Contributor of scene-stealing solos on some Miles Davis, Pharaoh Sanders and Herbie Mann records. Made a few albums under his own name, retired from music, came back in 1981 and made records with Last Exit, Machine Gun and several more under his own name.

Posting this mainly as an excuse to include these links, which may interest the interested:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/2 ... 1491610645



https://darkforcesswing.substack.com/p/ ... rt-1-sonny

Oh yeah, and the Space Ghost Coast to Coast theme, how could I forget?

Ask the Ages is really great, which isn't the case for a lot of 'straight' jazz records made after 1980 or so, but I don't know much else outside of some guest appearances. Great, unhinged soloist for sure.

Zero objectivity from me. He forms a kinda "Father, Son, Holy Spirit" trifecta for me (or four-way, if I'm allowed). Him, NY, Quine, and Andy Cohen.

His "Guitar" album took me the longest to kinda crack and has really edged up there with Ask the Ages for me.

There is this very peculiar one recorded with a pickup band in France in the early 80's that is really fucking wild, too. Wild in it's square-ness I mean. Great version of "Dance with Me, Montana" on it.

He's the king, I think. Changed my life when my buddy Tim Cook gave me a copy of one of his albums nearly 25 years ago now.

https://alanpaul.net/2018/03/the-format ... hers-band/

Jaimoe wrote:Duane [Allman] loved guitar players. I only knew two people Duane didn’t like: Jimmy Page and Sonny Sharrock. He played on the Herbie Mann Push Push sessions [in 1971] with Sonny and he hated him and the way nothing he played was ever really clear.

ahahahahahahaha

While I've changed my feelings about Duane Allman from CRAP to crap over the last 30 years, that's really funny.

Duane Allman is less cool than Herbie Mann, QED.

NC for "My Song" alone.
https://youtu.be/zWtj7JXuhtY?si=stsAM70aPheDWs5F

Unbeatable guitarist. One of the all-time greats.

Absolutely NOT CRAP.

If anyone votes crap on this then I shall need a proper lie down

when I first lived with my pop (96). He'd vacuum to "Ask the Ages" every other day. 21 year old me couldn't hear past the "production".

Thank god I out grew that. Sonny, Blood, Nels,and Ribot are the bedrock of jazz guitar for me. A ridiculously unique voice. 0 wf for the Lynda albums.

I really want more footage of him playing live than what they ran in "summer of soul"

Absolutely NOT CRAP. I think the stuff with Linda can be hard to take for some folks but man I love this album so much:

I actually like his pre-retirement stuff the best. I don’t know that he needed a supercharged guitar sound. There’s just so much about 80s production I can’t stand. There are similar sounds on some of the more dated Swans records that I don’t like either. Probably not fair to blame Bill Laswell, but that’s what I’m doing.

In fact, when I started recording in earnest I thought being able to boost the “air band” would be neat realism trick… then I got stuff that could actually do it and realized that dog ear treble was part of what annoyed me about 80s records, never mind all the goofy rack effects. The EQ equivalent to Electro Voice speakers (none of which is inherently bad.)

I don’t want to sound too down on him because there’s beautiful and exciting stuff throughout and of course he truly is one of the greats. Black Woman is one of the best guitar records of the 60s, easy.