Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins[1][2] (born September 7, 1930)[3] is an American retired jazztenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians.[3][4]
In a seven-decade career, Rollins has recorded over sixty albums as a leader. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards. Rollins has been called "the greatest living improviser".[5] Due to health problems, Rollins has not performed publicly since 2012 and announced his retirement in 2014.
After graduating from high school in 1948,[10] Rollins began performing professionally; he made his first recordings in early 1949 as a sideman with the bebop singer Babs Gonzales (trombonist J. J. Johnson was the arranger of the group). Within the next few months, he began to make a name for himself, recording with Johnson and appearing under the leadership of pianist Bud Powell, alongside trumpeter Fats Navarro and drummer Roy Haynes, on a seminal "hard bop" session.
In early 1950, Rollins was arrested for armed robbery and spent ten months in Rikers Island jail before being released on parole; in 1952, he was re-arrested for violating the terms of his parole by using heroin. Between 1951 and 1953, he recorded with Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk. A breakthrough arrived in 1954 when he recorded his famous compositions "Oleo", "Airegin", and "Doxy" with a quintet led by Davis that also featured pianist Horace Silver, these recordings appearing on the album Bags' Groove.
In 1955, Rollins entered the Federal Medical Center, Lexington.[11] While there, he volunteered for then-experimental methadone therapy and was able to break his heroin habit, after which he lived for a time in Chicago, briefly rooming with the trumpeter Booker Little.[12] Rollins initially feared sobriety would impair his musicianship, but then went on to greater success.
His widely acclaimed album Saxophone Colossus was recorded on June 22, 1956, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey, with Tommy Flanagan on piano, former Jazz Messengers bassist Doug Watkins, and his favorite drummer, Roach. This was Rollins's sixth recording as a leader and it included his best-known composition "St. Thomas", a Caribbean calypso based on "Hold Him Joe" a tune sung to him by his mother in his childhood, as well as the fast bebop number "Strode Rode", and "Moritat" (the Kurt Weill composition also known as "Mack the Knife").[3] A long blues solo on Saxophone Colossus, "Blue 7", was analyzed in depth by the composer and critic Gunther Schuller in a 1958 article.[15]
In the solo for "St. Thomas", Rollins uses repetition of a rhythmic pattern, and variations of that pattern, covering only a few tones in a tight range, and employing staccato and semi-detached notes. This is interrupted by a sudden flourish, utilizing a much wider range before returning to the former pattern. (Listen to the music sample.) In his book The Jazz Style of Sonny Rollins, David N. Baker explains that Rollins "very often uses rhythm for its own sake. He will sometimes improvise on a rhythmic pattern instead of on the melody or changes."[16]
Ever since recording "St. Thomas", Rollins's use of calypso rhythms has been one of his signature contributions to jazz; he often performs traditional Caribbean tunes such as "Hold 'Em Joe" and "Don't Stop the Carnival", and he has written many original calypso-influenced compositions, such as "Duke of Iron", "The Everywhere Calypso", and "Global Warming".[citation needed]
In 1957, he married his first wife, actress and model Dawn Finney.[7]
That year, Rollins pioneered the use of bass and drums, without piano, as accompaniment for his saxophone solos,[17] a texture that came to be known as "strolling". Two early tenor/bass/drums trio recordings are Way Out West and A Night at the Village Vanguard, both recorded in 1957. Way Out West was so named because it was recorded for California-based Contemporary Records (with Los Angeles drummer Shelly Manne), and because it included country and western songs such as "Wagon Wheels" and "I'm an Old Cowhand".[18] The Village Vanguard album consists of two sets, a matinee with bassist Donald Bailey and drummer Pete LaRoca and an evening set with bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Elvin Jones. Rollins used the trio format intermittently throughout his career, sometimes taking the unusual step of using his sax as a rhythm section instrument during bass and drum solos. Lew Tabackin cited Rollins's pianoless trio as an inspiration to lead his own.[17]Joe Henderson, David S. Ware, Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis, and Joshua Redman led pianoless sax trios.[17]
The same year, Rollins recorded another landmark piece for saxophone, bass and drums trio: Freedom Suite. His original sleeve notes said, "How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity."[23] The title track is a nineteen-minute improvised bluesy suite; the other side of the album features hard bop workouts of popular show tunes. Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach provided bass and drums, respectively. The LP was available only briefly in its original form, before the record company repackaged it as Shadow Waltz, the title of another piece on the record.[citation needed]
In 1959 he toured Europe for the first time, performing in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and France.[24]
Summer 1959–fall 1961: The Bridge
By 1959, Rollins had become frustrated with what he perceived as his own musical limitations and took the first – and most famous – of his musical sabbaticals.[25] While living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he ventured to the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge to practice, in order to avoid disturbing a neighboring expectant mother.[26] Today, a fifteen-story apartment building named "The Rollins"[27] stands on the Grand Street site where he lived.[28] Almost every day from the summer of 1959 through the end of 1961, Rollins practiced on the bridge, next to the subway tracks.[29] Rollins admitted that he would often practice for 15 or 16 hours a day, no matter what season.[30] In the summer of 1961, the journalist Ralph Berton happened to pass by the saxophonist on the bridge one day and published an article in Metronome magazine about the occurrence.[31] During this period, Rollins became a dedicated practitioner of yoga.[32] Rollins ended his sabbatical in November 1961. He later said "I could have probably spent the rest of my life just going up on the bridge. I realized, no, I have to get back into the real world."[33] In 2016, a campaign was initiated that seeks to have the bridge renamed in Rollins's honor.[29]
Winter 1961–1969: Musical explorations
In November 1961, Rollins returned to the jazz scene with a residency at the Jazz Gallery in Greenwich Village; in March, 1962, he appeared on Ralph Gleason's television series Jazz Casual.[34] During the 1960s, he lived on Willoughby Street in Brooklyn, New York.[35]
In 1963, he made the first of many tours of Japan.[38]
In 1965, he married Lucille Pearson, born on July 25, 1928, in Kansas City, Missouri. She eventually became his very effective manager/producer. They moved (partially, then completely) from New York City to Germantown, New York, where she died November 27, 2004. [39]
In 2007, recordings from a 1965 residency at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club were released by the Harkit label as Live in London; they offer a very different picture of Rollins's playing from the studio albums of the period.[40] (These are unauthorized releases, and Rollins has responded by "bootlegging" them himself and releasing them on his website.)
In 1968, he was the subject of a television documentary (in the series Creative Persons), directed by Dick Fontaine, entitled Who is Sonny Rollins?[41]
1969–1971: Second sabbatical
In 1969, Rollins took another two-year sabbatical from public performance. During this hiatus period, he visited Jamaica for the first time and spent several months studying yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophies at an ashram in Powai, India, a district of Mumbai.[42]
1971–2000
Sonny Rollins performing in 2005
He returned from his second sabbatical with a performance in Kongsberg, Norway, in 1971.[43] Reviewing a March 1972 performance at New York's Village Vanguard night club, The New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett wrote that Rollins "had changed again. He had become a whirlwind. His runs roared, and there were jarring staccato passages and furious double-time spurts. He seemed to be shouting and gesticulating on his horn, as if he were waving his audience into battle."[44] The same year, he released Next Album and moved to Germantown, New York.[45] Also in 1972, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in composition.[46]
During the 1970s and 1980s, he also became drawn to R&B, pop, and funk rhythms. Some of his bands during this period featured electric guitar, electric bass, and usually more pop- or funk-oriented drummers.
In 1974, Rollins added jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley to his band;[47] the group was filmed performing live at Ronnie Scott's in London.[48] For most of this period Rollins was recorded by producer Orrin Keepnews for Milestone Records (the compilation Silver City: A Celebration of 25 Years on Milestone contains a selection from these years).[49] In 1978 he, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, and Al Foster toured together as the Milestone Jazzstars.[50] In June of that year he joined many other major jazz artists in a performance for President Jimmy Carter on the South Lawn of the White House.[51]
It was also during this period that Rollins's passion for unaccompanied saxophone solos came to the forefront. In 1979 he played unaccompanied on The Tonight Show[52] and in 1985 he released The Solo Album, recorded live at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.[53] He also frequently played long, extemporaneous unaccompanied cadenzas during performances with his band; a prime example is his introduction to the tune "Autumn Nocturne" on the 1978 album Don't Stop the Carnival.[54]
By the 1980s, Rollins had stopped playing small nightclubs and was appearing mainly in concert halls or outdoor arenas; through the late 1990s he occasionally performed at large New York rock clubs such as Tramps and The Bottom Line. He added (uncredited) sax improvisations to three tracks by the Rolling Stones for their 1981 album Tattoo You, including the single, "Waiting on a Friend"[55] and the long jam "Slave". That November, he led a saxophone masterclass on French television.[56] In 1983, he was honored as a "Jazz Master" by the National Endowment for the Arts.[57]
In 1986, documentary filmmaker Robert Mugge released a film titled Saxophone Colossus.[58] It featured two Rollins performances: a quintet concert at Opus 40 in upstate New York and a performance with the Yomiuri Shimbun Orchestra in Japan of his Concerto for Saxophone and Symphony, a work composed in collaboration with the Finnish pianist and composer Heikki Sarmanto.
In 1997, he was voted "Jazz Artist of the Year" in the Down Beat magazine critics' poll.[63] The following year, Rollins, a dedicated advocate of environmentalism, released an album entitled Global Warming.[64]
Critics such as Gary Giddins and Stanley Crouch have noted the disparity between Rollins the recording artist, and Rollins the concert artist. In a May 2005 New Yorker profile, Crouch wrote of Rollins the concert artist:
Over and over, decade after decade, from the late seventies through the eighties and nineties, there he is, Sonny Rollins, the saxophone colossus, playing somewhere in the world, some afternoon or some eight o'clock somewhere, pursuing the combination of emotion, memory, thought, and aesthetic design with a command that allows him to achieve spontaneous grandiloquence. With its brass body, its pearl-button keys, its mouthpiece, and its cane reed, the horn becomes the vessel for the epic of Rollins's talent and the undimmed power and lore of his jazz ancestors.
In 2006, Rollins went on to complete a Down Beat Readers Poll triple win for: "Jazzman of the Year", "#1 Tenor Sax Player", and "Recording of the Year" for the CD Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert. The band that year featured his nephew, trombonist Clifton Anderson, and included bassist Cranshaw, pianist Stephen Scott, percussionist Kimati Dinizulu, and drummer Perry Wilson.
After a successful Japanese tour Rollins returned to the recording studio for the first time in five years to record the Grammy-nominated CD Sonny, Please (2006). The CD title is derived from one of his wife's favorite phrases. The album was released on Rollins's own label, Doxy Records, following his departure from Milestone Records after many years and was produced by Anderson. Rollins's band at this time, and on this album, included Cranshaw, guitarist Bobby Broom, drummer Steve Jordan and Dinizulu.
During these years, Rollins regularly toured worldwide, playing major venues throughout Europe, South America, the Far East, and Australasia; he is estimated to have sometimes earned as much as $100,000 per performance.[68] On September 18, 2007, he performed at Carnegie Hall in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of his first performance there. Appearing with him were Anderson (trombone), Bobby Broom (guitar), Cranshaw (bass), Dinizulu (percussion), Roy Haynes (drums) and Christian McBride (bass).[69]
Around 2000, Rollins began recording many of his live performances; since then, he has archived recordings of over two hundred and fifty concerts.[70] To date, four albums have been released from these archives on Doxy Records and Okeh Records: Road Shows, Vol. 1; Road Shows, Vol. 2 (with four tracks documenting his 80th birthday concert, which included Rollins's first ever recorded appearance with Ornette Coleman on the twenty-minute "Sonnymoon for Two"); Road Shows, Vol. 3; and Holding the Stage, released in April 2016.[71]
In 2010 Rollins was awarded the National Medal of Arts[72] and the Edward MacDowell Medal;[73] in the fall of the same year he celebrated his 80th birthday with a concert at New York's Beacon Theatre that included a guest appearance by Ornette Coleman.[74] The following year he was the subject of another documentary by Dick Fontaine, entitled Beyond the Notes.[75]
Rollins has not performed in public since 2012,[76] and retired in 2014,[77] due to recurring respiratory issues caused by pulmonary fibrosis.[78][77][79]
In 2014 he was the subject of a Dutch television documentary entitled Sonny Rollins-Morgen Speel Ik Beter (transl: Tomorrow I'll Play Better).[83] He made a public appearance in June of that year introducing saxophonist Ornette Coleman at an all-star tribute performance to Coleman in Brooklyn, NY.[84] In October 2015, he received the Jazz Foundation of America's lifetime achievement award.[71]
In February 2023, Rollins sold his music catalogue to Reservoir Media.[90] In April 2024 The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins was published, derived from notebooks he maintained from 1959 onwards.[91]
Influences
As a saxophonist he had initially been attracted to the jump and R&B sounds of performers like Louis Jordan, but soon became drawn into the mainstream tenor saxophone tradition. The German critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt described this tradition as sitting between the two poles of the strong sonority of Coleman Hawkins and the light flexible phrasing of Lester Young, which did so much to inspire the fleet improvisation of bebop in the 1950s.[92] Other tenor saxophone influences include Ben Webster and Don Byas. By his mid-teens, Rollins became heavily influenced by alto saxophonist Charlie Parker.[93] During his high school years, he was mentored by the pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, often rehearsing at Monk's apartment.[94]
Instruments
Rollins has played, at various times, a Selmer Mark VI[95] tenor saxophone and a Buescher Aristocrat.[96] During the 1970s he recorded on soprano saxophone for the album Easy Living. His preferred mouthpieces are made by Otto Link and Berg Larsen.[97] He uses Frederick Hemke medium reeds.[95]
Maxwell Lemuel Roach was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He worked with many famous jazz musicians, including Clifford Brown, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Abbey Lincoln, Dinah Washington, Charles Mingus, Billy Eckstine, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, and Booker Little. He also played with his daughter Maxine Roach, a Grammy nominated violist. He was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1992.
Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger, particularly in the hard bop style that he helped pioneer in the 1950s.
Wayne Shorter was an American jazz saxophonist, composer and bandleader. Shorter came to mainstream prominence in 1959 upon joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, for whom he eventually became the primary composer. In 1964 he joined Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet, and then co-founded the jazz fusion band Weather Report in 1970. He recorded more than 20 albums as a bandleader.
Henry Mobley was an American tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone, that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Lester Young, and his style that was laid-back, subtle and melodic, especially in contrast with players such as Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. The critic Stacia Proefrock claimed him "one of the most underrated musicians of the bop era." Mobley's compositions include "Double Exposure", "Soul Station", and "Dig Dis".
Elvin Ray Jones was an American jazz drummer of the post-bop era. Most famously a member of John Coltrane's quartet, with whom he recorded from late 1960 to late 1965, Jones appeared on such albums as My Favorite Things, A Love Supreme, Ascension and Live at Birdland. After 1966, Jones led his own trio, and later larger groups under the name The Elvin Jones Jazz Machine. His brothers Hank and Thad were also celebrated jazz musicians with whom he occasionally recorded. Elvin was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1995. In his The History of Jazz, jazz historian and critic Ted Gioia calls Jones "one of the most influential drummers in the history of jazz". He was also ranked at Number 23 on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Drummers of All Time".
Joseph Salvatore Lovano is an American jazz multi-instrumentalist. Though best known as a tenor saxophonist, Lovano has also recorded on alto clarinet, flute and drums, amongst other instruments. He has earned a Grammy Award and several mentions in Down Beat magazine's critics' & readers' polls. His wife is singer Judi Silvano, with whom he records and performs. Lovano was a longtime member of the late drummer Paul Motian‘s trio alongside guitarist Bill Frisell.
The Village Vanguard is a jazz club at Seventh Avenue South in Greenwich Village, New York City. The club was opened on February 22, 1935, by Max Gordon. Originally, the club presented folk music and beat poetry, but it became primarily a jazz music venue in 1957. It has hosted many highly renowned jazz musicians since then, and today is the oldest operating jazz club in New York City.
Christian McBride is an American jazz bassist, composer and arranger. He has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman, and is an eight-time Grammy Award winner.
Richard Powell was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He was not assisted in his musical development by Bud, his older and better known brother, but both played predominantly in the bebop style.
Saxophone Colossus is the sixth studio album by American jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. Perhaps Rollins's best-known album, it is often considered his breakthrough record. It was recorded monophonically on June 22, 1956, with producer Bob Weinstock and engineer Rudy Van Gelder at the latter's studio in Hackensack, New Jersey. Rollins led a quartet on the album that included pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Doug Watkins, and drummer Max Roach. Rollins was a member of the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet at the time of the recording, and the recording took place four days before his bandmates Brown and Richie Powell died in a car accident on the way to a band engagement in Chicago. Roach appeared on several more of Rollins' solo albums, up to the 1958 Freedom Suite album.
Thomas Lee Flanagan was an American jazz pianist and composer. He grew up in Detroit, initially influenced by such pianists as Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, and Nat King Cole, and then by bebop musicians. Within months of moving to New York in 1956, he had recorded with Miles Davis and on Sonny Rollins' album Saxophone Colossus. Recordings under various leaders, including Giant Steps of John Coltrane, continued well into 1962, when he became vocalist Ella Fitzgerald's full-time accompanist. He worked with Fitzgerald for three years until 1965, and then in 1968 returned to be her pianist and musical director, this time for a decade.
Way Out West is a 1957 album by Sonny Rollins with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne, neither of whom had previously played or recorded with Rollins. The music employs a technique called "strolling", used here by Rollins for the first time, in which he would solo over only bass and drums with no pianist or guitarist playing chords. The reissue of the CD has additional takes of three of the songs, including the title track. These additional takes are all about twice as long, containing much longer solos from all three members of the band.
Coltrane Jazz is a studio album by the jazz musician John Coltrane. It was released in early 1961 on Atlantic Records. Most of the album features Coltrane playing with his former Miles Davis bandmates, pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Jimmy Cobb during two sessions in November and December, 1959. The exception is the track "Village Blues", which was recorded October 21, 1960. "Village Blues" comes from the first recording session featuring Coltrane playing with pianist McCoy Tyner and drummer Elvin Jones, who toured and recorded with Coltrane as part of his celebrated "classic quartet" from 1960 to 1965.
Tenor Madness is an album by jazz musician Sonny Rollins released in October 1956 by Prestige Records. It is most notable for its title track, the only known recording featuring both Rollins and John Coltrane.
The Bridge is a studio album by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, recorded in 1962. It was Rollins' first release following a three-year sabbatical and was his first album for RCA Victor. The saxophonist was joined by the musicians with whom he recorded for the next segment of his career: Jim Hall on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on double bass and Ben Riley on drums.
The Complete Blue Note Recordings of Thelonious Monk is a box set by American jazz pianist Thelonious Monk compiling his recordings for Blue Note first released as a limited four-LP box set on Mosaic Records in 1983 before being issued as a four-CD box set by Blue Note for the first time in 1994 as The Complete Blue Note Recordings.
Sonny Rollins Plus 4 is a jazz album by Sonny Rollins, released in 1956 on Prestige Records. On this album Rollins plays with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. The album was the last recording including pianist Richie Powell and Brown, as both died in a car accident three months later.
G-Man is a live album by American jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins. It was recorded at an outdoor concert on August 16, 1986, held at Opus 40 in Saugerties, New York. The concert was filmed for a documentary about Rollins, directed by Robert Mugge, before being released on record in November 1987 by Milestone Records. G-Man received positive reviews from critics, some of whom called it one of Rollins' best albums.
The Solo Album is a live album featuring a solo performance by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins recorded at the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and released on the Milestone label in 1985.
Sonny Side Up is an album by trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, and the tenor saxophonists Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins, recorded in December 1957 in New York City. It was released in 1959 on producer Norman Granz's newly launched Verve label.
↑ Baker, David N (1983). The Jazz Style of Sonny Rollins: A Musical and Historical Perspective. Alfred Music (Van Nuys, CA). ISBN978-0769230740. p. 14.
1 2 3 Ratliff, Ben. "Sonny Rollins Strips for Action." The New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast). September 16, 2007. ProQuest. August 13, 2014.
↑ "Archived copy"(PDF). Kamamabooks.com. Archived from the original(PDF) on August 16, 2018. Retrieved January 15, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
↑ "Events". Carnegie Hall. January 20, 2012. Archived from the original on June 16, 2010. Retrieved January 31, 2013.
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