By 1986, Sonny Rollins didn’t need to prove anything to anybody — the “saxophone colossus” tag had followed him since the 1950s, and he’d spent three decades as one of the last living giants of the tenor sax. That made his appearance at Buffalo’s Tralfamadore Cafe, the beloved downtown jazz room that had built its reputation booking exactly this caliber of artist, a genuine event: a titan of the music playing a club small enough to feel his breath on the horn. For a room that regularly punched above its weight on the national jazz circuit, it was one more argument for why the Tralf mattered.
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