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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. Situated in both the time and place where be-bop was
being formulated, Rollins and his teenage cohorts were greatly intrigued
and inspired by the innovations being made in the new jazz idiom. They
grew up idolizing those musicians, only slightly older than themselves,
at the helm of the new music like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and
Bud Powell. 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. In fact, Rollins first appearance on Blue Note was
on a Bud Powell date recorded on August 9, 1949 which also featured be-bop
stalwarts Fats Navarro on trumpet, Tommy Potter on bass, and Roy Haynes
on drums. Shortly thereafter, throughout the early 1950s, a frequent associate
with whom Rollins worked as a sideman was Miles Davis and in 1955 he replaced
Harold Land in the tenor chair of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet.
Rollins remained with the pioneering bop drummer after Brown's untimely
death, playing in his group throughout 1957.
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. While this is certainly a memorable
date with Rollins' rich, husky timbre in good form, more notable is the
session done a few months later. Recorded on April 14, 1957, Sonny Rollins,
Volume Two is of special interest because of the presence of two of the
most important- but drastically different stylistically - pianists in the
history of modern jazz. While hard bop progenitor Horace Silver is at the
piano chair for three of the selections, the very unique Thelonious Monk
accompanies Rollins on a beautiful rendition of his ballad "Reflections".
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. The piano presence notwithstanding
let us not forget the performance of the session's leader as Rollins playing
throughout is superb. One example is his extraordinary solo on "Misterioso"
where his improvisatory ideas appear to be limitless.
Rollins final two sessions for Blue Note were recorded in close proximity
to one another roughly five months later. The first was a studio date entitled
Newk's Time recorded on September 22, 1957. This quartet date featured
Wynton Kelly on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums.
A loosely constructed blowing session by nature, Newk's Time is notable
for the strong performance by Rollins as well as the solidity of this rhythm
section. Miles Davis' "Tune Up" for instance is given a whirlwind treatment
with Rollins displaying in his ingenious solo what was dubbed by music
historian Gunther Shuller as "thematic improvisation", a improvisatory
style invented by Rollins which consists of the spontaneous reworking of
an initially stated theme or motif. Newk's Time is also representative
of Rollins aesthetic code in that it exemplifies his penchant for giving
jazz treatment to hackneyed popular material. On this record Rollins turns
to the popular show tunes "Wonderful!Wonderful!" and "The Surrey With The
Fringe On Top".
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. Moreover, this recording is considered by many one of Rollins
finest recordings of his career. A Night At The Village Vanguard (Volumes
1 and 2) is significant first because it was Rollins only live record done
for Blue Note and; furthermore, because it has come to epitomize and define
live jazz recordings at their very finest. Recorded during the afternoon
and evening sets on November 3, 1957 at New York's famed Village Vanguard,
this record captures the essence of jazz conveyed upon hearing the music
live in its spontaneity, intellect, energy and feeling. The live session
is also notable because Rollins mastery of improvisation is at its highest
level given the extended format of the club date. Here Rollins is not confined
to the time restrictions of the studio and; thus, truly stretches out producing
lengthy and brilliantly constructed improvisations. Lastly, A Night At
The Village Vanguard is a landmark record because it captured Rollins'
pioneering idea of the jazz unit in the pianoless tenor saxophone trio.
This minimalist approach gave the rhythm section a emptier, freer feel
as accompaniment for Sonny's blazing tenor. Lastly, the date is interesting
because it includes Rollins with two different trios. The afternoon session
featured bassist and Donald Bailey and drummer Pete La Roca while in the
evening Sonny was accompanied by Wilbur Ware on bass and Elvin Jones on
drums.
Rollins output for Blue Note is notable because it was during this
period that he became widely regarded as the most talented and innovative
tenor saxophonist in jazz. At this time Sonny became the most influential
and widely-imitated jazz saxophonist, establishing himself as the most
outstanding saxophonist since Charlie Parker (and later superseded by John
Coltrane). However, a year and a half after the Village Vanguard session
he withdrew from public life as a result of personal and musical frustrations.
A little over two years later, however, Rollins re-emerged out of seclusion
with an expansion of his already fortuitous technique. Throughout the 1960s,
Rollins also began to experiment with avant-garde jazz movement of the
period, free jazz. From 1969 to 1971 Rollins took another public hiatus,
but in 1972 he resumed playing once more, leading groups of various young
musicians but this time performing in a more commercial vein. Nonetheless,
Rollins allegiance to the hard bop tradition has endured throughout the
1980s and 90s as he continues to perform and record his own personal interpretation
of the idiom he both mastered and helped define.
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. In fact, he started out on alto saxophone and the music of Louis Jordan, but at the age of sixteen, insisted his mother buy him a tenor when Hawk became his man. As a teenager, he fell under the spell of a musical revolution called Bebop and came under the wing of Thelonious Monk, who became his mentor. Up on Sugar Hill, his neighborhood musical peers included future Jazz stars Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor, but it was young Sonny who was first out of the pack, working and recording with Babs Gonzalez, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell and Miles Davis before he turned twenty.
"Of course, these people are there to be called on because I think I represent them in a way," Rollins said recently of his peers and mentors. "They're not here now so I feel like I'm sort of representing all of them, all of the guys. Remember, I'm one of the last guys left, as I'm constantly being told, so I feel a holy obligation sometimes to evoke people."
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...anyway, Sonny had a big reputation among a lot of the younger musicians in Harlem. 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. I know one thing--he was close. He was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas. I loved him back then as a player and he could also write his ass off..."
After a few years off the scene to eliminate a drug problem, Sonny reemerged in Chicago at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet, with an even more authoritative presence. His trademarks became a caustic, often humorous style of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that found him hailed for models of thematic improvisation.
It was during this time that Sonny acquired a nickname,"Newk." As Miles Davis explains in his autobiography: "Sonny had just got back from playing a gig out in Chicago. He knew Bird, and Bird really liked Sonny, or "Newk" as we called him, because he looked like the Brooklyn Dodgers' pitcher Don Newcombe. One day, me and Sonny were in a cab...when the white cabdriver turned around and looked at Sonny and said, `Damn, you're Don Newcombe!'' Man, the guy was totally excited. I was amazed, because I hadn't thought about it before. We just put that cabdriver on something terrible. Sonny started talking about what kind of pitches he was going to throw Stan Musial, the great hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals, that evening..."
In the mid-50s, Sonny Rollins finally arrived. In `57 he won the prestigious Down Beat magazine Critics Poll as New Star of the tenor saxophone. 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's first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late `61 withdrew from public performance.
Rollins remembers that he took his leave of absence from the scene because "I was getting very famous at the time and I felt I needed to brush up on various aspects of my craft. I felt I was getting too much, too soon, so I said, wait a minute, I'm going to do it my way. I wasn't going to let people push me out there, so I could fall down. I wanted to get myself together, on my own. I used to practice on the Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge because I was living on the Lower East Side at the time."
When he returned to action in early `62, his first recording was appropriately titled The Bridge. By the mid 60's, his live sets became grand, marathon stream-of-consciousness solos where he would call forth melodies from his encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs, including startling segues and sometimes barely visiting one theme before surging into dazzling variations upon the next. Rollins was brilliant, yet restless. The period between 1962 and `66 saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, yet he grew dissatisfied with the music business once again and started yet another sabbatical in `66. "I was getting into eastern religions," he remembers. "I've always been my own man. I've always done, tried to do, what I wanted to do for myself. So these are things I wanted to do. I wanted to go on the Bridge. I wanted to get into religion. But also, the Jazz music business is always bad. It's never good. So that led me to stop playing in public for a while, again. During the second sabbatical, I worked in Japan a little bit, and went to India after that and spent a lot of time in a monastery. I resurfaced in the early 70s, and made my first record in `72. I took some time off to get myself together and I think it's a good thing for anybody to do."
Since returning to recording and performing in 1972, he has released a steady, yet by no means excessive stream of recordings (all on the Milestone label), performed a constant though modest schedule of concerts, and gained worldwide acknowledgment as the great living Jazz soloist.
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