Sonny Rollins - biography
Check out Sonny's video library, including his Podcasts, peformance clips, interviews and special features about the Sonny Rolins Group.New: Sonny's elder sister Gloria remembers growing up with Sonny in Harlem.Rollins is still touring and recording today, having outlived most of his contemporaries such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Art Blakey, all performers with whom he recorded.While Rollins was born in New York City, his parents were born in the United States Virgin Islands.Rollins received his first saxophone at age 13.Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946.Jackie McLean and Kenny Drew.In his recordings through 1954, he played with performers such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.He spent 10 months in Rikers Island jail before he was released on parole.Louis Jordan, but soon became drawn into the mainstream tenor saxophone tradition.In 1953 and 1954 he worked with Thelonious Monk, recording Thelonius Monk and Sonny Rollins, which includes "I Want to Be Happy" and "Friday the 13th".Max Roach quintet in 1955 (recordings made by this group have been released as Sonny Rollins Plus 4 and Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street; Rollins also plays on half of More Study in Brown), and after Brown's death in 1956 worked mainly as a leader.Rollins was also recording regularly for Blue Note, Riverside and the Los Angeles label Contemporary.Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones.This has been released as Sonny Rollins Volume One (the superstar session Volume Two recorded the following year has consistently outsold it).This texture came to be known as "strolling".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.JJ Johnson on trombone, Horace Silver or Thelonious Monk on piano and drummer Art Blakey (released as Sonny Rollins Volume 2).Rollins' saxophone and the drums of Max Roach, some of it very tense.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.Each album he recorded differed radically from the previous one.He then provided the soundtrack to the 1966 version of Alfie.Rollins' most famous appearance to rock music fans was his appearance on the 1981 Rolling Stones album Tattoo You, on which he plays saxophone on "Slave", "Waiting on a Friend" and possibly "Neighbours".The Blue Note cover art to his Sonny Rollins Vol.Body and Soul, which prominently features sax and trumpet.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.Rollins' talent and the undimmed power and lore of his jazz ancestors."Although he was shaken, he traveled to Boston five days later to play a concert at the Berklee School of Music.Films
Saxophone Colossus (1986).Directed by Robert Mugge.Soundtrack for the classic sixties film Alfie composed by Rollins.Anthony, Michael, "SONNY OUTLOOK; DESPITE 50 YEARS OF JAZZ INVENTION, TENOR SAX GREAT SONNY ROLLINS WOULD RATHER LOOK AHEAD THAN BACK.Sonny Rollins: The journey of a jazzman.Open Sky, Sonny Rollins and his world of Improvisation.Da Capo Books: Printing Press.External links
Sonny Rollins Official Website
Documentary about Sonny's new CD "SONNY, PLEASE"
Night Lights radio show featuring excerpts from Rollins' live 1965 appearances at Ronnie Scott's
Review of Sonny Please by JazzChicago.All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.See Copyrights for details.From Blue Note Records:
Born in Harlem on September 9, 1930 Sonny Rollins began his career in
music at an early age, studying piano and alto saxophone from age 11 and
eventually taking up the tenor saxophone in 1946.Growing up in the Sugar
Hill section of Harlem Rollins' teenage running mates included future jazz
masters Jackie McLean, Arthur Taylor, and Kenny Drew with whom he had a
band in high school.Rollins was the first of his peers to reach a level where he
could join some the older bop players and beginning in the late 1940s Rollins
recorded and performed with Parker, Powell, Thelonious Monk, and Miles
Davis among others.It was during his tenure with Max Roach that Rollins began to record
as a leader, making albums for both Prestige and Blue Note.Thus, it is
only fitting that Roach be behind the drum set on Rollins first album recorded
for Blue Note.The December 16, 1956 date which eventually came to be title
simply Sonny Rollins, Volume One also featured trumpeter Donald Byrd, pianist
Wynton Kelly, and bassist Gene Ramey.Moreover, on what could be considered Monk's most famous and important
composition, the haunting blues line "Misterioso", Thelonious and Horace
share the piano chair with Monk accompanying Sonny at the beginning and
end of the song and Silver taking over in the middle.Here, in one song
an intriguing contrast between two bebop innovators is witnessed.On the
one hand there is Monk's jutting, discordant style in contrast with the
bluesy, soulful stylings of Silver.This quartet date featured
Wynton Kelly on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums.Newk's Time is also representative
of Rollins aesthetic code in that it exemplifies his penchant for giving
jazz treatment to hackneyed popular material.While Newk's Time is an important record on these counts, Rollins next
and final recording for Blue Note proved to be his most significant output
for the label.Lastly, the date is interesting
because it includes Rollins with two different trios.From Jazz Central Station:
Theodore Walter Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in New York City.He grew up in Harlem around the corner from the Savoy Ballroom, not far
from the Apollo Theatre, and the doorstep of his idol, Coleman Hawkins."They're not here now so I feel like I'm sort of representing all of them,
all of the guys.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.Miles Davis was an early Sonny Rollins fan and in his autobiography
wrote that he "began to hang out with Sonny Rollins and his Sugar Hill
Harlem crowd...People loved Sonny Rollins up in Harlem and everywhere
else.He was a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians.Some thought he was playing the saxophone on the level of Bird.Max Roach
Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence.It was during this time that Sonny acquired a nickname,"Newk."Damn, you're Don Newcombe!Louis Cardinals, that evening..."Sonny Rollins finally arrived.He
began to record classic sessions, and to work under his own name beginning
in 1957, often in a pianoless trio setting that provided still greater
freedom to his imagination.By the decade's end, Rollins and Coltrane were
generally recognized as the dominant new voices of the tenor.Rollins was brilliant, yet restless.I've always done, tried to do, what I wanted
to do for myself.But also, the Jazz music business
is always bad.Rikers Island before he was released on parole.Rollins ventured to the Williamsburg Bridge to practice.Sonny Rollins the concert artist.Design by Andreas Viklund.Thank you for sharing this video!Please login to add to flag a video.This video has no Responses.Change this to see only comments above a certain value.Change the value of a comment by clicking on a thumb.Sonny Rollins has always been one of my favorite sax men.It's amazing how one could take a sabbatical when the world thought he was at the top of his playing game.Type in search: Jazz is my religionAmsterdam, 1964.Thank you so much, Bret!When Sonny Rollins plays, the world listens.When Sonny Rollins plays, the world listens.Gardenin g: instant grat...NPR's Basic Jazz Record Library: Sonny Rollins
NPR's Murray Horwitz and jazz critic and poet AB Spellman recommend the Rollins album Freedom Suite (Fantasy).Sonny Rollins began his musical studies on piano, studied alto saxophone from about the age of 11, and then took up the tenor saxophone in 1946.He rehearsed with Thelonious Monk for several months in 1948, and from 1949 to 1954 recorded intermittently with a number of leading bop musicians and groups, including J.Way Out West (1957), Rollins's 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.On resuming his career Rollins had improved his already prodigious skills, but his style was now considered conservative.Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, and other musicians playing free jazz; East Broadway Run Down (1966) illustrates the furthest extent to which he incorporated noise elements into his playing.Sonny Rollins Live, captures the exuberance of a concert performance.Copying or other reproduction is prohibited.When Sonny Rollins picks up the
tenor saxophone, the world listens.And rather than exploit his lofty standing
in the world of jazz, he chooses his creative venues prudently, working
only when he chooses and recording sporadically.Yet
Sonny Rollins, the artist, embodies certain ideals and he feels strongly
about using his music as a vehicle for these ideas.How much oil can we take out of the earth?People have to wake up in time to change this
profligate lifestyle which we enjoy.Under the mentorship of Thelonious Monk, Rollins
began to develop the true mastery of the sax.Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor.Out of this core of
future jazz superstars, Rollins was the first to break through by recording
tracks with Babs Gonzales, J.Johnson, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis, all
before he was 20 years of age.Some thought he was playing the saxophone on the level of Bird.He was an aggressive, innovative player
who had fresh musical ideas.Amazingly, in the year beginning with Work
Time, he also recorded Sonny Rollins Plus 4, Tenor
Madness, Saxophone Colossus, Sonny Rollins
Plays for Bird, Tour de Force, and Sonny Rollins
Volume 1.By 1956, he began to leading his
own groups, fostering and propelling his imposing creativity by working
without a pianist and frequently playing unaccompanied saxophone solos.But by 1959,
when he had become one of the most important musicians in jazz, Sonny Rollins
withdrew from the music, dissatisfied with his own output and the music
business itself, questioning the popular acclaim that he was attracting.He could easily perform entire concerts
by himself in dazzling style as if he were accompanied by a large orchestra.
![Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 3]](/en-music/covers/17/17142/alb_87781_th.jpg "Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 3]")
![Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 4]](/en-music/covers/17/17142/alb_87782_th.jpg "Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 4]")
![Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 5]](/en-music/covers/17/17142/alb_87783_th.jpg "Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 5]")
![Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 6]](/en-music/covers/17/17142/alb_87784_th.jpg "Sonny Rollins : The Complete Prestige Recordings [disc 6]")
