Why was Sonny Rollins' "Freedom Suite" LP quickly renamed "Shadow Waltz?"

Just curious.

 

Just guessing, but maybe Prestige thought the record wasn't selling as well as it might because the title and reputation were too confrontational and political. When they rereleased it it became The Freedom Suite again.

 

Could be, as the liner notes contained remarks which some might construe as "anti-white." (BTW, this LP was released on Riverside.)

 

It was actually called "French suite" first

 

In Richard Palmer's book on Rollins (pp167-168) the liner notes apparently read:-

"America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms, its humour, its music. How ironic that the Negro, who more than any people can claim America's culture as its own, is being persecuted and repressed, that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity"

Palmer writes "Intelligent, temperate and in my view, unanswerably right, those words at once caused a furore that prompted Riverside to pull the album off the market and reissue it as Shadow World, the title of the second-shortest piece on the album. One would call the irony delicious were it not so depressing: such a reaction proved- devastatingly- the point that inspired The Freedom Suite in the first place and thereby exemplified so much of what was nationally amiss."

 

So I guessed right, apparently. Too bad, but a great album no matter which composition you use for the title.

 

Shouldn't that be Shadow Waltz?

 

Oops. Quite right. Too much time spent listening to Sun Ra I guess. Either that or my eyesight's gone.

 

OT perhaps, but this is absolutely one of Sonny's greatest albums - as far as the 50s go, it's second only to Colossus to me. It's not quite (or nearly) as radical for its time as those great liner notes, but the title track, broken down into pieces, contains several of Sonny's richest compositions, especially the ballad section in the middle. And I never miss the piano, though I sometimes do on Night at the Village Vanguard.

Anyway, as for the original question, it's sadly pretty self-explanatory...kind of ridiculous for anyone to construe those liner notes as 'anti-white' (as WG suggests above), even then. What they are anti- is oppression.

In fact, Orrin Keepnews was the author of those lines, though Sonny signed his name to them. The notes Keepnews himself signed softpedal the issue somewhat.

If anyone's wondering why they picked "Shadow Waltz," I assume it's because the album contains several waltzes - the others being "Someday I'll Find You" and the recurring, non-improvising theme sections of "The Freedom Suite" (first appearance: 8 minutes into the track).

 

yeah it's a great great album. i always like sonny sans piano best. the fact that such a simple and unanswerably true statement could cause such a furor (in the jazz world of all places!) shows what a ridiculous world we live in.

but then too much freedom is a bad thing, right? (even on the steve hoffman forums!)

 

Release 2001 and 2008

 

I would submit that the reason for the name change is not "pretty self-explanatory" unless one has read the liner notes, which I had not when I started the subject thread. The LP's title might have rankled some of the power elite of the time (i.e., bigoted white folks), but probably not enough to cause Riverside to go to the trouble and expense of renaming and repackaging the album.

Of course the notes represent a diatribe against oppression of blacks; henceforth I shall take pains to choose my words more precisely, although I would argue that students of this period of history should be aware that any statement which criticized the racial status quo was viewed as "anti-white" by those who chose to perpetuate the oppression of that period.

 

I always found it bizarre, though, that bigoted white folks bought advanced post-bop in significant enough numbers to alter the marketing of any such LP. I mean, bigoted white folks wouldn't have liked Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, either, but it's not like the publisher ever thought of renaming it Harlem Memories and deleting all reference to the protagonist being African-American and angry.

A pretty craven move on Riverside's part however you slice it - revealing that Orrin Keepnews's self-aggrandizing new liner notes (where he largely takes credit for the album's political dimension) make no mention of the change, which he must have OK'd.

 

I don't think anti-intellectuals of any stripe would be the market for contemporary jazz. I also think that provocative and confrontational statements make liberals and conservatives alike uncomfortable. For some people, art and politics just don't mix, as the rules state right here at SH Forums. That's just the way it is.

 

You make good points. I find it hard to imagine that white people who harbored animosity towards blacks would even be listening to Sonny Rollins in 1958, let alone reading the notes to his records; Perry Como might have been more to their liking. I'm white, non-prejudiced, and own several of Sonny's recordings and yet I was not familiar until yesterday with the liner notes of Freedom Suite as I do not own that particular LP or CD.

Invisible Man won the National Book Award in 1953, edging out Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (as you are no doubt aware). The award gained Ellison entree into elite white circles unimaginable to the vast majority of black persons at that time. Why would a comparably timid few sentences on the back of a record jacket cause such a furor?

I agree that Keepnews and Bill Grauer should have ignored the hue and cry, such as it was, and let the notes and title remain unchanged, although in all fairness it's difficult for me to imagine the economic realities of a struggling indy record label in the late 1950s.

 

On that note, didn't Max Roach find it really difficult to get work in the 60s for his outspoken comments (plus Percussion Bitter Suite and We Insist-Freedom Now Suite recordings)?

 

I believe you may be right about that. Great videos of that band on youtube from a German television network, btw.