Sonny Rollins

The Harlem tenor saxophonist whose 1956 album Saxophone Colossus closes with the eleven-minute "Blue 7", the subject of Gunther Schuller's essay on thematic improvisation.

Harlem to the Williamsburg Bridge

Walter Theodore Rollins was born on September 7, 1930 in Harlem, New York City, and played tenor, alto and soprano saxophone. He made his first recordings as a sideman with Babs Gonzales in 1949 and sat in with Bud Powell, and in 1954 recorded "Oleo", "Airegin" and "Doxy" with a Miles Davis-led quintet. In 1955 he briefly joined the Miles Davis Quintet and then the Clifford Brown and Max Roach quintet. In 1957 he pioneered the pianoless tenor, bass and drums trio, made A Night at the Village Vanguard and debuted at Carnegie Hall, and the Freedom Suite followed in 1958.

He took a sabbatical from the summer of 1959 to November 1961, practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge, and returned in 1962 with The Bridge on RCA Victor. He made a first Japan tour in 1963 and the Alfie soundtrack in 1966, and took a second break from 1969 to 1971, including study at an ashram in India, returning with a concert in Norway in 1971. A Guggenheim Fellowship came in 1972, and he played a benefit concert in Boston after September 11, 2001. His last public performance was in 2012, and he announced his retirement in 2014.

Honors

He entered the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1973, was named an NEA Jazz Master in 1983, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement award in 2004, the Polar Music Prize in 2007, the National Medal of Arts (2010 by Wikipedia, 2011 by a news summary), the MacDowell Medal in 2010 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2011. Other major albums include Tenor Madness (1956), Way Out West (1957), Sonny Meets Hawk! (1963), East Broadway Run Down (1966), This Is What I Do (2000) and Sonny, Please (2006).

Wikipedia gives his death as May 25, 2026 at home in Woodstock, New York, aged 95; AP reported it, confirmed by his publicist, but we did not check this against a fetched primary source.