In 2014 the Sonny Rollins documentary ‘Tomorrow I’ll play better’ / (‘Morgen speel ik beter’) was released in which the saxophonist (1930) spoke about his music and life: ‘I want to perfect myself and my music all the time.’ That same year, the jazz legend took the decision to stop performing due to health reasons.
Album titles like Saxophone Colossus and G-Man speak volumes: when Sonny Rollins (1930) entered the stage you could not ignore his gigantic stature. As soon as he started blowing on his tenor sax, his sound was that dominant that chord instruments like a guitar or a piano were no longer needed.
Although critics and fans praised him to the skies, Rollins himself was never really happy with his playing. He regularly withdrew from the public eye. If he was spotted anywhere, it was not in the gutter, but on the Williamsburg Bridge, practising scales.
Thanks to Hans Dulfer’s nightly Dutch radio broadcasts in the 1990s, I discovered that I had known Sonny Rollins longer than I realised until then. Dulfer learned me that the authoritative saxophone solo’s on The Rolling Stones’ song ‘Waiting on a Friend’, plus two other songs on the 1981 album Tattoo You had been played by Rollins. Dulfer had also been present at Rollins’ legendary concert in Arnhem with drummer Han Bennink and bassist Ruud Jacobs in May 1967 about which Dulfer commented: ‘It was a musical eruption that had never been seen before and probably never will be again.’
Han Bennink and Ruud Jacobs met Rollins a few minutes before their first performance; there was no time to rehearse. Rollins gave the go-ahead with the words, ‘Let’s go,’ and miraculously the trio was immediately on the right track. The hall at the Arnhem Academy of Visual Arts gradually turned into a musical pressure cooker.
Benninks energetic drumming and Jacobs’ driving, full bass tones gave the 36-year-old Rollins wings. ‘I almost cried,’ Bennink confessed afterwards. Jacobs said years later that he had never had such an extraordinary musical experience again.
Fortunately, the tapes were recovered more than 50 years later. A CD or LP is at best a weak reflection of the moment, but Rollins in Holland is a valuable addition to the oeuvre of the ‘Saxophone Collossus’. If only because Sonny Rollins made no other albums between 1966 and 1972.
Rollins’ life is all about learning, understanding and improving himself. Dutch jazz enthusiast Olaf van Paassen had been trying to speak to his idol for many years. This proved difficult, as Rollins is keen on his privacy. In 2014 Van Paassen and documentary maker Hans Hylkema finally succeeded and Rollins turned out to be remarkably candid: ‘I used to be an asshole’ the saxophonist said, ‘I did stupid things and that’s why I’m glad I got so old. Now I can show the people I hurt that I’ve become a better person.’
If Rollins had been an asshole at all, he no doubt had plenty of reasons for that: ‘I am constantly being harassed and insulted. When I find myself in an airport, five hundred people think: there’s a black man walking there. I notice it by the condescending way they treat me.’
Yet Sonny Rollins has reached such a state of enlightenment that he can muster the noble-mindedness to say: ‘If one person is kind and treats me like a human being, it wipes out the other five hundred people who insult me or look down on me.’
Rollins has received just about every prize there is to win. Looking at the group photo of the 1958 generation of jazz musicians, he says: ‘I stand on the shoulders of the musicians who never got any awards like Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Count Basie.’
Although he no longer performs, Sonny Rollins’ music will remain forever. Recording engineer Richard Corsello, who has worked with Rollins since 1978, has shopping bags full of Dat tapes that he edits and archives in his spare time. Sometimes he is so happy with a particular recording that he burns it onto a CD and sends it to Sonny. When the latter does not respond after several days of tense waiting, it is yet another confirmation that Sonny Rollins is not keen on looking back.
The saxophonist came into the world on September 7th, 1930 as Theodore Walter, son of Walter and Valborg Rollins in New York. He made his debut as a professional musician in that city in 1947. In 1954, he made his breakthrough with the Miles Davis Quintet, with which he recorded his compositions ‘Oleo’, ‘Doxie’ and ‘Airegon’, among others. He was then part of the Max Roach Quintet (1955 – 1956).
After a period of seclusion, the album The Bridge (1962) marked his comeback. ‘St Thomas’ became his signature tune, Calypso rhythms his trademark. From the 1960s, he preferred to be accompanied by bass and drums. Sometimes he silenced the rhythm section to discover all the possibilities of the theme on his own. During these public explorations, he reached lonely heights.
Until an advanced age, Rollins entered world stages. The final years with a band featuring electric guitar, drums, percussion, trombone, bass and keyboard. ‘My interest is what I’m doing now,’ Rollins said when he was 84, ‘I am trying to perfect myself and my music and what it ends up, who knows? It doesn’t matter. All I know is that I want to be better and I think I can be better.’
