Sonny Rollins

Saxophonist

• Born: September 7, 1930
• Birthplace: New York, New York

Jazz musician and composer

Rollins ranks among the most influential jazz saxophonists, filling the musical and historical gap between Charlie Parker and John Coltrane. As a trendsetting saxophonist of the post-bebop and hardbop era, he established jazz waltz, calypso rhythms, extensive “improvisatory stream of consciousness” solo technique, and other key styles. He remained on the forefront of exceptional tenor saxophonists during his more than sixty-year career.

Areas of achievement: Music: bandleading; Music: composition; Music: jazz

Early Life

Sonny Rollins, whose parents were born in the Virgin Islands, grew up in Harlem in New York City. There he had ample opportunity to visit the Apollo Theater, where he heard Lionel Hampton, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie. After an unsuccessful attempt to learn the piano at the age of eight, Rollins took up the alto saxophone at the age of thirteen, having been inspired by records by Louis Jordan and the Tympany Five. As an alto player, he led a group with Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor during his high school years.

Inspired by Coleman Hawkins, Rollins switched to tenor saxophone in 1946 and began his professional career in his native New York in 1947. He rehearsed with Thelonious Monk for several months in 1948, played with Art Blakey in 1949, and recorded with Babs Gonzales, J. J. Johnson, Bud Powell, and Fats Navarro in the same year. In 1951, he joined the band of Miles Davis, with whom he stayed until 1954. That same year, Rollins succeeded in overcoming a heroin addiction after treatment at a federal drug facility in Lexington, Kentucky. He moved to Chicago, where he joined the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet in January of 1956. After Clifford Brown’s fatal automobile accident that June, Rollins left the group and performed briefly in Davis’s quintet before forming his own group.

Life’s Work

Rollins established himself as one of the key instrumentalists of the post-bebop era through three landmark recordings in 1956. In “Valse Hot,” he introduced the practice of playing bebop in a 3/4 meter. In “St. Thomas” (named for the birthplace of his mother), he first showed his affinity for calypso rhythms, and in “Blue Seven,” he explored an innovative solo technique based on short motifs. Way Out West (1957) was the first album on which Rollins omitted the piano from the rhythm group. The Freedom Suite (1958)—again with bass and drums accompaniment—was probably the first jazz album to express a political position in support of civil rights for African Americans.

Despite being hailed as one of the most talented and innovative saxophonists of his time, Rollins was discontented with his sidemen and his own playing. He took a break from professional music from August, 1959, to November, 1961. As a result of his long practice sessions on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York during this period, Rollins developed a distinct solo style based on extended “stream-of-consciousness” extemporizations. He first exhibited this style in a twenty-minute unaccompanied solo in “Oleo” (on the 1962 album Our Man in Jazz). Rollins stylistically remained true to a hardbop style, despite several efforts to join the avant-garde movement by collaborating with free jazz musicians Don Cherry and Billy Higgins in mid-1962. East Broadway Run Down (1966) marks the most free-jazz-influenced album that Rollins recorded as a bandleader.

In a second sabbatical from September, 1969, to November, 1971, Rollins abandoned music altogether to travel to Japan and pursue spiritual development in India. After his return, Rollins began to make increasing use of electronic instruments and to perform in a moderately commercial vein (Horn Culture, 1973 and Don’t Stop the Carnival, 1978). In 1972, he also began to play the soprano saxophone, adding the lyricon to his repertoire in 1979. After touring the United States in 1978 as a member of the Milestone Jazzstars (with McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, and Al Foster), Rollins refused to take on any further nightclub engagements and announced that he would play only in concert halls or festivals. His third, six-month long sabbatical occurred in 1983 after he collapsed from exhaustion. Two years later, the recording of his acclaimed solo concert in the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art was released as The Solo Album (1985). In the subsequent years, his Concerto for Saxophone and Orchestra—the product of Rollins’s work during a 1972 Guggenheim Fellowship—premiered in Tokyo.

Throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century Rollins remained active, touring the United States, Europe, and Japan and recording with his quintet in hardbop and fusion styles. In 2001, he performed a landmark concert at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, merely four days after the terrorist attacks of September 11. The concert recording Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert (2001) won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo (“Why Was I Born?”) and the DownBeat Readers Poll. The magazine also named Rollins Best Tenor Saxophonist and Jazzman of the Year. Rollins also continued to record, releasing the album Sonny, Please (2006), which was nominated for a Grammy, and multiple live albums in the Road Shows series. However, health issues led him to stop live performances in 2012.

In 2015 Rollins's 1962 comeback album The Bridge was accepted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. The following year saw the release of Holding the Stage: Road Shows, vol. 4, which collected live tracks from 1979 through 2012, including the previously unreleased ending performance from the famous Boston show in September 2001. Around this time, Rollins had announced that he no longer played saxophone at all due to ongoing respiratory problems, but he remained a renowned figure in the jazz world. In 2017 his archives were acquired by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library in Harlem. Another live recording, Rollins in Holland, was released in 2020, featuring recordings from 1967.

Significance

Sonny Rollins is widely considered among the greatest saxophonists of all time and an iconic figure in jazz history. His long and illustrious career began in the late 1940s during the bebop era and continued into the twenty-first century. Although he experimented with free jazz and jazz rock, he stayed rooted in the hardbop idiom. On his instrument, Rollins developed a voluminous, coarse and rough tone (which possibly stemmed from the 1970s fusion movement) with a grainy and complex timbre, diverse vibrato nuances, and characteristic staccato articulations. His improvisation and varied rhythmic playing style are among his most important contributions to jazz. Among the numerous prizes and awards that Rollins received were Grammy Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2004), the induction into the Academy of Achievement (2006), the Polar Music Prize (2007), a honorary doctorate in music from Colby College (2007), the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, First Class (2009), and the National Medal of Arts (2010).

Bibliography

"About Sonny Rollins." Sonny Rollins, sonnyrollins.com/bio. Accessed 21 July 2021.

Baker, David. The Jazz Style of Sonny Rollins: A Musical and Historical Perspective. Lebanon: Studio PR, 1980. Print.

Blancq, Charles. Sonny Rollins: The Journey of a Jazzman. Boston: Twayne, 1983. Print.

Nastos, Michael G. "Sonny Rollins: Biography." AllMusic, www.allmusic.com/artist/sonny-rollins-mn0000039656/biography. Accessed 21 July 2021.

Nisenson, Eric. Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and His World of Improvisation. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000. Print.

Palmer, Richard. Sonny Rollins: The Cutting Edge—An Informative Introduction to Rollins’s Life and Work. Hull: Hull UP, 1998. Rev. ed. New York: Continuum, 2004. Print.

Rollins, Sonny. "Sonny Rollins Is At Peace. But He Regrets Trying to One Up Coltrane." Interview by David Marchese. The New York Times Magazine, 27 Feb. 2020, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/02/24/magazine/sonny-rollins-interview.html. Accessed 21 July 2021.

Wilson, Peter N. Sonny Rollins: The Definitive Musical Guide. Berkeley, Calif.: Berkeley Hills, 2001. Print.