Sonny Rollins recorded the confidently titled album ‘Jazz Colossus’ in 1956. But the saxophonist remained plagued by doubt.
Then, in the summer of 1959, he began playing on the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge in New York. Initially a place where he could avoid bothering his pregnant neighbor, the walkway became the site of endless practice.
“What led me to withdraw and go to the 🏽bridge was how I felt about my own playing,” Rollins told the newspaper Guardian in 2022. ‘I knew I was dissatisfied.’
He ended up spending more than two years there, often for 14 or 15 hours a day.
‘Of course, sometimes I would go downstairs to go to the bathroom or go to a bar I liked and have a brandy,’ he said. ‘But then I would go back upstairs.’
The resulting album, ‘The Bridge’, was not a complete break from his previous style, but it took his solos and improvisations to a new level. A review published in Jazz Journal at the time said that Rollins was able to “extract every last ounce of meaning from a particular phrase taken from the song’s melody.”
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The record also put him on the path to becoming one of the most acclaimed artists of his generation, alongside John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter.
Rollins died at his home in Woodstock, New York, according to a statement released by his publicist on Monday. He was 95 years old.
Born on September 7, 1930, Walter Theodore Rollins grew up in Harlem surrounded by music.
Both his brother and sister studied violin and piano. Pianist Fats Waller lived in the neighborhood. Sonny, as he was known since he was little, remembered how he knew instinctively that Waller’s music was right for him — “like a baby getting a bottle or something,” he told PBS NewsHour.
His idol, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, also lived nearby.
On his way to school, Rollins passed by the Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom — both locations in the heart of New York’s jazz world. “I was immersed in it from the beginning, actually,” he said.
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Rollins, a child prodigy, was influenced by saxophonist Charlie Parker and mentored by pianist Thelonious Monk. His first opportunities came in the late 1950s, when he played with leading jazz artists such as Art Blakey, Bud Powell and Miles Davis.
He composed some of Davis’ best-known early pieces, including ‘Oleo’ and ‘Airegin’.
‘Colossus Saxophone’ included ‘St. Thomas’, inspired by calypso, beginning a long association with the music loved by his parents, originally from the American Virgin Islands.
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Rollins’ often marathon, hard-hitting solos have earned him the reputation as jazz’s greatest saxophone improviser.
He told PBS that he entered the stage with a blank mind and no plan for his solos, other than knowing the structure of the piece. ‘Improvising on it is something that I leave entirely to the forces,’ he said. “Sometimes I’m surprised by what comes out.”
Rollins also innovated by using his saxophone as a rhythm section instrument.
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The albums included the alfie film soundtrack and ‘East Broadway Run Down’, both recorded in 1966.
After winning two Grammy Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the same institution, a respiratory illness forced him to stop playing. He retired in 2014.
Rollins was aware of his place as the last surviving giant of the jazz era led by Parker, Monk and Coltrane.
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“I’m the last one, but in some ways I’m not, because when I’m gone, my music will still be here,” he told PBS in 2011. “We’re all still here, we’re all still here.”
