"When Your Lover Has Gone" is a performance of Einar Swan's standard from Sonny Rollins's 1956 album Tenor Madness, featuring four soloists who each take a single chorus over the 32-bar ABAC form in E-flat. Rollins opens with a tenor saxophone solo at a medium tempo of 109 beats per minute that demonstrates his gift for melodic transformation, taking the song's familiar contours and reshaping them into something distinctly personal while maintaining the emotional core of the original. Red Garland follows with a piano chorus that blends his characteristic elegance with the bluesy inflections that made him one of the most recognizable pianists in hard bop. Paul Chambers contributes a full chorus of acoustic bass solo that showcases his remarkable facility as a melodic improviser, his lines singing with a vocal quality that transcended the instrument's typical supporting role. Philly Joe Jones closes with a half-chorus drum statement that demonstrates his flair for melodic, compositionally structured percussion improvisation. The performance's most notable quality is the democratic distribution of solo space among all four members of the quartet, reflecting the collaborative spirit that characterized the finest small-group jazz of the 1950s. Recorded at the Van Gelder Studio in Hackensack, New Jersey, the session captures the quartet in an intimate, relaxed mood that contrasts with the more intense tenor battle of the album's title track.
