One of the better-known pieces of lore in the jazz world involves Sonny Rollins and the Williamsburg Bridge. As the telling of it goes, Sonny had gotten burned out after years of being the top guy on the scene. The year was 1959. He had been recording for a decade, traveling and gigging constantly. Sonny was worn down, and besides, he had gotten stale. “I wasn’t satisfying my own requirements,” he said.
So, Sonny Rollins dropped off the scene. No gigs. No records. No tours. He carried his horn daily, in all kinds of weather, up to a spot on the Williamsburg Bridge. He spent hours and hours practicing and, it seems, reconnecting with himself. He broke his recorded silence with the 1962 record The Bridge.
In the macho world of American jazz, there’s usually a competitive edge to the story. By 1959, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were reinventing the saxophone and the music in different directions. It’s easy for ego-driven saxophonists to assume Sonny was trying to outdo them. But as composer Darcy James Argue pointed out recently, that’s not what was happening. The Bridge is splendid. And it starts with old material–the decades old standard “Without a Song.”
Rollins’ transformation was not becoming something else, Argue said. His transformation on that bridge was Sonny becoming more himself.
Sonny Rollins died on Monday, May 25, at age 95 years old. He was the last of his era. The final remaining musician from the famous Great Day in Harlem photo.
Something about jazz musicians invites spiritual reflections. The roots of the music come from the fraternal twin traditions of blues and gospel. In the best players of the tradition, those roots are always nearby. Some musicians, like Ellington and Coltrane, wrote overtly spiritual works. And on a great night, a smoking band will transport you. I can tell you of at least three times heaven descended upon me while in a New York City jazz club.
There should be no pressure on a musician to become a bodhisattva. It’s ok to just be a great player. But the tradition demands of its disciples two key qualities found in the saints. One of them is careful listening. The other is the willingness to spend long, long stretches in solitude mastering a craft, and in the process, yourself.
I’m not making the case for the sainthood of Sonny Rollins. I’m merely saying that the journey of sounding like yourself is, always and everywhere, holy work.
A Few Personal Notes on Sonny Rollins
Through middle and high school, I took saxophone lessons from a quirky man in the Raleigh area. A couple years in, I was advancing quickly through scales and sound production and etudes. My weekly assignments began to include a new wrinkle–”bring me blank 90-min cassette tapes,” Ron said.
One week I’d drop off a couple of tapes while I demonstrated my progress. The next week I’d return to tapes freshly recorded with classic jazz records. Soon, the assignments ventured away from etudes, and into learning improvisation techniques. I knew the scales. I did not know how to apply them to a musical situation.
The weekly requirements involved listening, which I did voraciously. Dozens of tapes cycled through my 1988 Grand Prix for the next few years. A few of them earned “Velveteen Rabbit” kind of status. If you played a cassette enough, the tape would eventually break. My father showed me how to take the cassette apart, lightly trim the broken section, and use scotch tape to attach it back together. If you did a good job, it would last through dozens more plays, with a little hiccup every time the repaired section ran through.
I spliced back together a few tapes, usually more than once. All but one of them were Sonny Rollins tapes. (The other was the Stan Getz-Kenny Barron duet album “People Time.”) The big, muscular sound, the reservoir of creativity, the conversational lines. Even now, I return to Sonny over and over. I don’t have a cassette player anymore, but I still have all those tapes.
I saw Rollins live once. 1996 or 97, I believe, at Memorial Hall in Chapel Hill. I was probably 17 and had already put in 1000 hours of listening to his records. I knew I was seeing an icon. I still remember the feeling, the way he captivated the room.
My son told me of Sonny’s death on Tuesday morning. I spent most of Tuesday listening to records, and also a fair amount of time talking and texting with musician friends. (Also doing my job, boss!) The community feels a real loss, and also a deep sense of gratitude. In the evening I checked in with a bunch of different folks asking for their favorite Sonny Rollins record. I’ll leave you with these listening opportunities, courtesy of my dear friends and colleagues Will Campbell, Ron Brendle, Seth Carper, Patrick Brown, and Lovell Bradford.