and AllMusic also rates it five. Other guides were cooler. The Rolling Stone Jazz Record Guide (1985) gave it three stars, and The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (2008) three and a half. Rollins did not return to the studio until the early 1970s.

This edition belongs to the Verve Acoustic Sounds series (2024). It is stereo, mastered all-analogue from the original tapes by Ryan K. Smith at Sterling Sound and pressed on 180g vinyl at Quality Record Pressings. The tip-on gatefold jacket is printed by Stoughton, and Chad Kassem supervised the reissue.