Sonny Rollins

Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a leader. A number of his compositions, including " St. Thomas", " Oleo", " Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards. Rollins has been called "the greatest living improviser" and the "Saxophone Colossus".

Early life

Rollins was born in New York City to parents from the United States Virgin Islands. The youngest of three siblings, he grew up in central Harlem and on Sugar Hill, receiving his first alto saxophone at the age of seven or eight. He attended Edward W. Stitt Junior High School and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946. During his high school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor.

Later life and career

1949–1956

After graduating from high school in 1948, 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, at the time the only assistance in the U.S. for drug addicts. 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. Rollins initially feared sobriety would impair his musicianship, but then went on to greater success.

Rollins briefly joined the Miles Davis Quintet in the summer of 1955. Later that year, he joined the Clifford Brown– Max Roach quintet; studio albums documenting his time in the band are ''Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street'' and '' Sonny Rollins Plus 4''. After the deaths of Brown and the band's pianist, Richie Powell, in a June 1956 automobile accident, Rollins continued playing with Roach and began releasing albums under his own name on Prestige Records, Blue Note, Riverside, and the Los Angeles label Contemporary.

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"). A long blues solo on '' Saxophone Colossus'', "Blue 7", was analyzed in depth by the composer and critic Gunther Schuller in a 1958 article.

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." 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".

In 1957 he married the actress and model Dawn Finney.

In 1956 he also recorded '' Tenor Madness'', using Davis's group – pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The title track is the only recording of Rollins with John Coltrane, who was also a member of Davis's group.

At the end of the year Rollins appeared as a sideman on Thelonious Monk's album ''Brilliant Corners'' and also recorded his own first album for Blue Note Records, entitled '' Sonny Rollins, Volume One'', with Donald Byrd on trumpet, Wynton Kelly on piano, Gene Ramey on bass, and Roach on drums.

1957–spring 1959

In 1957, Rollins pioneered the use of bass and drums, without piano, as accompaniment for his saxophone solos,Ratliff, Ben. "Sonny Rollins Strips for Action." ''The New York Times,'' Late Edition (East Coast). September 16, 2007. ''ProQuest.'' Web. August 13, 2014. 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". 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. Joe Henderson, David S. Ware, Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis, and Joshua Redman have also led pianoless sax trios.

While in Los Angeles in 1957, Rollins met alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman and the two of them practiced together. Coleman, a pioneer of free jazz, stopped using a pianist in his own band two years later.

By this time, Rollins had become well known for taking relatively banal or unconventional songs (such as " There's No Business Like Show Business" on '' Work Time'', " Toot, Toot, Tootsie" on '' The Sound of Sonny'', and later " Sweet Leilani" on the Grammy-winning album '' This Is What I Do'') and using them as vehicles for improvisation.

Rollins acquired the nickname "Newk" because of his facial resemblance to Brooklyn Dodgers star pitcher Don Newcombe.

In 1957 he made his Carnegie Hall debut and recorded again for Blue Note with Johnson on trombone, Horace Silver or Monk on piano and drummer Art Blakey (released as '' Sonny Rollins, Volume Two''). That December, he and fellow tenor saxophonist Sonny Stitt were featured together on Dizzy Gillespie's album '' Sonny Side Up''.

In 1958, he appeared in Art Kane's '' A Great Day in Harlem'' photograph of jazz musicians in New York; he is one of only two surviving musicians from the photo (the other being Benny Golson).

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." 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.

Following '' Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass'' (''Sonny Rollins Brass/Sonny Rollins Trio''), Rollins made one more studio album in 1958, '' Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders'', before taking a three-year break from recording. This was a session for Contemporary Records and saw Rollins recording an esoteric mixture of tunes including " Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with a Dixie Melody" with a West Coast group made up of pianist Hampton Hawes, guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Leroy Vinnegar and drummer Shelly Manne.

In 1959 he toured Europe for the first time, performing in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and France.

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. 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. Today, a fifteen-story apartment building named "The Rollins" stands on the Grand Street site where he lived. Almost every day from the summer of 1959 through the end of 1961, Rollins practiced on the bridge, next to the subway tracks. Rollins admitted that he would often practice for 15 or 16 hours a day, no matter what season. 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. During this period, Rollins became a dedicated practitioner of yoga. 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." In 2016, a campaign was initiated that seeks to have the bridge renamed in Rollins's honor.

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''. During the 1960s, he lived on Willoughby Street in Brooklyn, New York.

He named his 1962 "comeback" album '' The Bridge'' at the start of a contract with RCA Victor. Produced by George Avakian, the disc was recorded with a quartet featuring guitarist Jim Hall, Ben Riley on drums, and bassist Bob Cranshaw. This became one of Rollins's best-selling records; in 2015 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Rollins's contract with RCA Victor lasted through 1964. Each album he recorded differed radically from the previous one. The 1962 disc '' What's New?'' explored Latin rhythms. On the album ''Our Man in Jazz,'' recorded live at The Village Gate, he explored avant-garde playing with a quartet that featured Cranshaw on bass, Billy Higgins on drums and Don Cherry on cornet. He also played with a tenor saxophone hero, Coleman Hawkins, and free jazz pianist Paul Bley on ''Sonny Meets Hawk!'', and he re-examined jazz standards and Great American Songbook melodies on '' Now's the Time'' and ''The Standard Sonny Rollins'' (which featured pianist Herbie Hancock).

In 1963, he made the first of many tours of Japan.

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. (These are unauthorized releases, and Rollins has responded by "bootlegging" them himself and releasing them on his website.)

Upon signing with Impulse! Records, he released a soundtrack to the 1966 film '' Alfie,'' as well as '' There Will Never Be Another You'' and '' Sonny Rollins on Impulse!'' After '' East Broadway Run Down'' (1966), which featured trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones, Rollins did not release another studio album for six years.

In 1968, he was the subject of a television documentary (in the series Creative Persons), directed by Dick Fontaine, entitled ''Who is Sonny Rollins?''

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