Walter Theodore " Sonny " Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is a widely acclaimed American saxophonist tenor jazz as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a career of seven decades, he has recorded over sixty albums as a leader. A number of compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", "Pent-Up House", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards. Rollins has been called "the greatest living improvisation".
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Rollins was born in New York City to parents of the US Virgin Islands. The youngest of three brothers, he grew up in central Harlem and at Sugar Hill, received his first alto saxophone at the age of seven or eight. He studied at Edward W. Stitt Junior High School and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. Rollins began as a pianist, converted into alto saxophone, and eventually switched to tenor in 1946. During his high school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor.
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Next life and career
1949-1956
After graduating from high school in 1947, Rollins began performing professionally; he made his first recording in early 1949 as a sideman with bebop singer Babs Gonzales (J. J. Johnson is a group organizer). In the next few months, he started making a name for himself, recording with Johnson and appearing under the leadership of pianist Bud Powell, along with trumpeter Fats Navarro and drummer Roy Haynes, in a seminal hard bop session.
In early 1950, Rollins was arrested for armed robbery and spent ten months in Rikers Island prison before being released on parole; in 1952, he was arrested again for violating the terms of his parole by using heroin. Between 1951 and 1953, he recorded with Miles Davis, Modern Jazz Quartet, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk. A breakthrough arrived in 1954 when he recorded his famous compositions "Oleo", "Airegin", and "Doxy" with a quintet led by Davis who also featured pianist Horace Silver.
In 1955, Rollins entered the Federal Medical Center, Lexington, at that time the only help in the US for drug addicts. While there, he volunteered for experimental methadone therapy and was able to break his heroin habit, after which he stayed for a while in Chicago, in the same room with the trumpeter of Booker Little. Rollins initially feared the calm would disrupt the musician, but then went on to greater success.
Rollins briefly joined Miles Davis Quintet in the summer of 1955. Later that year, he joined the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet; studio albums documenting his time in the band are Clifford Brown and Max Roach on Basin Street and Sonny Rollins Plus 4 . After the death of Brown and the band pianist, Richie Powell, in a June 1956 car crash, Rollins continued to play with Roach and began releasing albums of his own name on Prestige Records, Blue Note, Riverside and Contemporary Los Angeles labels.
His much-recognized album, Saxophone Colossus, was recorded on June 22, 1956 at Rudy Van Gelder's studio in New Jersey, with Tommy Flanagan on piano, former bassist Jazz Messengers, Doug Watkins, and his favorite drummer, Roach. This is the sixth recording of Rollins as a leader and it includes his most famous compositions "St. Thomas", a Caribbean calypso based on a song sung to him by his mother in his childhood, as well as the fast bebop number "Strode Rode", and "Moritat" (Kurt Weill's composition also known as "Mack the Knife"). A long blues solo at Saxophone Colossus , "Blue 7", was thoroughly analyzed by composer and critic Gunther Schuller in a 1958 article.
In the solo for "St Thomas", Rollins uses a rhythmic pattern repetition, and variations of that pattern, covering only a few tones in a tight range, and using staccato and semi-detached notes. This is interrupted by a sudden development, exploiting a much wider range before returning to the previous pattern. (Listen to music examples.) In his book Sonny Rollins Jazz, David N. Baker explains that Rollins "very often uses rhythm for himself, he will sometimes improvise on rhythmic patterns rather than melodies or changes. "Since recording" St. Thomas ", the use of the Calypso Rollins rhythm has been one of his distinctive contributions to jazz; he often performs traditional Caribbean songs such as "Hold 'Em Joe" and "Do not Stop the Carnival," and he has written many original compositions that affected the calypso, such as "Duke of Iron," "The Everywhere Calypso," and "Global warming."
In 1956 he married actress and model Dawn Finney.
In 1956 he also recorded Tenor Madness, using Davis group-pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The title track is Rollins only recording with John Coltrane, who is also a member of the Davis group.
At the end of the year Rollins appeared as a sideman on Thelonious Monk Brilliant Corners album and also recorded his first album for Blue Note Records, titled Sonny Rollins, Volume One, with Donald Byrd on Trumpet , Wynton Kelly on piano, Gene Ramey on bass, and Roach on drums.
1957-spring 1959
In 1957, Rollins pioneered the use of bass and drums, without piano, as a companion for his saxophone solo, a texture that came to be known as a "walk." Two early tenor/bas/drum recordings were Way Out West and A Night at the Village Vanguard . Way Out West is so named for being recorded for California-based Contemporary Records (with Los Angeles Shelly Manne drummer), and therefore includes country and western songs such as "Wagon Wheels" and "I'm Old Cowhand ". The Village Vanguard album consists of two sets, a matinee with bassist Donald Bailey and drummer Pete LaRoca and a set of nights with bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Elvin Jones. Rollins used the trio format intermittently throughout his career, sometimes taking unusual steps using his saxophone as the rhythm section instrument during bass and drum solos. Lew Tabackin cites the trio of pianoless Rollins as inspiration for his own lead. Joe Henderson, David S. Ware, Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis, and Joshua Redman also lead a trio of pianoless saxophones.
While in Los Angeles in 1957, Rollins met alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman and both trained together. Coleman, a free jazz pioneer, stopped using a pianist in his own band two years later.
At this time, Rollins has become famous for taking relatively shallow or unconventional songs (such as "No Business Like Business Show" at Working Time , "Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye" at < i> The Sound of Sonny , and then "Sweet Leilani" on the Grammy winning album This Is What I Do ) and use them as a vehicle for improvisation.
Rollins earned the nickname "Newk" because of the resemblance of his face with the likes of Brooklyn Dodgers star Don Newcombe.
1957's Newk Time saw him working on the piano again, in this case Kelly, but one of the most highly respected tracks was a saxophone/drum duet, "Surrey with Fringe on Top" with Philly Joe Jones. Then in the same year he made his Carnegie Hall debut and recorded again for Blue Note with Johnson on trombone, Horace Silver or Monk on piano and drummer Art Blakey (released as Sonny Rollins, Volume Two). In December, he and tenor saxophonist Sonny Stitt were featured together on Dizzy Gillespie's album Sonny Side Up.
In 1958, he appeared in Art Kane's A Great Day in Harlem jazz musician in New York; in 2017, he is one of two surviving musicians from the photo (the other being Benny Golson).
That same year, Rollins recorded another vital part for the saxophone, bass and drum trio: Freedom Suite . The original arm note says, "It is ironic that the Negro, who more than anyone else can claim American culture as his own, is being persecuted and oppressed, that the Negroes, who have imitated humanity in existence, are rewarded, inhumanely." the song is a improvised nineteen minute improvisation suite; the other side of the album features hard bop drills from popular show songs. Oscar Pettiford and Max Roach provide bass and drums, respectively. LP is available only briefly in its original form, before the recording company packs it as Shadow Waltz , another work title on the note.
Following Sonny Rollins and Big Brass, Rollins made another studio album in 1958, Sonny Rollins and Contemporary Leader , before taking a three-year break from recording. It was a session for Contemporary Records and saw Rollins recording a mix of esoteric songs including "Rock-a-Bye Your Baby with Dixie Melody" with a West Coast group consisting of Hampton Hawes pianists, guitarist Barney Kessel, bassist Leroy Vinnegar and drummer Manne.
In 1959 he toured Europe for the first time, performing in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and France.
Summer 1959-fall 1961: The Bridge
In 1959, Rollins became frustrated by what he regarded as the limitation of his own music and took the first - and most famous - of his musical vocal. While living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, he ventured to walk on the sidewalks of the Williamsburg bridge to practice, to avoid disturbing a nearby mother-to-be. Today, a fifteen-story apartment building called "The Rollins" stands on the Grand Street site where he lives. Almost every day since the summer of 1959 until the end of 1961, Rollins trained on the bridge, alongside the subway tracks. In the summer of 1961, journalist Ralph Berton happened to pass a saxophonist on the bridge one day and published an article in Metronome magazine about the incident. During this period, Rollins became a dedicated yoga practitioner. Rollins ended his sabbatical in 1962. He then said, "I might be able to spend the rest of my life climbing on the bridge, I realize, no, I have to go back to the real world." In 2016, a campaign begins aimed at getting the bridge to be renamed by Rollins.
Winter 1961-1969: Musical exploration
In November 1961, Rollins returned to the world of jazz music with a residency at the Jazz Gallery in Greenwich Village; in March 1962, he appeared on the television series Ralph Gleason Jazz Casual . During the 1960s, he lived in Brooklyn, New York.
He named his 1962 comeback album The Bridge at the start of the contract with RCA Victor. Produced by George Avakian, the disc was recorded with a quartet featuring guitarist Jim Hall, Ben Riley on drums, and bassist Bob Cranshaw. It became one of Rollins bestselling notes; in 2015 it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Rollins contract with RCA Victor lasted until 1964 and saw it remain one of the most adventurous musicians. Each album he recorded differed radically from his previous album. The 1962 disc What's New? exploring the Latin rhythm. In the album Our Man in Jazz, was recorded live at The Village Gate, he explored avant-garde playing with a quartet featuring Cranshaw on bass, Billy Higgins on drums and Don Cherry in the cornet. He also plays with a saxophonist hero, Coleman Hawkins, and Paul Bley free jazz pianist at Sonny Meets Hawk! , and he re-examined the jazz and melodic standards of the Great American Songbook at Now It's Time and The Sonny Rollins Standard (featuring Herbie Hancock pianist).
In 1963, he made the first tour of many Japanese tours.
In 2007, a recording of the 1965 residency at Ronnie Scott was released by the Harkit label as Live in London ; they offer Rollin images that are very different from studio albums in that period. (This is an unauthorized release, and Rollins has responded by "booting" their own and releasing it on its website.)
After signing with Impulse! Note, he released the soundtrack for the 1966 movie Alfie, And I Will Never Be Another You and Sonny Rollins on Impulse! After the East Broadway Run Down (1966), featuring trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones, Rollins did not release another studio album for six years.
In 1968, he became the subject of a television documentary film, directed by Dick Fontaine, entitled Who is Sonny Rollins?
1969-1971: Second leave
In 1969, Rollins took another two years off from public performance. During this hiatus period, he visited Jamaica for the first time and spent several months studying Eastern yoga, meditation, and philosophy in an ashram in Powai, India, a district in Mumbai.
1971-2000
He returned from his second hiatus with a show in Kongsberg, Norway, in 1971. Reviewing the March 1972 show at Village Vanguard nightclub in New York, New Yorker Critic Whitney Balliett writes that Rollins "has changed again. "He has become a whirlwind. The escapes wailed, and there were staccato parts jarring and twitching in double. He appeared to be shouting and moving his hands on his horns, as if he were waving his audience into battle. "That same year he released Next album and moved to Germantown, New York. , he was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship in composition.
During the 1970s and 1980s, he was also interested in the R & amp rhythm B, pop, and funk. Some of his bands during this period featured electric guitars, electric basses, and drummers usually usually pop or funk-oriented.
In 1974, Rollins added jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley to his band; the group was filmed live at Ronnie Scott in London. For most of this period, Rollins was recorded by producer Orrin Keepnews for Milestone Records (compilation of Silver City: The 25th Anniversary at Milestone contains options from these years). In 1978 he, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, and Al Foster toured together as Milestone Jazzstars.
It was also during this period that Rollins' passion for unsupported saxophone solos came to the surface. In 1979 he played without a companion on The Tonight Show and in 1985 he released Solo Album, recorded live at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He also often played unattended cadenzas without preparation during the show with his band; a prime example is the introduction to the song "Autumn Nocturne" on the 1978 album Do not Stop the Carnival .
In the 1980s, Rollins had stopped playing a small nightclub and appeared mainly in concert halls or open arenas; until the late 1990s he occasionally appeared in big rock clubs in New York like Tramps and The Bottom Line. In 1981, he was asked to play uncredited on three songs by the Rolling Stones for their album Tattoo You, including the single, "Waiting on a Friend". In November, he led a master saxophone class on French television. In 1983, he was honored as "Master Jazz" by the National Endowment for the Arts.
In 1986, documentary filmmaker Robert Mugge released a film titled Saxophone Colossus . It features two Rollins performances: quintet performance at Opus 40 in northern New York and herself Concerto for the Saxophone and Symphony with the Yomiuri Shimbun Orchestra in Japan.
In 1993, Sonny Rollins International Jazz Archives opened at the University of Pittsburgh.
New York City Hall proclaimed November 13, 1995, to "Sonny Rollins Day."
In 1997, he was voted "Jazz Artist of the Year" in a poll of critics of Down Beat magazine. The following year, Rollins, a dedicated environmentalist, released an album titled Global Warming .
2001-2012
Critics like Gary Giddins and Stanley Crouch have noted the distinction between Rollins, recording artist, and Rollins concert artist. In a May 2005 profile New Yorker , Crouch writes about Rollins concert artist:
Over and over again, decades after decade, from the late seventies to the eighties and nineties, here it is, Sonny Rollins, a giant saxophone, playing somewhere in the world, one afternoon or around eight o'clock somewhere, chasing a combination of emotions. , memory, thought, and aesthetic design with commands that enable him to achieve spontaneous nervousness. With its brass body, pearl knobs, mouthpieces, and cane reeds, the horn is a vessel for Rollins' epic talents and unlimited power and knowledge of his jazz ancestors.
Rollins won the 2001 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Album for This Is What I Do (2000). On September 11, 2001, 71-year-old Rollin, who lived a few blocks away, heard of the collapse of the World Trade Center, and was forced to evacuate his apartment, with only his saxophone in hand. Although he was shaken, he went to Boston five days later to play a concert at Berklee School of Music. Live footage of the performance was released on the CD in 2005 as No Song: The 9/11 Concert , which won the 2006 Grammy for Jazz Instrumental Solo for Rollins appearance "Why Was I Born? "
Rollins were presented with a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement in 2004; That year also saw the death of his wife, Lucille.
In 2006, Rollins went on to complete the winning Down Beat Polling Readings threefold for: "Jazzman of the Year", "# 1 Tenor Sax Player", and "Record of the Year" for CD Without Song: The Concert 9/11 . The band this year featured his nephew, Clifton Anderson's trombonist, and included bassist Cranshaw, pianist Stephen Scott, percussionist Kimati Dinizulu, and drummer Perry Wilson.
After a successful Japanese tour, Rollins returned to the recording studio for the first time in five years to record a Grammy nominated CD Sonny, Please (2006). The CD title comes from one of his wife's favorite phrases. The album was released on Rollins' own label, Doxy Records, after his departure from Milestone Records after years and was produced by Anderson. Rollins' band today, and on this album, including Cranshaw, guitarist Bobby Broom, drummer Steve Jordan and Dinizulu.
During these years, Rollins regularly toured the world, playing in major venues across Europe, South America, the Far East, and Australasia. On September 18, 2007, he performed at Carnegie Hall to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance there. Shown with him are Anderson (trombone), Bobby Broom (guitar), Cranshaw (bass), Dinizulu (percussion), Roy Haynes (drums) and Christian McBride (bass).
Around 2000, Rollins began recording many of his live shows; since then, he has filed records of more than two hundred and fifty concerts. To date, four albums have been released from this archive on Doxy Records and Okeh Records: Road Shows, Vol. 1 ; Road Shows, Vol. 2 (with four songs documenting his 80th birthday concert, which included Rollins's first ever appearance recorded with Ornette Coleman in the 20th minute "Sonnymoon for Two"); Road Shows, Vol. 3 ; and Holding the Stage , was released in April 2016.
In 2010, Rollins was awarded the National Medal of Arts and Edward MacDowell Medal. The following year he became the subject of another documentary by Dick Fontaine, titled Beyond the Notes .
Rollins has not been done in public since 2012, due to recurrent respiratory problems.
2013-present
In 2013, Rollins moved to Woodstock, New York. That spring, he made a guest television appearance on The Simpsons and received his honorary Doctor of Music degree from Juilliard School in New York City.
In 2014 he became the subject of a Dutch television documentary entitled Sonny Rollins-Morgen Speel ik Beter and in October 2015, he received a lifetime achievement award from the American Jazz Foundation.
In the spring of 2017, Rollins donated his personal archive to the Schalkurg Center for Research in the Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library. Later that year, he awarded the "Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble Fund" at Oberlin College, in "recognition of the legacy of the legacy of access and social justice."
Influences
As a saxophonist, he was initially interested in leaps and sounds of R & amp; B from players like Louis Jordan, but soon became interested in the tradition of mainstream saxophone tenor. German critic Joachim Berendt describes this tradition as sitting between the two poles of the mighty splendor of Coleman Hawkins and the light flexible sentence of Lester Young, who did a lot to inspire the improvised bebop fleet of the 1950s. Other tenor sax effects include Ben Webster and Don Byas. In mid-adolescence, Rollins became heavily influenced by alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. During his high school years, he is mentored by pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, often practicing in Monk apartments.
Instruments
Rollins has played, at various times, the tenor saxophone Selmer Mark VI and a Buescher Aristocrat. During the 1970s he recorded on soprano saxophone for the Easy Living album. The selection funnel was created by Otto Link and Berg Larsen. He uses the middle reed Frederick Hemke.
Discography
Decorations and awards
- Selected in Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame (1973)
- Honorary Doctor of Arts from Bard College (1992)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from Wesleyan University (1998)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from Long Island University (1998)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from Duke University (1999)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from New England Conservatory of Music (2002)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from Berklee College of Music (2003)
- Grammy Award for lifetime achievement (2004)
- Minneapolis, Minnesota was officially named October 31, 2006 after Rollins to honor his achievements and contributions to the world of jazz
- Polar Music Prize "for over 50 years one of the most powerful and personal voices in jazz" (2007)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from Colby College (2007)
- Austrian Honorary Cross for Science and Art, class 1 (2009)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from Rutgers University (2009)
- National Medal of Arts (2010)
- Miles Davis Award at the Montreal Jazz Festival (2010)
- Selected for the American Academy of Art and Science (2010)
- Kennedy Center Honors on its 81st birthday (September 7, 2011)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from Juilliard School (May 2013)
- Honorary Doctor of Music from University of Hartford (2015)
References
Further reading
- Blancq, Charles. Sonny Rollins: The Journey of a Jazzman . Boston: Twayne, 1983.
- Blumenthal, Bob, and John Abbott. Saxophone Colossus: Portrait of Sonny Rollins . New York: Abrams, 2010.
- Broecking, Christian. Sonny Rollins: Improvisation and Protest . People Creative Book/Broecking Verlag, 2010.
- Nisenson, Eric. Open Sky, Sonny Rollins and World of Improvisation . New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.
- Palmer, Richard. Sonny Rollins: The Cutting Edge . New York: Bloomsbury, 2004.
- Wilson, Peter Niklas. Sonny Rollins: The Definitive Musical Guide . Berkeley: Berkeley Hills Books, 2001.
External links
- Sonny Rollins Official Website
- Detailed Discography at Jazzdisco.org
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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