Sonny Rollins

Writer's Almanac

Today is the birthday of American jazz musician Sonny Rollins in New York City (1930). Rollins plays the tenor saxophone and is considered one of the finest jazz musicians in history. He favors long, experimental improvisation when he plays, especially during live concerts. He once said: “I’m not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I’m just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that’s when it’s really happening.”

Rollins grew up in Harlem, not far from legendary jazz clubs like the Savoy Ballroom and The Cotton Club. He spent his childhood listening to Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller, especially Waller’s song “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter.” His mother bought him a used horn during the Depression, when Rollins was seven. He played so much and so often that he often forgot to come to dinner, and his mother would have to bang on his door. As a teen, he glued on a fake mustache to sneak into The Cotton Club to hear Charlie Parker play.

Sonny Rollins switched to the tenor saxophone at 16 and remained largely self-taught during his childhood. When he first began playing clubs, he quickly found a mentor in jazz great Thelonius Monk. Rollins became known for taking well-known songs like “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and using them as vehicles for his experimental sax improvisations.

Rollins credits his study of Kabbalah, Buddhism, Indian philosophy, and yoga for his music. He says: “You’re a player; you can’t spend too much time thinking about what you’re going to play, it comes out so fast. The fact that there’s logic to what I’m playing, I’ve been very blessed about that part because I certainly didn’t have anything to do with that […] whatever talent that God has given me. Just the thinking, the playing, the going on and on and on — that part is mine.”

And: “The music has got to mean something. Jazz improvisation is supposed to be the highest form of communication, and getting that to the people is our job as musicians.”

On teaching younger musicians how to play, and feel, jazz, Sonny Rollins once said: “It’s not a matter of your intelligence or anything. You have to have a gift. Just as, I’m sure, for other professions. […] I came upon these very great and — not just great musicians, but great people. […] And I’m trying to now live my life like that. I’ve got a gift, a musical gift, fine. But I want to be a human being, a good human being. I need to always express that to young students. Everybody can have a gift. That’s a gift. But then we have to be good human beings. So that’s what it’s all about.”