Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins

Date Posted: August 27 2008

Written By: Chicago Jazz

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in his own words…
Sonny Rollins

Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City. He grew up in Harlem not far from the Savoy Ballroom, the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep of his idol, Coleman Hawkins. After early discovery of Fats Waller and Louis Armstrong, he fell under the spell of the musical revolution that surrounded him, bebop. He began to follow Charlie Parker, and soon came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his musical mentor and guru. Living in Sugar Hill, his neighborhood musical peers included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor, but it was young Rollins who was first out of the pack, working and recording with Babs Gonzales, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty. In the early fifties, he established a reputation first among musicians, then the public, as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene, through his work with Miles, Monk, and the MJQ.

Rollins moved to Chicago for a few years to remove himself from the surrounding elements of negativity—particularly drugs—around the jazz scene. He reemerged at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence. His trademarks became a caustic, often-humorous style of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that found him hailed for models of thematic improvisation.

In 1956, Rollins began recording the first of a series of landmark recordings issued under his own name: Valse Hot introduced the practice, now common, of playing bop in 3/4 meter; St. Thomas initiated his explorations of calypso patterns; and Way Out West (1957), Rollins’ first album using a trio of saxophone, double bass, and drums, offered a solution to his longstanding difficulties with incompatible pianists, and exemplified his witty ability to improvise on hackneyed material (“Wagon Wheels,” “I’m an Old Cowhand”). It Could Happen to You (also 1957) was the first in a long series of unaccompanied solo recordings, and The Freedom Suite (1958) foreshadowed the political stances taken in jazz in the 1960s. During the years 1956 to 1958 Rollins was widely regarded as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz.

Rollins' first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late sixty-one withdrew from public performance, woodshedding on the Williamsburg Bridge on New York's Lower East Side. When he returned to action in early 1962, his first recording was appropriately titled The Bridge. By the mid sixties, his live sets became grand, marathon stream-of-consciousness solos where he would call forth melodies from his encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs, including startling segues and sometimes barely visiting one theme before surging into dazzling variations upon the next. Rollins was brilliant, yet restless. The period between 1962 and 1966 saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, yet he grew dissatisfied with the music business once again and went on two more sabbaticals—to India and Japan—between 1966 and the early 1970s.

In 1972, with the encouragement and support of his wife Lucille, who had become his business manager, Rollins returned to performing and recording, signing with Milestone and releasing Next Album. His lengthy association with the Berkeley-based label produced two-dozen albums in various settings. Rollins is also the subject of a mid-eighties documentary entitled Saxophone Colossus; part of its soundtrack is available as G-Man.

He won his first performance Grammy for This Is What I Do (2000), and his second for 2004’s Without a Song (The 9/11 Concert), in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category (for "Why Was I Born"). In addition, Rollins received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 2004.


Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did you get involved with the saxophone?

Sonny Rollins: I started playing alto at about age eight and then I went into tenor about age ten and I got my first… Well I didn’t get it, my mother got me my first tenor. Maybe about age sixteen. That's roughly right, but I started on alto when I was in elementary school.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did you get started in music?

Rollins: Well, I was very enamored of the saxophone of Louis Jordan. And of course I came from musical background. There was a lot of music in my house. My older brother and sister are musicians. I heard a lot of music. Of course I was born in Harlem and there was so much music going around Harlem! So I heard a lot of music, and I got into the saxophone through Louis Jordan.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Your parents were from the Virgin Islands. Did you receive some Caribbean influences while growing up?

Rollins: Yes, my mother used to take me to some Caribbean dances, so I was able to hear a lot of that music.
Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was "St. Thomas" inspired by your parents’ Caribbean music?

Rollins: Yeah, that was a piece my mother used to sing around the house. So I sort of purloined it.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Her lyrics must have been different than the ones written by Ray Passman.

Rollins: Yeah! [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What do you think of the rework?

Rollins: It's okay. It's really nice. I'm glad that it's being done. You know, it's a nice melody and I just sort of built an arrangement on it. It's bright, it's happy and it adds a little lift to the world and I'm quite happy with anything that’s done with it.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What prompted the switch from alto to tenor?

Rollins: Well, my first idol, as I said, was Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five. Then I heard Coleman Hawkins "Body and Soul." I used to listen to a lot of music, as I said. Around the house there would always be radio and we would hear all the bands that would come to New York and everything. Finally I heard "Body and Soul" and I realized that I liked the tenor. So it was through Coleman Hawkins that I wanted to switch over to this slightly larger instrument.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Do you remember your first paid gig?

Rollins: Yeah, I remember a gig I had in the Bronx. I lived in a place on Washington Heights and there was a big bridge––sort of a viaduct––going over from where we lived at on the Heights to the Bronx, where my first job was. And I remember when I went there, I had my alto with me, and when I came home I could see my mother waiting for me all way at the other end of this viaduct. I remember that—that was my first paid job. You know, I knew from an early age that I was destined; you know I really wanted to do it and I said, This is it––this is what I want to do, and I just felt destined to do it.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You are blessed in that regard. How did you end up getting a paid gig? Who hired you?

Rollins: Oh, this was just a little, uh, some kind of a function––I forget exactly how I got it. I was a young musician coming up––I was better than most of the guys around. Everybody wanted to be a musician, but I had a little more talent than a lot of the other guys. You know, I was selected by the older guys, and this carried through all the way up to when I started working with Babs Gonzalez and he always had a lot of the top-notch people and he got me when I was pretty young and I started playing with people like Wardell Gray and all these really high, high level musicians when I was quite young, compared to them. So this is sort of the way I sort of got into it. I was always selected by more experienced, better-known musicians.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was Babs the first big name you worked with?

Rollins: Yeah, I made my first record with Babs in 1948 and I was seventeen or eighteen.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How did he discover you?

Rollins: Well, he discovered me by word of mouth. We lived in this section of New York called Sugar Hill, which was quite a well-to-do area of Harlem at that time. You know, word really got around that there is this kid that really can play and so on and so forth––and so he offered me a job and I got a chance to play with people like J.J. Johnson and Benny Green and all of these really top level people––it was really great.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What do you consider to be your first big break?

Rollins: Well, um… my first big break. Well, I have been so fortunate in my life to have played with some of these great people. I began playing with Thelonius Monk––began joining his band and practicing in his small apartment there in Manhatten and I consider that to be my first opportunity. And I think shortly after that I joined Miles Davis, which was also a fairly big breakthrough because I met John Coltrane––we played together with Miles––and I made some records with Miles. Around that time, which would be the late forties, I was beginning to get breaks. But, you know, I would say that playing with Monk when Monk got me into his band and I began to rehearse and everything with a lot of the guys. That was a pretty good thing. But, you know, as I said, a few things began happening as people began to know that there’s this young guy that can play and they could get him. And, you know, all of the older musicians were always looking to recruit the young people, and so I got a lot of breaks by virtue of being where I was—I was right in New York City––right in the heart of everything. Monk was one of first important people that I got a chance to associate with, and shortly thereafter Miles.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: How do you measure these events as "breaks"? Is it the musical level you attained, the international and national exposure that you received or the money that accompanied it?

Rollins: Well, the money was never a huge factor. In those days the musicians––this would be the late forties going into the fifties––musicians were I guess on a scale of ordinary people––I guess they did okay financially.

But it wasn't about the money––it was always about the music. I'm not a money-oriented person, so it was always about playing the music. And, also I don't think there was a lot of money around––some of the top guys like J.J. Johnson, who was a very talented draughtsman in the fifties––he had to actually work what we would call a day job. So there was not a lot of money around, and it wasn't at all for the love of money. At least in my case, I never really made a lot of money and I never even thought about money. I mean money is sort of, well… actually, I'm still a pauper in comparison to a lot of Americans. [laughs] I think the money never came for jazz musicians. I know I'm more fortunate than others, but it wasn't about that––it was about being accepted and that I was beginning to make some contributions. Of course, I didn't realize that I was contributing anything to the music until retrospectively years later. You know, getting to play some of their music, et cetera. The money part was completely foreign to me. Music and money, they don't go. And I always tell young people that call me and write me and things—I always tell them, Just play music for the love of it. I mean, if you can make money, great, but music is not about money. Most people have to live, raise a family, get into that realm then it's over for most people, because you can’t do both. But if you are lucky enough to be able to play and you don't have to be a family person, then do it for the love of it, never mind trying to make money playing music. That is my philosophy to this very day, actually.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What was your impression of Bird?

Rollins: Well, Bird was sort of our prophet, because when he came along with the bebop revolution everybody tried to play like Bird. And I did, too even though my first instrument was a tenor. I remember there used to be a disc jockey, as a matter of fact in Chicago, a fella named Daddy-O Daley. And he used to call me "Sonny Rollins, the Bird of the tenor." So I still had the influence of Charlie Parker although I played tenor. He was our man, everybody really looked up to Charlie Parker and the wonderful group that he had. Of course, he had some bad habits, which was the bane of his existence, actually. Something I found out myself. We all thought, Gee, if Charlie Parker uses drugs then I guess it's okay to use drugs.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You weren't alone.

Rollins: Right. Finally, one day Charlie Parker––it was destroying him to see his young protégés like myself following in his footsteps and that was enough to kind of screw my head on straight and I got myself together because I was following him, you know. But, he was our prophet, really.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Was that when you moved to Chicago for a while?

Rollins: Well, I was in Chicago several times. I first came to Chicago in the late forties and I was probably young and wild and I was doing a lot of stuff. And later in the fifties when I was involved in drugs, that was dragging me down at different points all the way up until 1955 when I left from Chicago and went down to Lexington—the Betty Ford Clinic of its day—and was able to effect a cure from drugs and it’s a wonderful period of my life because I was able to confront the serpent and turn him away. It's one of the things that I'm most proud of in my life.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: It's one of your great accomplishments.

Rollins: Yeah, I think so. I know it is for me.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You joined Clifford Brown coming out of that period, and Clifford was known as being on the straight and narrow. Would that have anything to do with you hooking up with him?

Rollins: Well, by the time that I hooked up with Clifford Brown and Max Roach, I had already turned the corner and I had been living in Chicago and I had been doing a lot of menial jobs around various parts of Chicago and I was, you know, just trying to strengthen myself—my character, my will, my resolve—to stay away from drugs and be able to go back into the jazz scene, because I knew I eventually had to go back to it. So it took a while before I was able to walk through the doors of a nightclub, because I knew what was waiting for me. But, I was able to finally do it. So, by the time I got involved with Clifford and Max I had turned the corner so I was just getting myself ready to come back into the music scene.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: They always say the most vigilant anti-smokers are the ex-smokers. Being a vigilant anti-drug user, is that why you turned to Clifford Brown, because you knew that he was on the straight and narrow?

Rollins: No, I had already started turning the corner, but Clifford was such a straight-laced, beautiful guy, it was really great inspiration to be around somebody that was such a great musician and was such a clean-living person. It definitely reinforced where I was at.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Tell us about the jazz scene in Chicago in the mid-fifties.

Rollins: A lot of my time was spent there in the fifties. As I said, the late forties I first went there and played with and met some of the Chicago musicians, like the great drummer Ike Day and Wilbur Ware and Wilbur Campbell and lots of many young jazz musicians in Chicago. It's really a wonderful place, I really felt very "at home" in Chicago. I got acquainted with some other guys. Then I came back several times during the fifties. And fifty-five was when all these things were happening and I joined Clifford Brown. And then I guess I came back a few other times just through the years. Chicago is my second home. Every time I'd go to Chicago for many, many years I would feel a special emotional tug. That is sort of wearing off a little bit now, but I felt it for so many years when I began going back there. All through the seventies, eighties, nineties I really felt that. I feel that Chicago is a wonderful place to be, a great place during that period, the jazz scene there. You would have nightclubs open all night, guys jamming.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: What were some of your favorite places to play at that time?

Rollins: There used to be a guy called Tommy "Mad Man" Jones, who had a club out on the West Side. He was the saxophone player. A lot of guys used to go out there. And then everyone began working at the Beehive, over by the university, near the lake. There were several clubs over there and several clubs around 63rd near Cottage Grove, like the Crown Propeller––Miles and Coltrane used to work at the Crown Propeller. I used to work McKee's on Cottage Grove. As a matter of fact, when Clifford Brown passed away, Max and George Morrow and I came to Chicago, and we were supposed to meet Clifford and Richard Powell in Chicago. That was a sad time. I used to go to a lot of places where my good friend Gene Ammons was at. Gene was always a big-hearted guy. His heart was big as his saxophone sound. And he would let me come in and sit in with him. And I also played at some places on the near North Side—a lot of joints where they had live jazz. Chicago—instead of the Wild West atmosphere it was the Wild Jazz atmosphere! They had these clubs with all-night guys who would play twenty-four hours in a day.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: We've heard about some of those twenty-four-hour jam sessions.

Rollins: It was fantastic—I tell the story, because I never forget—I was living around Cottage Grove, in that area. And I came home one night—I say night but it was about five o’clock in the morning. There used to be a place on the corner 63rd and Cottage Grove called The Circle. And there was Lester Young up on the stage, jamming. It was the sort of place where through the glass you could look right in from the street. And there’s Prez up there blowing with his hat on and everything. This is the stuff of real jazz lore. So I love Chicago, because that's what Chicago means to me. That scene.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Tell us about the death of Clifford Brown. Weren’t you and him scheduled to perform together in Chicago the day he died?

Rollins: Let's see, Clifford Brown died in 1955. Right, we were supposed to be coming to play someplace in Chicago—I don’t remember where. He was leaving from Philadelphia with a pianist, Richie Powell, and Richie’s wife, and they were driving to Chicago. Max, myself and the bass player, George Morrow, were leaving from New York, and we were going to meet in Chicago. But of course it never happened.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You laid new groundwork in jazz by releasing the first saxophone trio album without another rhythm instrument like a piano or guitar. Was that something you did consciously?

Rollins: No, I've played trio quite a bit during my career, done a lot of trio work so it was not unusual for me to use that instrumentation. I’ve done a lot of stuff like that.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You did not view it as particularly innovative even though other people did?

Rollins: Well, you could say that. As matter of fact when I first... I was opening up for Miles Davis—Miles and the group of jazz stars. I had a trio—I think it was sax, piano and bass. Anyway, it was a trio, and that was when Miles first heard me and offered me a job in his band. So, I've been playing trio all my life for different reasons, sometimes nobody else available, sometimes, the sound—I like the sound… I never worried about the sound, I always liked playing by myself or playing with one other instrument. As you know I recorded with one other instrument, so it's never been an impediment to my trying to create some music. I've enjoyed it over the years.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: For many years you chose to use guitar instead of piano.

Rollins: Right, right, right.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Is there some benefit in your mind to having a guitarist over a pianist?

Rollins: Well, the guitar leaves a little space, whereas a pianist tends to fill up that space. Sometimes, I like the empty space so that I can fill it up. I can use that space to create what I'm thinking about. Yeah, I like guitars because guitars give you the chordal option and still there is more space in their accompaniment. Not that I haven't played with some great pianists in my time. [laughs]

Chicago Jazz Magazine: When you made the West Coast album, Sonny Rollins Way Out West, were you living out there at the time or was that something you recorded while visiting L.A.?

Rollins: Um, let’s see… I was living out in California for a while, briefly. I got married when I was in California and I was living out there briefly before we came back to New York. So, I’m not sure. I went out there originally with Max Roach and Kenny Dorham—that's when I went to the West Coast for the first time and that's when I got married. So, I'm not—I could have been out there with them at that time.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: You didn't work with Max on the album. You recorded Way Out West with Shelley Manne, right?

Rollins: Shelley Manne and Ray Brown.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Were you infatuated with the whole Brubeck, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan West Coast sound?

Rollins: Well, I know Dave, I knew Gerry Mulligan—I didn't know Chet Baker that well at that time—I came to know him later. I don't know if that was particularly reminiscent of their work––that album––at the time. Although I think Gerry had a piano-less quartet, but I don't know if that album Way Out West was reminiscent of any of these musicians you mentioned.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Well, it didn't seem to be musically, but the timing seemed about right.

Rollins: That was a concept album. That was my idea, the posing in the cowboy suit, the whole thing was my idea. My whole idea was a concept. So, I therefore chose those songs, "I'm an Old Cowhand," "Wagon Wheels" and "Way Out West." So, anyway, that's why I chose those songs.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: The western was huge in TV and movies at that time.

Rollins: Well, I grew up to going to westerns as a boy. I would spend every Saturday or whenever I could get, or my uncle would take me to western movies during the time I was growing up back in the thirties. People like Buck Jones and Tim McCoy and Hoot Gibson and Hopalong Cassidy—all of those guys. I was a big fan of the movies—that was our television of the day. I was a big cowboy fan.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Though you've discussed this many times before, we should talk about your "bridge" period.

Rollins: Well, it was a sabbatical to sort of practice—go into the woodshed as they say, and there has been a lot of conjecture about it and people said I went there because of Coltrane and Ornette Coleman. As far as I know, I went on the bridge because I have always been a self-critical musician and I had been getting a lot of play in the jazz world and I felt I wasn't living up to my reputation. I remember it happened one night I was playing with Elvin Jones who was working with me at that time as a drummer. And we played a job someplace in Baltimore.

Anyway, I saw it coming… In fact I had played a solo concert out at U.C. Berkeley back in fifty-nine, and I sort of knew at that time that I wanted to go back to the woodshed. So, this is something that I wanted to do and that is why I went to the bridge. I just wanted to practice and work on some technical things, some various exercises. Actually, I had a teacher down there that I was studying orchestration with… I just wanted to get my musical feet under me. You know, I always had the talent; I always had the natural ability. I just wanted to get some more skills under me. So that’s why I went to the bridge.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: And did it accomplish what you were hoping to accomplish?

Rollins: It accomplished a lot. Although, when I came back, there was some people that said, Well, gee, Sonny, I don't know why you went to the bridge, it sounds the same like you sounded before. But what they didn’t realize is that I did accomplish a lot. It might not have been evident right at that time when I came back. I did amass a lot of skills that I needed. And also it was the act of going against the crowd—see? Because everybody said, Why go away? Keep playing. So it was definitely an unusual step to take for somebody in the music business. Most people feel if you go away people forget about you. A lot of guys would never leave the scene and so on and so forth. So, anyway, that meant nothing to me because I had an idea that I wanted to accomplish, and I felt I did. I went to the bridge and the rest is history.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Well that ties in with what you were saying: that it's not about the money, it's about the music. If it were about the money you wouldn’t take a risk like that.

Rollins: Of course not. Right, I would have kept working and so on and so forth. No, it's never been about the money.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Often times people associate a sabbatical with relaxation, yet your album The Bridge is anything but laid back. The title song, for example, is an action-packed, intense song. So obviously it wasn't a sabbatical in the sense of resting or relaxing.

Rollins: Oh, no, no. There was no resting and relaxing involved. I was lucky enough to find a place to practice at, quite by accident. Serendipitous. I was looking up one day in my neighborhood walking up the steps and seeing the expanse of the Williamsburg Bridge and there was nobody up there. And I walked across and there was maybe one or two people walking across. I said, Wow, this would be an excellent place to come up and practice! And that was it. I had found a spot that was not visible to the trains or the cars—I was not visible to them. The only thing then was the boats below. And that was it, it was a beautiful thing in my life and I'm really grateful for that whole period of time.

Chicago Jazz Magazine: Is it true you were looking for someplace away from your home because you didn't want to bother your neighbors?

Rollins: Oh, right, exactly. There was a lady living there. You know, I prefer not to practice in apartments anyway because I don't like to play music in somebody else’s… But you know, that’s how apartments are in New York City. You can’t get away from… and you know, any music that's too loud

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