This vintage hard bop burner marks the second vinyl release in Verve Records’ outstanding and budget-friendly Straight From The Vault reissue series.
Sonny Side Up — recorded in 1957 but released in 1959 — features trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie teaming up with tenor titans Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt, supported by a stellar rhythm section with pianist Ray Bryant and drummer Charlie Persip.
As I reported in my recent review of the first album in this series, Antonio Carlos Jobim’s 1963 Brazilian jazz classic The Composer of Desafinado, Plays, Sonny Side Up also has excellent basic specs, according to official materials:
“The Verve Vault Series presents all-analog 180-gram vinyl reissues of essential albums from the Verve, Impulse!, Mercury, and associated catalogs. Mastered by Ryan K. Smith from the original analog tapes and pressed at Optimal, each release combines exceptional audio fidelity with meticulous attention to detail — from mastering to jacket reproduction.”
The Verve Vault series promises “the greatest artists, the greatest recordings, straight from the vault,” and so far it’s delivering—high-quality pressings of vintage, often hard-to-find classics with solid cover art and pricing that won’t make collectors wince.
On Sonny Side Up, the celebrated trio engage in a series of spirited jams—essentially trading blows in an instrumental showdown—a format producer Norman Granz helped popularize through his wildly successful Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts and long-running live album series that began back in 1944.
An interesting and fun listen, Sonny Side Up ultimately underscores the different styles between the two saxophonists while Dizzy effortlessly floats solos above, inside and around them. Its hard to pick favorite tracks given there are only four but I did enjoy the bluesy “After Hours” and Stitt’s “The Eternal Triangle” was is also a fine showcase.
Interestingly, producer Norman Granz also released another album from these sessions around this same time time frame called Duets, which finds Dizzy performing individually with these saxophone powerhouse players.
While the reissue’s cover is produced in a more modern style—using oaktag-type stock that allows for direct printing rather than the old-school pasted slicks over cardboard—the overall attention to detail in this series is excellent. For Sonny Side Up, the producers even recreated Verve’s period-correct late-1950s “trumpeter” label design, a thoughtful nod to the album’s original era.
That said, if you were to try to find an original 1959 pressing of Sonny Side Up in good condition, expect challenges. For example at the time of this writing there were only six original copies on Discogs selling for between $40 and $90 in at best VG+ condition. From personal experience I can also attest that Verve Records’ covers from this period didn’t always age well, so the “seams” of the cover often are split on originals when you find them. These single disc Verve covers typically weren’t laminated so they often show much ring wear and tear from being in people’s collections over the years.
For most of us, this new Verve Vault issue of Sonny Side Up will be a more than satisfying stop gap “play” copy until that moment when we find a rare unicorn mint condition original.
Where to buy: $27.98 at Amazon
Mark Smotroff is a deep music enthusiast / collector who has also worked in entertainment oriented marketing communications for decades supporting the likes of DTS, Sega and many others. He reviews vinyl for Analog Planet and has written for Audiophile Review, Sound+Vision, Mix, EQ, etc. You can learn more about him at LinkedIn.
Related Reading:
- Verve’s ‘Straight From The Vault’ Series Debuts Strong With Antonio Carlos Jobim’s 1963 Classic “The Composer Of Desafinado, Plays”
- The Giants Of Jazz: Frank Sinatra, Count Basie & Duke Ellington Mid-’60s Sessions Return On 2LP Reissue
- Free Jazz Revival: Pharoah Sanders And Archie Shepp Reissues Honor Saxophone Greats
- Review: Yusef Lateef’s 1957 Jazz Mood — Craft Recordings Revives His Rare Savoy Debut In The Acclaimed OJC Vinyl Series
