Sonny Rollins, colossus of jazz saxophone, dies aged 95 | Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins, one of the greatest jazz saxophonists of all time, has died at the age of 95.
his death announced on its website “With deep sadness and deep love” on Monday. Journalist Terri Hinte also confirmed the news.
No cause of death was given, but the statement said “Saxophone Colossus” died Monday afternoon at his home in Woodstock, New York. In the statement, Rollins’ thoughts on death were conveyed: “I think when the creative person ends, he moves on to the next existence. I am a person who believes that this life is not the be-all and end-all. A spiritual person does not feel that way.”
With more than 60 albums released since the late 1940s, including collaborations with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and others, Rollins was one of the last living stars of the bebop generation, which took jazz from the predominantly dance or ballad form into startlingly expressive new territory.
Rollins himself was a melodic genius; his brilliant, catchy verses—whether jazz standards or self-penned—were not chosen but expanded and recast in improvised and sometimes epic solos. Saxophonist Branford Marsalis called him, along with Louis Armstrong, “the greatest improviser in the history of jazz”; When presenting him with the 2010 National Medal of Arts in 2011, Barack Obama said Rollins “inspired him to take risks I wouldn’t have taken otherwise.”
He was born Walter Theodore Rollins in New York City in 1930 and grew up in the Harlem area, receiving the nickname Sonny from his grandmother. He began learning the saxophone at the age of seven, inspired by his piano-playing sister and violin-playing brother, as well as jazz heroes such as Louis Jordan and Fats Waller. His area’s jazz scene was so vibrant that one of his first bands in high school featured future stars Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor; Immediately after leaving school, he began playing with local talents such as Bud Powell and touring stars such as JJ Johnson, as well as composing his own works.
Rollins once described himself as “primitive… I go with my emotions more than my brain,” and it was this willingness to break with convention and embrace improvisation that helped chart a new course for jazz, along with Davis, Charlie Parker and others in the bebop scene, which soon loosened further into hard bop and post-bop. Davis wrote how Rollins quickly became “a legend, almost a god to many young musicians… he was an aggressive, innovative player who always had new musical ideas.” Reminiscing about his early life, Rollins said: “Jazz Good. This is not just lesson music, shaking your booty music. That’s everything. This doesn’t make you want to fight. “It makes you feel like there is a God.”
But he became obsessed with heroin, and in 1950 he committed an armed robbery to raise money to feed his habit. He later described himself as “a truly despicable character… I alienated everyone except my mother.” He was sentenced to 10 months in prison at Rikers Island in New York, but managed to kick his habit through a rehabilitation program in 1955.
Getting clean spurred an astonishing burst of creativity: Rollins released his first album as a bandleader in 1953 and recorded 17 more albums by the end of the decade, including such landmarks as Saxophone Colossus (1956), with its signature melody. St. Thomasa nod to calypso and named after his mother’s birthplace in the Caribbean; The piano-free “wandering” style explored on Way Out West (1957); And Freedom Suite (1958)His freewheeling composition on the 20-minute title track became an elegant argument for freedom in the midst of the growing civil rights movement. His collaborators during this period included Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey and others.
In 1959, Rollins took a three-year break from recording and performing and honed his craft by practicing for up to 15 hours a day on the crosswalk of the Williamsburg Bridge, partly to avoid disturbing his neighbors; this inspired his comeback album in 1962. Bridge. Apart from another sabbatical between 1969 and 1971, when he went to an Indian ashram to study yoga, philosophy and meditation, these two decades saw him participate in avant-garde and fusion tendencies on the jazz scene, playing Latin American music in What’s New (1962); More free (but still highly melodic) improvisations on Sonny Meets Hawk! (1963) and East Broadway Run Down (1966); and covers 1970s R&B-influenced material from Stevie Wonder, Patrice Rushen and others. He also composed and performed the soundtrack for the 1966 Michael Caine film Alfie (except for the Cilla Black theme song).
He continued to fuse his playing with funk and calypso in the 1980s, adding an uncredited solo to the Rolling Stones’ 1981 album Tattoo You. He focused his live performances on larger stages than “smoke-filled, cash register-racking nightclubs” and campaigned around the growing climate crisis with charity concerts and his 1998 album. Global warming. “It’s like we’re on the Titanic right now, but everyone is just watching the Titanic,” he later said.
Rollins was married twice, first (and briefly) to Dawn Finney in 1957. That year he met his next wife, Lucille Pearson, and they married in 1965, remaining together until his death in 2004. The couple was at their home just six blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11; They were evacuated to upstate New York, with Rollins carrying only his saxophone. Three days later, he traveled to Boston for an acclaimed live set that would be released as Songless: The September 11 Concert and earned him a Grammy for best jazz instrumental solo. Rollins later told the Guardian: “I lost a lot of valuables on 9/11 and learned a lesson; things are not where they are.”
He won a lifetime achievement Grammy award in 2004, and after touring and performing throughout his life, he retired in 2014 after being diagnosed with the lung disease pulmonary fibrosis. “I went through a period of depression; I was really skinny“I had gone on this life quest to realize my potential in music, and not being able to play anymore meant I wouldn’t have the chance to do that,” he said in 2017. “But I eventually came out of depression when I realized I should be grateful rather than depressed. I had the opportunity to live a life as a musician, which I always wanted to do.”
He once said his goal was to “get to a level where I never stop making progress,” and even in 2013, just before his retirement, he maintained he still had a lot of work to do: “People say, ‘Sonny, calm down, sit back. Your place is safe. You’re the great Sonny Rollins; you’ve done it.” I heard that and thought, ‘To hell with Sonny Rollins.’ Where I want to go is beyond Sonny Rollins. “Far beyond.”
