Saxophonist Sonny Rollins, jazz legend, has died

Sonny Rollins, one of the towering figures in jazz history, has died at 95. The news of the saxophonist's passing was confirmed by his spokesperson Terri Hinte. Regarded as one of the last giants of the bebop era, Rollins has often been ranked alongside figures like John Coltrane and Charlie Parker for his influence and artistic stature.
His fame rested above all on his extraordinary gift for improvisation, a quality that made him an absolute touchstone for generations of musicians. In an interview with "People" in 2018, he explained his relationship with music this way: “A lot of the people I grew up with wanted to be jazz musicians, but they didn't have what it takes. Music is a gift. Everybody can learn it, but only a few really have something special.”

Born in New York in 1930 as Walter Theodore Rollins, he grew up in Harlem in a family originally from the Virgin Islands. After starting out on piano and alto sax, at 16 he switched to tenor, inspired by his idol Coleman Hawkins - the instrument that would go on to define him.
While still very young, he had already played alongside some of the biggest names in jazz, including Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, whom he would later call his “musical guru.” “I played and studied with Monk, he taught me so much and he was also an extraordinary person,” he recalled in a 2013 interview.
In the 1950s he struggled with a long addiction to heroin. After several drug-related arrests, in 1954 he was admitted to the federal rehabilitation center in Lexington, Kentucky, known as the “Narco Farm,” at the time one of the few institutions in the US specializing in the treatment of addiction.

He later moved to Chicago, where he gradually returned to performing while staying clean. In a 2008 interview with the "Chicago Reader" he recalled: “I thought I had to be strong enough to live within that environment, because that was the jazz scene back then. When I left Lexington I was clean, but I still had to find my place in society.”
Over the course of his career Rollins received seven Grammy nominations, winning two. In 2004 he was given the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, while in 2011 he received the Kennedy Center Honor and the National Medal of the Arts. In 2017 his personal archive was acquired by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.

On OndaRock we recently dedicated an in-depth feature to one of his masterpieces, “Newk's Time” from 1959.

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