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Farewell, Saxophone Colossus.

On Monday, news spread of the death of Sonny Rollins at the age of 95.  A Lifetime Achievement Grammy and National Medal of Arts recipient as well as a Kennedy Center Honoree, Rollins dedicated his life to his art: as a sideman, as a composer, as a leader.

A New York native of Caribbean heritage, Walter Theodore Rollins was nicknamed “Sonny” by his grandmother, and the name stuck.  He began taking piano lessons at the age of nine but switched a couple of years later to the saxophone: first the alto, inspired by “King of the Jukebox” Louis Jordan, then the tenor.  Following in the footsteps of his hero Coleman Hawkins, Rollins came to master the tenor sax.  Honing his craft, he joined with like-minded friends – alto saxophonist Jackie MacLean, pianist Kenny Drew, and drummer Art Taylor – during his high school years and formed a band.  Through a classmate, Sonny met pianist-composer Thelonious Monk, who recognized his burgeoning talents.  He dedicated himself to the instrument, and made his first professional recordings in 1949 as bebop had taken hold of the jazz scene.  His early recordings with J.J. Johnson and Bud Powell remain bop classics today.

Brushes with crime and drug addiction threatened to derail a promising career, but Rollins persevered.  In the early 1950s, he recorded with the likes of Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, and The Modern Jazz Quartet; the 1954 EP Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins featured three of Rollins’ own compositions.  The lone remaining track was The Gershwins’ “But Not for Me.”  Not bad company, indeed.  Rollins overcame his drug addiction in 1955 and went on to even greater heights.

1956’s Saxophone Colossus was Rollins’ sixth release as a leader, but the title was no mere hyperbole.  He had developed a sound all his own, one which critic Ralph J. Gleason characterized as “gentleness, a delicate feeling for beauty in line, and a puckish sense of humor…and all done with the uncompromising swinging that has characterized [Rollins’ group] all along.”  The album introduced one of his most beloved compositions, the calypso-infused “St. Thomas,” which was adapted from a Bahamian folk song Rollins’ mother sang to him when he was a child.  It opened the doors to the use of calypso rhythms in modern jazz.

He was joined on the album by pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Doug Watkins, and drummer Max Roach.  At the time of recording, he was still a member of the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet; just days later, Brown and pianist Richard Powell were killed in a car crash.  Sonny never forgot Brown’s memory, and years later recorded a touching version of Benny Golson’s “I Remember Clifford” in tribute.

The title track of 1956’s Tenor Madness proved to be the only recording of Rollins and fellow sax titan John Coltrane playing together; the following year’s Way Out West, adorned with a striking William Claxton photo, found Rollins reinventing cowboy tunes with only bass and drums played by Ray Brown and Shelly Manne, respectively.  Its sound, too, proved influential.  In 1958, he recorded Freedom Suite with Roach on drums and Oscar Pettiford on bass.  His own sprawling, deeply-felt, four-movement title track was a direct response to the racial discrimination he faced while trying to rent an apartment in New York City.  It was joined by reinventions of standards by Noel Coward, Meredith Willson, Al Dubin and Harry Warren, and Tom Adair and Matt Dennis.

New York would inform much of his work; 1962’s The Bridge (his debut on RCA Records after tenures on Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary, Blue Note, and other labels) derived its title from a preferred rehearsal spot for Sonny, the Williamsburg Bridge.  Arriving after the artist’s three-year sabbatical, it featured a shocking new sound with Jim Hall on electric guitar, Bob Cranshaw on double bass, and primarily Ben Riley on drums.  On The Bridge, Rollins was free to indulge in long, languid solos, bringing new colors to familiar songs.  Its follow-up, What’s New, gilded Camelot’s “If Ever I Would Leave You” with a bossa nova beat even as it stretched out to nearly twelve minutes’ length.  Cuban conga player Candido lent Afro-Cuban rhythms to “Jungoso” and “Bluesongo” as Rollins’ sound embraced the world and culture around him.

Rollins departed RCA for Impulse!, recording such memorable LPs as the soundtrack to Michael Caine’s swingin’ London vehicle Alfie for which he composed memorable themes (even if they were ultimately eclipsed by the Burt Bacharach/Hal David title song).  Always following his muse, he took a six-year break from the recording studio between 1966 and 1972, including a two-year absence from public performance.  When he reemerged on the Milestone label, he continued to break new ground, whether further developing his long, unaccompanied solos, or incorporating funk, R&B, and soul textures in the fusion style of the day.  He joined The Rolling Stones in 1981 to add sax to Tattoo You, notably on “Waiting on a Friend” and the lengthy jam-based “Slave.”  By this time, Rollins was an institution, and New York City proclaimed November 13, 1995 to be Sonny Rollins Day.

Six years later, on September 11, 2001, he was forced to evacuate his downtown home in the wake of the devastating terror attacks.  He left with only his saxophone in hand.  His September 15 concert at Boston’s Berklee College of Music – later released as Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert – captured his conflicting emotions of the day, cutting through the devastation and loss with a profound sense of hope for the future.

Health issues forced Rollins off the road in 2012, and in 2014 he announced his retirement.  His final decade found him donating his personal archives to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and endowing The Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble Fund at Oberlin College.  He died peacefully at his home in Woodstock, New York.

Sonny Rollins was often referred to as one of jazz’s great improvisers, though he was rarely flashy.  His solos were always in service of the song, as he plumbed the depths of a melody to find the emotion within.  He modestly observed in a PBS interview that he left improvising “completely to the forces…sometimes I’m surprised by what comes out.”  His approach was imaginative and innovative but always organic, regardless of genre and established boundaries.  Sonny Rollins believed that there was more to life than this existence; no doubt his burnished, clear tone is echoing today throughout the heavens.