“Jazz is bigger than the Earth!” declares sax god Sonny Rollins, and he should know. He’s watched history, and jazz, unfold from A Great Day In Harlem to 9/11. And at 85, he’s still growing, still blowing.
Interview by Portrait by
On August 12, 1958, 57 musiciAns from jazz’s first half-century posed in front of a brownstone on East 126th street in new York city for Esquire photographer Art Kane. that portrait came to be known as A great Day in Harlem, an array of giants, among them trumpeter Dizzy gillespie, big-band maestro count Basie and a rising tenor saxophonist, sonny Rollins, then 27. today, only two legends survive from that photo: trumpeter Benny golson, 87, and Rollins. Born to parents from the us Virgin islands and raised in Harlem, the 85-year-old has been a titanic figure in every era of modern jazz – bebop, hard bop, free jazz, even fusion – since his earliest sideman sessions in 1949 for pianist Bud Powell and trombonist J.J. Johnson. since, he has made more than 50 albums under his own name, including such historical leaps in vision and improvising as 1956’s Saxophone Colossus; the 1958 civil rights broadside Freedom Suite; and The Bridge, Rollins’ 1962 comeback from a legendary exile in private study. “i came up in the golden days,” says Rollins today, sheltering from a late-winter snowstorm inside his Woodstock home, bundled against the chill in a red ski cap and green wool jacket. His voice is a deceptively drowsy growl. He often enters an anecdote with eyes half-closed, as if envisioning scenes on the other side of his eyelids. then he suddenly turns to you with a laser-like gaze to emphasise a vital point. the effect, over two non-stop hours, is akin to one of his fabled, epic-length solos. “i don’t feel the flow,” Rollins says at one point, describing his state of mind as he improvises. “i’m in it.” Rollins has a new album, Road Shows, Vol. 4, part of a series of dynamic live anthologies drawn from his last three decades of touring. He has been off the road since 2012, coping with a lung condition that he traces to the september 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World trade center. Rollins lived a few blocks from the devastation. “i ingested a lot of that toxic stuff,” he explains. Yet only four days later, Rollins gave an incandescent, memorial performance in Boston, later released as Without A Song: The 9/11 Concert. He has been frustrated by his enforced time off. “i’m a guy that used to practise incessantly – it was quite a change not to be able to play at all,” Rollins says. “But it’s coming,” he adds, that hawk-like profile breaking into a smile through his full white beard. “i’m going to blow my horn again.” “There’s a very human element to Sonny’s playing, it feels like he’s talking to you. [On] A Night At The Village Vanguard – the way he plays What Is This Thing Called Love?, it’s uncanny how communicative he is. And Tenor Madness: Coltrane and Sonny together! Sonny is more playful than ’Trane; his sense of humour comes through. In Rollins’ hands, the saxophone is not just an instrument.”
When did you first realise that you had your own sound as a saxophonist?
I had my heroes, starting from Coleman Hawkins and [pianist] Fats Waller, people that I listened to and emulated. I learned as much from them as I could. I was playing in kid bands, and older