condition (record/cover): NM / VG+ (light yellowing on back)
Gategold sleeve. Obi included.
San Francisco, 1978: Sonny Rollins live across two LPs, the calypso banner flying high - Don't Stop The Carnival, the seventies concert experience in full documentation, title track as mission statement. Studio Rollins and live Rollins were famously different animals - he said so himself, repeatedly - and this is the live animal at large: marathon solos that build chorus upon chorus with no visible ceiling, the Caribbean lilt he carried from childhood powering everything, cadenzas that stop time, an audience swept up in what was by then simply the greatest live show in jazz. The Milestone years get less critical romance than the fifties Prestige and Blue Note runs; the concert evidence has always argued loudly back, and two LPs of it settle the matter for anyone listening honestly.
Japanese 2LP pressing, big, clean and dynamic, which this music's range demands. Sunshine with a colossus inside it - the rarest weather there is.