The Freelance Years: The Complete Riverside and Contemporary Recordings (1956)

About this title: Picking up only ten days after Fantasy's Complete Prestige Recordings box leaves off, these five discs run through one of Rollins' most fertile (some insist, the most fertile) periods. Not only are Rollins' Riverside and Contemporary sessions as a leader and sideman collected in toto; Fantasy also includes three tracks recorded for Period in 1957, which can finally be heard within the context of Rollins' late-'50s hot streak. The box kicks off at the end of 1956 with almost all of Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners album, where Rollins alternates with alto saxophonist Ernie Henry. ... read more

Tracks:

1. Brilliant Corners [Monk]
2. Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are [Monk]
3. Bemsha Swing [Monk/Best]
4. Pannonica [Monk]
5. I'm an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande) [Mercer]
6. Way Out West [Rollins]
7. Come, Gone [Rollins]
8. There Is No Greater Love [Jones/Symes]
9. Wagon Wheels [DeRose/Hill]
10. Cutie [Hefti/Styne]
11. Solitude [DeLange/Ellington]
12. I'm an Old Cowhand (From the Rio Grande) [Alternate Take] [Mercer]
13. Come, Gone [Alternate Take] [Rollins]
14. There Is No Greater Love [Take 2] [Jones/Symes]
15. Way Out West [Alternate Take] [Rollins]
16. Falling in Love With Love [Rodgers/Hart]
17. My Old Flame [Johnston/Coslow]
18. La Villa [Dorham]
19. I'll Remember April [Raye/DePaul/Johnsto]
20. The Last Time I Saw Paris [Hammerstein/Kern]
21. Just in Time [Comden/Green/Styne]
22. Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye [Erdman/Fio Rito/Kah]
23. What Is There to Say? [Duke/Harburg]
24. Dearly Beloved [Mercer/Kern]
25. Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye [Porter]
26. It Could Happen to You [Burke/VanHeusen]
27. Mangos [Libby/Wayne]
28. Funky Hotel Blues [Rollins]
29. Porgy [Fields/McHugh]
30. I Must Have That Man! [Fields/McHugh]
31. When a Woman Loves a Man [Mercer/Hanighen/Jen]
32. Strong Man [Brown]
33. Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe [Arlen/Harburg]
34. That's Him [Nash/Weill]
35. My Man [Pollack/Yvain/Wille]
36. Don't Explain [Holiday/Herzog]
37. I Must Have That Man! [Take 3] [Fields/McHugh]
38. Porgy [Take 1, Alternate] [Fields/McHugh]
39. Sonnymoon for Two [Rollins]
40. Like Someone in Love [Burke/VanHeusen]
41. Theme from Tchaikovsky's Symphony Pathetique [Tchaikovsky]
42. Till There Was You [Take 4] [Willson]
43. Someday I'll Find You [Coward]
44. Will You Still Be Mine? [Dennis/Adair]
45. Shadow Waltz [Warren/Dubin]
46. Till There Was You [Take 3, Alternate] [Willson]
47. The Freedom Suite [Rollins]
48. I've Told Ev'ry Little Star [Kern/Hammerstein]
49. Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody [Lewis/Schwartz/Youn]
50. How High the Moon [Hamilton/Lewis]
51. You [Adamson/Donaldson]
52. I've Found a New Baby [Palmer/Williams]
53. Alone Together [Schwartz/Dietz]
54. The Song Is You [Kern/Hammerstein]
55. In the Chapel in the Moonlight [Hill]
56. You [Alternate Take] [Adamson/Donaldson]
57. I've Found a New Baby [Alternate Take] [Palmer/Williams]
58. The Song Is You [Alternate Take] [Kern/Hammerstein]

Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is further described below.