Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins
Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins is an American jazz tenor saxophonist, widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded at least sixty albums as leader and a number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSaxophonist
Date of Birth7 September 1930
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.
I remember hearing that song around the house, and on the radio and everything, ... Wow, I haven't heard that record in so many years. It's one of my earliest memories of jazz. I believe in things like reincarnation, and it struck a chord someplace in my back lives or something.
I look at all that from the inside, so you'd probably have to ask someone else.
If you could do that, it's great to do it. And a lot of great musicians have done it. A lot of musicians get to a point and stay in that groove all of their career. I have just not been able to do it because I don't think I'm a good enough musician. Someone was criticizing Miles, and Miles said, 'The truth is, it's much more difficult for me to play the way I did in 1947. It's really a physical thing. Sure, I like to experiment, but it's really a physical element.' He brought up a good point. That kind of playing, you've got to be young, in a way. It demands a certain youthful vigor.
I don't think jazz should try to change. I think jazz is varied enough and there is so many different kinds of jazz. So jazz doesn't need to change.
I can name a lot of people whose productive, whose creativity dies when they got L.A. Maybe it's too laid back. It's too comfortable.
There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.
I guess I'm fortunate that I'm still around and I emphasize 'I guess', because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have.
I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.
We have to make ourselves as perfect as we can.
There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.
Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.
I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.