Sonny Rollins, Giant of the Jazz Saxophone, Is Dead at 95
One of the pillars of postwar jazz, Sonny Rollins, has died, age 95.
The NYT obit tells his story well enough, though it focuses overmuch on critics’ negative views of his post-comeback music, I think. Some of the tunes he wrote, now jazz standards, that he wrote would’ve made anyone’s name—“Oleo,” “Airegin,” “Dozy,” “St. Thomas”—but he was also renowned as one of the greatest improvisers ever to pick up a horn.
The first I ever heard of him was the story about him leaving jazz performance and recording in 1959 to improve his playing. That he would play under the Williamsburg Bridge into the night because the acoustics were good, and he wouldn’t disturb his neighbors. Blowing 15 to 16 hours every day for two years just to get his playing to where he wanted it to be. That is an image to conjure with.
He was not just a “saxophone colossus,” to quote one of his album titles, but more like the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the bebop of his early days and the musics yet to come.
aav.
His legendary extended solo.
From his soundtrack for Alfie.
One of the great American jazz saxophonists regarded as an improvising genius by fans all over the world
