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Owen McNally writes about jazz and other music events in Connecticut's Jazz Corridor, stretching from the tip of Fairfield County, right through New Haven and Hartford, and on up beyond the state into the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. Keep up with the best our area has to offer in music.

Sonny Rollins Reflects on His Life, Career, and Goals, Both Musical and Spiritual

Bengt Nyman
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Creative Commons
Sonny Rollins performing in 2009.
"Legacy is the last thing I would ever want to think about. I want to do more."
Sonny Rollins

Looking every inch a silver-maned patriarch of Biblical grandeur, Sonny Rollins, the 84-year-old genius of the jazz tenor saxophone, was especially elated last weekend to receive an honorary doctor of music degree from the University of Hartford at graduation ceremonies on its West Hartford campus.

Sure, the Grammy Award-winning Rollins probably already has a warehouse full of prestigious awards earned over his remarkable, nearly seven-decade career in which he has clearly established himself as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, most exultantly celebratory, thematic improviser in jazz history. Among Rollins’s countless coveted prizes is the Medal of Arts, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, awarded to him personally by President Barack Obama in a ceremony at the White House.

But this new UHart award, with its honorific title, Dr. Rollins, is not merely another personal honor. It is also, in Rollins’s heartfelt view, a way to celebrate the memory of his longtime close friend and fellow jazz great, Jackie McLean, who was 74 when he died at home in Hartford after a long illness in 2006. A renowned alto saxophonist and innovative educator, McLean, Rollins’s boyhood buddy from their early Harlem years, founded the widely-acclaimed jazz studies program at UHart’s Hartt School, now known as the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz.

“I think it’s a very nice remembrance and know Jackie would be glad to see this happening,” Rollins said by phone from his home in New York State a few days before making the trek to the campus ceremonies.

Sweet Sugar Hill Days Remembered

“Jackie and I grew up in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem and had many close friends our age who were into jazz. We had a tight little circle of young, budding musicians,” he said. Among the hip Sugar Hill jazz set were such future shakers-and-doers as drummer Arthur Taylor and pianist Kenny Drew.

Like some others in the circle, Drew didn’t actually live on the Hill, as it was called, but took the train uptown to hang out and play in bands with gifted neighborhood kids, including saxophonist Andy Kirk Jr. (son of Andy Kirk, the famous bandleader of Andy Kirk and His Twelve Clouds of Joy) and Lowell Lewis, a trumpeter who lived across the street from McLean.

Pianist Walter Bishop Jr., who would make his mark in later years, would also journey uptown to the Hill to jam with Sonny and Jackie, maybe even play on gigs which, beginning in junior high school, Rollins recalls, were mostly dances.

Sugar Hill kids thrilled at spotting these cosmopolitan heroes coming and going to gigs at fabled liquor-serving nightclubs that the awe-struck youngsters couldn't even get into, because they were underage.

“That’s what we believed in, that’s what we did,” Rollins said of the Sugar Hill crowd’s devotion to jazz.

It was a revolutionary time for the music fueled by the dramatic rise of modern jazz, then called bebop, the avant-garde of the 1940s and '50s. It was the best of times to be young and in Sugar Hill when bebop was the exciting new thing and New York’s famous 52nd Street clubs were swinging to the sounds of jazz giants of every style from Old Masters of swing and early jazz to iconoclastic Young Turks of bebop.

Sugar Hill, Rollins said, was alive with so many celebrities that seeing them daily was almost commonplace.

Smitten with jazz, Sugar Hill kids thrilled at spotting these cosmopolitan, elegantly dressed, dashing heroes coming and going to gigs at fabled uptown and downtown liquor-serving nightclubs that the awe-struck youngsters couldn’t even get into, because they were underage.

Credit Fabio Bruna / Creative Commons
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A packed house settles in for a Sonny Rollins performance in 2010.

“We were lucky,” Rollins said, “because we had a lot of great musicians living right around us. So we had a chance at looking at people going about their daily business, famous figures at the time like drummer Big Sid Catlett, saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, bandleaders like John Kirby, Erskine Hawkins, Sy Oliver and Don Redman, bassist Al Hall, drummer Denzil Best and trumpeter Red Allen, and all those other great musicians who lived on Sugar Hill. We’d see these guys out on the street in everyday life. They served as ideal role models for us. Duke Ellington at one time lived up there on St. Nicholas Avenue closer to Jackie, and once even lived right in a building where I lived on Edgecombe Avenue."

Rollins said they would play in a variety of configurations at what they called functions. "They were mainly dances," he said. "It wasn’t concertizing yet. As time went on, some of the bigger, established guys began to select us for their groups. It was a great environment for young musicians like us to come up in” he said fondly.

Credit Hans Reitzema / Creative Commons
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Creative Commons
Sonny Rollins plays live.

As two emerging prodigies, McLean and Rollins crossed paths briefly through their early and pivotal associations with Miles Davis, who was even then a master at recognizing and recruiting young talent to bring into the fold of his all-star bands. Sonny and Jackie rose on pretty much separate flights to fame over the years, yet always remained close, loyal friends right up to the time of McLean’s death.

“Years later after Sugar Hill, Jackie and I lived close to each other again down on the Lower East Side. In fact, Jackie even went up on the Williamsburg Bridge with me, at least once, maybe more,” Rollins said of when he practiced endless hours at night on the Williamsburg Bridge. The bridge became an iconic emblem of Rollins’s rugged individuality, connecting the Lower East Side of Manhattan with the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Rollins at the Bridge

At one of the artistic peaks in his career, at only 29 in 1959, Rollins dropped out from all public performances for two years to hone his craft with those late-night practice sessions on the bridge.

Credit Wally Gobetz / Creative Commons
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Creative Commons
The Williamsburg Bridge as seen from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York.

Rollins on the Williamsburg Bridge has become an almost religious allegory of the lone, self-reliant artist striving with monastic dedication night after night for perfection, a labor of love.

All of this epic effort at self-improvement was later immortalized in Rollins’s dramatic, 1962 comeback recording, The Bridge, one of many historic milestones in his distinguished discography.

The Bridge, recorded in 1962, was the first album Rollins released following his three-year hiatus.
Credit Bluebird/RCA Victor
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Bluebird/RCA Victor
The Bridge, recorded in 1962, was the first album Rollins released following his three-year hiatus.

After Rollins’s two-year hiatus, critics anticipated his return to the jazz world as a kind of second coming, with virtually messianic anticipation of what wisdom the jazz prophet would now bring down with him from his towering sanctuary on the bridge.

Brushing aside the more poetic interpretations of his first famous sabbatical, Rollins offers a far less romanticized motivation for his decision to take to the bridge.

"I did it for a very practical reason," Rollins said. "I went up there because I was looking for a place to practice. It’s always hard for a horn player to practice in New York City with your neighbors in nearby apartments. It’s really a nightmare for a musician, for any musician, but especially for horn players. So I was looking for a place to practice. I was walking around one day on Delancey Street, and I saw these steps to the Williamsburg Bridge. I just walked up there, not thinking."

Rollins said maybe there was some kind of higher power leading him up there. "I got up there, and wow! I saw this great expanse from the bridge, and there was nobody there," he said. "I can come up here and practice and play as loud as I want. And that's what I did."

Rollins practiced there night after night for the next two years for hours at a time.

Dropping out for two years was a decision Rollins made entirely on his own, he said. He’s extremely proud of his decision to go through with it, doing what he knows was the right thing on his own terms. "I have always been a guy who has been striving to get more knowledge and to play my instrument better. But that was nothing new. I’ve been like that all my life," he said.

Even as a youngster back in Sugar Hill, Rollins had to be coaxed out of his room by his mother away from his rigorous practice regimen to come to the dinner table.

"When I signed with RCA, I put in my contract that I would be able to use their studios even when I wasn’t recording," Rollins said. "I could go in there in the middle of the night, or any time, and practice all night. ...The horn and I were really meant for each other."

Sonny’s Musical Quest

"It's loving music, wanting to play music and wanting to excel. That's my motivation."
Sonny Rollins

Why the phenomenal pursuit of perfection? Why is Rollins's restless, self-critical spirit never really satisfied, even with past triumphs and a canonical discography that other artists, including some of the finest, would gladly die for?

Among these many revered recordings is the most aptly named early masterwork, Saxophone Colossus, an album title that over the years has become the ideal summation of the saxophonist’s career.

Rollins has a simple, direct answer for why he keeps chasing after perfection, even when this eminently intelligent man knows that perfection, perhaps much like infinity, is something that mere humans -- even a Saxophone Colossus like himself -- might approach but can never quite attain.

So what makes Sonny run?

“I can say it began with my listening to Fats Waller when I was a little boy and being so impressed with that music…realizing that here was something glorious that I wanted to do with my life. And that’s what it is. It’s loving music, wanting to play music and wanting to excel. That’s my motivation. It always has been, and it always will be,” Rollins said of his creed as an artist.

Sonny’s Spiritual Quest

Along with his never-ending musical quest, there is, also quite famously, his mystical quest and continuous spiritual studies that have taken from an ashram in India to Buddhist studies in Japan with a Zen master.

Rollins' 1957 album Saxophone Colossus.
Credit Prestige
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Prestige
Rollins' 1957 album Saxophone Colossus.

Asked if his immersion in studies of Eastern religions, the practice of yoga and his omnivorous independent reading and reflection on classic religious works was worth the huge investment in time, effort, and intellectual energy for him both as a musician and as a person, he paused a bit and said: “Whether or not it made me a better musician, other people will have to determine. I can’t answer that. But did it make me a better human being? Yes, unequivocally. There’s no doubt about it.”

As with his passion for practicing and striving to move forward musically, he said, his interest in spiritual matters also didn’t develop overnight. "The early searching for some kind of understanding of what life is and what life should be, and all of that, started in the States. I used to be in the Rosicrucian group," Rollins said.

Rollins said he always had a sense of spiritual. "But look," he said. "I need to get a whole lot more knowledge. What I mean is that I have enough knowledge to give me a peaceful day every day. And my understanding of what life is all about has impressed itself upon me…impressed me so that I am very sure about certain things of a spiritual nature. So on that level, I am a completely happy person."

Sonny’s Jazz Gurus

As for early jazz gurus, Rollins said he learned from everybody he ever played with and others, running through a partial litany of personally inspiring figures.

“Thelonious Monk was a great guru of mine,” he said. “I started playing with Monk when I was fairly young, and he showed me a lot of stuff. Not so much by sitting down with me and teaching me like I was in school. But I learned so much just by being around him and seeing how he approached music.”

Coleman Hawkins, known as the father of the jazz tenor saxophone, was his idol. "Coleman had this great sense of dignity about him, and that appealed to me too,” Rollins said.

On Charlie Parker, a powerful influence on Rollins, McLean and whole generations of jazz musicians, Rollins said simply: “Bird was our prophet.”

Although Parker, one of the music’s greatest innovators, was himself ravaged by heroin addiction, Rollins recalls, the brilliant alto saxophonist took an extremely dim view of any of his many young followers using drugs. When it came to heroin abuse, Parker, a tragically self-destructive figure and voracious user, wanted his most brilliant protégés to do as he said (avoid drugs) and not as he practiced, living existentially on the needle’s edge.

In fact, Rollins said, it was Parker’s deeply-felt, negative attitude about any of his chosen, young acolytes using heroin that convinced young Sonny to quit and go clean.

“It hurt Bird to see others use drugs, imitating him just because he used drugs. And, in fact, he was the guy who got me off drugs,” said Rollins.

“I had told Bird that I was off drugs and I was okay,” Rollins said of how he had lied to his idol about being clean rather than upsetting him with the truth. “But somebody at a record session I was doing ratted on me and went up to Bird and said, ‘No, Bird, that’s not true about Sonny not using drugs. Sonny was out with us getting high last night’

Vanquishing the drugs that had destroyed so many of the best minds of his generation, staying clean and at the very top of his form is one of the most dramatic elements in the Rollins story.

“I saw the dramatic change of expression sweep over Bird’s face when he heard that I was using. And that’s when I realized how much he didn’t want his young followers to use drugs. I really saw it then. I decided right then that I’m going to stop, and, fortunately, I did get off drugs,” Rollins said. “Later I tried to get back to see Bird to tell him this, to let him know that I had got the message and was clean. But,” he said with a sad note of regret, “Bird had passed before I could see him again and tell him that.”

Vanquishing the drugs that had destroyed so many of the best minds of his generation, staying clean and at the very top of his form is one of the most dramatic elements in the Rollins story, adding to its mythic resonance, perhaps even elevating this lifelong student of spiritual philosophy and creator of a soulful body of inspirational works to the level of guru status all his own.

Credit tom.beetz / Creative Commons
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Creative Commons

“Oh, no. I’m no guru,” Rollins said. “In the first place,” I don’t know enough to be a guru. But if somebody can find something in my life, which they can use, that’s fine. But I certainly don’t consider myself a guru because I’m still learning, still experiencing life.”

Rollins said his philosophy is giving to others. "That’s the reason we’re here: to give," he said. "So, if doing my happy times learning my horn and all of that ends up with me giving something to somebody else, then that’s a great blessing, and an affirmation of everything that I’ve done in my life."

When told that his concerts bring great joy to many fans, some of whom regard his exuberant live performances as transcendent experiences, he said: “I’m happy if I can give somebody something. Then I’ve done something worthwhile in life.”

Reflections on Legacy

When asked about reflections on his rich historic legacy, Rollins, the self-effacing giant, gives similarly modest, even skeptical verbal riffs.

“No, legacy is the last thing I would ever want to think about. I want to do more,” he said.

Focusing on the future has always been his visionary approach, never even once going back into the vaults to revisit his classic recordings treasured by so many critics and fans. “No, hardly! The vaults are no place for me. That’s never going to happen,” he said, greeting the idea of cozily dwelling in the past with a few more loud guffaws of derision.

Credit John Kelin / Creative Commons
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Creative Commons
Sonny Rollins performing at the 1989 Montreux Detroit Jazz Festival.

"I can’t speak for others, but I’m not satisfied yet with the stuff that I’ve done," Rollins said. "I haven’t contributed what I want to. Whatever I’ve contributed, I’m very grateful and thankful for it and glad that people like it. But I’m not through,” he said, adding that “no matter how many mountains you climb, there’s still yet another one to be conquered. ...I’ve been around all these really great people -- masters like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins -- so I know what greatness sounds like. I have my own parameters as to where I should be, and I’m not there yet. I’ve got more to do. There’s always more to explore."

Even after decades of creating something new, often with startling musical wit, he’s still very much excited by the challenge to play everything that he can hear in his mind and connect with through his subconscious, a deep source, he feels, of his improvisational art.

Sonny and Trane

Like many great prophets before him, things have been written about Rollins that, although not true, assume the mantle of truth and the ring of authenticity through endless cycles of repetition.

John Coltrane's iconic 1965 record A Love Supreme
Credit Impulse! Records
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Impulse! Records
John Coltrane's iconic 1965 record A Love Supreme

One such historic distortion that he wants to set right, he said, is the depiction of his relationship with Coltrane, often portrayed as if they were bitter enemies. Yes, of course, they were rivals, he readily admits, much in the manner of the earlier classic tenor rivalry between Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins. But despite whatever else you may have read, Rollins insists, the two modern tenor titans were also the very best of friends. As a close, personal friend, Rollins ranks Coltrane right up there with his deeply prized friendship with another jazz genius, Thelonious Monk.

“I’m sure that was the conventional wisdom of the time. But John and I were very close friends. John was such a great, humble, extremely spiritual person. We were tight friends, and he was always there, even,” he notes with a chuckle, “if I needed to borrow some money from him.”

“His music speaks eloquently for itself. And as a person he was the best,” Rollins said.

Rollins’s praise of his late friend’s eloquent music and extraordinary life is also the perfect, succinct summation of his own art and life as well.

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Owen McNally writes the weekly Jazz Corridor column for WNPR.org as well as periodic freelance pieces for The Hartford Courant and other publications.

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