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Biography
Theodore Walter "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930 in New York City) is
an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Sonny Rollins has had a long, productive
career in jazz, beginning his career at the age of 11 and playing with piano
legend Thelonious Monk before reaching the age of 20. Rollins is still
touring and recording today, having outlived several of his jazz
contemporaries such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Art Blakey, all
performers with whom he has recorded.
Early Days
Rollins started as a pianist, then changed to alto saxophone, finally
switching to tenor in 1946. He was first recorded in 1949 with Babs
Gonzalez; in the same year he recorded with J. J. Johnson and Bud Powell. In
1950, Rollins was arrested for armed robbery, given a sentence of three
years, spending 10 months in Rikers Island before he was released on parole.
He was rearrested in 1952 for violating the terms of his parole by using
heroin. Rollins however, attended an institution in Lexington for drug
addicts, which administered dolophine, allowing him to kick his habit
entirely. Rollins had begun to make a name for himself as he recorded with
Miles Davis in 1951 and Thelonious Monk in 1953.
Rollins joined the Clifford Brown–Max Roach quintet in 1955, and after
Brown's death in 1956 worked mainly as a leader.
Rollins' most widely acclaimed album Saxophone Colossus was recorded on June
22, 1956, featuring Tommy Flanagan on piano, former Jazz Messengers bassist
Doug Watkins and his favorite drummer Max Roach. This was only Rollins'
third outing as a leader in the recording studio, but it was a date on which
he recorded perhaps his best-known composition "St. Thomas", a Caribbean
calypso-based on a tune sung to him by his mother in his childhood: "St.
Thomas is a song my mother used to sing, it is a traditional tune."
Coltrane had not yet become a major figure and Rollins was the leading
modern jazz saxophonist in America.
In 1957 he also pioneered the use of just bass and drums as accompaniment
for his saxophone solos, a texture that came to be known as "strolling"; two
early recordings in this format are Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957) and A
Night at the Village Vanguard (Blue Note, 1957). Throughout his career,
Rollins used the technique, even backing bass and drum solos with sax licks
(and bass for the drummer or drums for the bass player).
By this time, Rollins had become well-known for taking relatively banal or
unconventional material (such as "There's No Business Like Show Business" on
Work Time, "I'm an Old Cowhand" on Way Out West, and later "Sweet Leilani"
on This Is What I Do) and turning it into a vehicle for improvisation. He is
quite well-known as a composer; a number of his tunes (including "St.
Thomas", "Doxy", "Oleo" and "Airegin") have become standards.
In 1958 Rollins recorded an extended piece for saxophone, bass and drums:
The Freedom Suite. His original sleeve notes made it explicit that the piece
was an intervention on the socio-political situation:
"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." [1]
The LP was only briefly available in its original form, before the record
company repackaged it as Shadow Waltz, the title of another piece on the
record.
First Sabbatical
By 1959 however, Rollins was frustrated with what he perceived as his own
musical limitations and took the first – and most famous – of his musical
sabbaticals. To spare a neighboring expectant mother the sound of his
practice routine, Rollins ventured to the Williamsburg Bridge to practice.
Upon his return to the jazz scene he named his "comeback" album The Bridge
at the start of a contract with RCA Records.
Throughout the '60s Rollins remained one of the most adventurous musicians
around. Each album he recorded differed radically from the previous one.
Rollins explored Latin rhythms on What's New, tackled the avant-garde on Our
Man in Jazz, and re-examined standards on Now's the Time. He also provided
the soundtrack to the 1966 version of Alfie. His 1965 residency at legendary
jazz club Ronnie Scott's has recently emerged on CD as Live in London, a
series of releases from the Harkit label; they offer a very different
picture of his playing from the studio albums of the period.
Second Sabbatical
Frustrated once again, Rollins took his last (so far) sabbatical to study
yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophies. When he returned in 1972, it was
clear that he had become enamored with R&B, pop, and funk rhythms. His bands
throughout the '70s and '80s featured electric guitar, electric bass, and
usually more pop- or funk-oriented drummers. It was during this period that
Rollins' notoriety for unaccompanied saxophone solos came to the forefront.
In 1985 he released his Solo Album, though many Rollins fans consider it
something of a disappointment compared to his best solo work.
Rollins' most famous appearance to rock music fans was his appearance on the
1981 Rolling Stones album Tattoo You in which he plays saxophone on "Slave"
and "Waiting on a Friend" and possibly "Neighbours".
Into the 21st century
Although his recordings in the '70s, '80s, and '90s were not as critically
acclaimed as his earlier recordings, he continues to be known for his
powerful live performances. Critics such as Gary Giddins and Stanley Crouch
have noted the disparity between Sonny Rollins the recording artist, and
Sonny 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'
talent and the undimmed power and lore of his jazz ancestors."
On September 11, 2001, Rollins, who lived several blocks away, heard the
World Trade Center collapse, and was forced to evacuate his apartment, with
only his saxophone in hand. Although he was shaken, he travelled to Boston
five days later, to play at Berklee College. That concert was released on CD
in 2005,'Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert.
Rollins was presented with a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2004.
After a highly successful Japanese tour in late 2005, Rollins returned to
the recording studio for the first time in five years to record, "Sonny,
Please." At the same time, he launched his own website, and started his own
label, Doxy Records.
The city of Minneapolis, MN officially named Tuesday October 31st, 2006
after him in honor of his achievements and contributions to the world of
Jazz.
