Discography
For a complete online Sonny Red discography please visit jazzdiscography.com for my online version. The most current discography is also available through gumroad.com.
Special and Rare Recordings
All of the records below come from my personal collection with a few exceptions from the family. The most notable is the LP Out of the Blue mono version signed by Sonny to his mother and the test pressing of Home Run that I found on Ebay for twenty dollars!
1957-1959
“Sonny played his own self, and that’s what I admired about him. He didn’t emulate anyone else. Anything he played was appealing to me. I think he understood that the tradition was to play like yourself and he pursued that path.”
-Yusef Lateef
1960-1969
“I liked Sonny’s sound and his concept. Sonny sounded like a cross between Bird and Sonny Stitt, if you could say that. He liked Parker, but he might have liked Stitt a little bit better. Sonny sounded more like Sonny Stitt for sound and licks, but he had his own creative approach to soloing too. With some of these other cats, I can’t ID them, but with Sonny Red, I can. He had natural, creative ability. He was more self-taught anyway, you know? I remember he’d like to play Stay as Sweet as You Are and Stars Fell Down on Alabama.”
-Kiane Zawadi
1970-1981
“Red was an interesting player. He was one of the alto players that certainly came from Charlie Parker, but was able to be a little bit different, to take that language, and actually have a way of forging a style of your own. That’s really the way everybody learns how to play. But he definitely had a little something. So, even though he came from Bird, like everybody else, he had his own little way of doing things and his sound, which manifested itself on some records. He definitely was under-recorded, and never given his just due, because of this.”
Charles McPherson