Sonny Side Up - Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt & Sonny Rollins

Recorded on December 19, 1957 at Nola Recording Studio in New York City, Sonny Side Up pairs tenor saxophonists Sonny Rollins and Sonny Stitt with trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie in a studio jam session produced by Norman Granz for Verve Records. Ray Bryant plays piano, his brother Tommy Bryant handles bass, and Charlie Persip drums. The album consists of just four tracks, three of them extended blowing vehicles that evoke the cutting contests of earlier decades. "The Eternal Triangle," a Stitt original running over fourteen minutes, serves as the centerpiece, with all three horns trading choruses in contrasting styles — Stitt's Parker-derived intensity against Rollins' more thematic, rhythmically inventive approach, with Gillespie sparking exchanges from the top. "After Hours" stretches past twelve minutes in a slow-burning blues setting. The sole shorter track, "On the Sunny Side of the Street," opens with a Gillespie vocal before the horns take over. AllMusic called the album "one of the most exciting jam session records in the jazz catalog," and it captures a rare configuration — Rollins and Stitt, two of the most prominent tenors of the era, measured against each other with one of bebop's founders moderating from the trumpet chair.