en 1966 chez Impulse!. L’album est entièrement composé par Rollins pour la bande son du film Alfie réalisé par Lewis Gilbert avec Michael Caine en acteur principal. Rollins réuni pour cet album une dizaine de musiciens, notamment les trombonistes J.J. Johnson et Jimmy Cleveland, les saxophonistes Oliver Nelson, Bob Ashton, Phil Woods ainsi que le guitariste Kenny Burrell. L’album atteint la 17^ième place en 1966 des albums R&B du Billboard.

While Sonny Rollins’s saxophone solos epitomized his best free-flowing improvisational ideas, he let the story of Michael Caine’s philandering character determine the mood of this 1966 soundtrack. But knowing the movie’s plot is not essential to hearing how this disc is a unique part of Rollins’s oeuvre. A long-standing individualist, Rollins worked with director Lewis Gilbert to devise a narrative, and then conductor Oliver Nelson wrote arrangements based on his charts. Rollins is famous for his small groups, but here he leads an 11-piece band and gives considerable space to guitarist Kenny Burrell. The collaboration embellishes Rollins’s playing, which was as strong in the mid-’60s as in his more celebrated years. And “Alfie’s Theme” has become an unlikely jazz standard. –Aaron Cohen