Listening to CDs with Sonny Rollins

[MartyJazz]

Enjoyable article, Sonny's insights into some jazz greats, Waller ( and clarinetist Rudy Powell), Hawkins, Bird, Pres.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/arts/music/30sonn.html

[Stereojack]

Enjoyable article, Sonny's insights into some jazz greats, Waller ( and clarinetist Rudy Powell), Hawkins, Bird, Pres.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/arts/music/30sonn.html

←

An interesting article. Thanks for posting.

In the audio samples, the Hawkins excerpt contains no Hawkins!! Didn't anybody listen?

[JSngry]

I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter,

And make believe it came from you,

I'm gonna write words oh, so sweet,

They're gonna knock me off my feet,

A lot of kisses on the bottom,

I'll be glad I got 'em!

I'm gonna smile and say, "I hope you're feeling better,"

And close with love the way you do;

I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter,

And make believe it came from you!

Yeah, Sonny!

[MartyJazz]

Enjoyable article, Sonny's insights into some jazz greats, Waller ( and clarinetist Rudy Powell), Hawkins, Bird, Pres.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/30/arts/music/30sonn.html

←

An interesting article. Thanks for posting.

In the audio samples, the Hawkins excerpt contains no Hawkins!! Didn't anybody listen?

←

Having owned these sides for so many years as I'm sure you have also, I didn't bother to link up to the samples. (Of course, having posted the link in the middle of the night, I wasn't looking to wake anyone up here). I simply made a mental note to pull these cuts during the weekend and will listen to them while re-reading Sonny's comments.

[Brad]

I believe Ratliff done a couple of these and it's good to see them. Maybe it'll make some converts.

[skeith]

I agree Brad, Ratliff has done a few of these and they are great.

[ghost of miles]

Sonny is the man.

[Michael Weiss]

From the Detroit Free Press:

A MAN OF INTUITION: Thinking is the enemy once the music takes over, says Sonny Rollins

September 25, 2005

BY MARK STRYKER

FREE PRESS MUSIC WRITER

I have heard tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins play often, but the most memorable night came in Chicago in 1991. It was the quintessential Rollins experience: Half of the concert was profoundly disappointing and half was the greatest live music I have ever heard.

Rollins, who performs in Ann Arbor on Saturday, opened then with Jerome Kern's "Long Ago and

Far Away," but he sounded distracted, playing little more than worried repetitions that jogged in place. He cut short the band after a second tune and during the unscheduled intermission,

I wondered if this was one of those infamous nights when Rollins and his muse were on the outs.

Then he launched into a blues, "Tenor Madness," and began trading four-bar phrases

with drummer Al Foster. Suddenly, his muse had bedroom eyes. The music poured out of

him in a joyous rush of Joycean intuition. He played curlicue bebop and honking gutbucket

blues. He brayed, barked, stuttered, strutted, roared. He built mansions of inspiration from

Foster's rhythmic blueprint. He crushed the song's melodic riff into atoms and reassembled them like an alchemist -- a hallmark of his thematic approach to improvisation.

When it was over I looked at my watch: He and Foster had traded phrases for more

than 15 minutes.

Rollins is widely regarded as our greatest living jazz musician. Even at 75, with

dental problems taking a toll on the once-pinpoint accuracy of his articulation, he can

summon the powers of Zeus. On a good night he won't make you see God so much

as convince you he is one.

He has been a force in jazz since 1949, working or recording with Bud Powell,

Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Clifford Brown and

nearly every other postwar giant. Along with John Coltrane, he is the most influential

tenor saxophonist of the modern era, and a huge chunk of his discography is as

important to jazz as scripture is to theology. Yet there is nothing pedantic about

Rollins' radiance. He is as inviting to newcomers as to the cognoscenti.

As critic Francis Davis once put it, "When conjuring up an image of the quintessential

jazzman -- heroic, inspired, mystical, obsessed -- as often as not, it is Rollins we

picture, because no other jazz instrumentalist better epitomizes the lonely tightrope

walk between spontaneity and organization implicit in an improvised solo."

Rollins gives few interviews, but he graciously spent more than an hour on the

phone recently talking about his creative process, practice habits and stylistic traits.

QUESTION: A friend of mine met you once in a music store in Boston around 1963.

He remembers two things clearly. First, you were buying a guitar string to attach

from the neck to the bell of your horn. Second, you told him to play as much as

possible -- anywhere -- and that you'd play on the street if there were no clubs.

What was the point of the guitar string and would you, literally, play on the street?

ANSWER: I was just experimenting with the concept of the guitar string. I never got it

to work like I hoped, so I abandoned it. I was thinking about plucking it at propitious

times as accompaniment to my horn playing.

I might not be playing on the street, but I'd be playing in private in my own garret

someplace. Playing on the street might entail the trappings of a professional

performance, but I would definitely be playing all the time. It's where I find a certain

meditative value to my everyday existence. It's my way of meditating or praying.

Q: How much do you practice?

A: It's a little difficult these days because of the encroachments of age, dental

problems and all that. So I can't practice as much as I would like. If I'm in the house

and for some reason I don't get around to playing for two or three days because of a

physical problem, I begin to physically feel ill. I used to play all day, more than eight

hours. Now If I get in two hours a day, I feel reasonably satisfied.

Q: What do you practice?

A: I'm sort of a stream-of-consciousness player. When I was a boy, I used to play

and not have anything planned, and I would just be in the house playing for hours

and hours. So I just start out playing. I do have projects I work on -- various chord

patterns and such. Right now I'm working on a way to have the same facility in, for

instance, the key of A major that I might have in C major. I'm trying to find a method to

hear the saxophone and intervals in all the keys and be able to play anything in any

key.

I have sheaves of manuscripts and I work off of those; I'm constantly writing down

music -- walking through airports or somewhere and something comes to my mind.

So I've got my pad and I refer to that as often as it takes to get these things in my

head. If you can go through the patterns, you alleviate the mechanics of playing the

horn.

Q: Will you practice playing a tune for 20 or 30 minutes?

A: I might if I'm trying to learn a tune. I try to find the dead spots, where I'm not exactly

getting what's going on, and play them over and over until I can remove them. I

practice so that I don't have to practice when I'm playing. So when I'm on the

bandstand, I don't have to think. I can just let the song play itself and let the elements

that come to bear on improvisation take over.

Q: Describe the difference between the way you feel on a good night or a bad

night.

A: I hate to think about when I'm having a good night because then you're giving me a

trauma. (Laughs.) I'm getting to be professional enough that I can sort of overcome

the bad nights because it can give you a negative view of your own performance and

you can make it worse. I try to avoid thinking about having a bad night, even when I'm

having a bad night.

On a good night, everything just happens and you don't have to think about it. Things

come into my head easier. If I'm having a bad night, I find myself thinking too much.

You're not supposed to think. There's no time. If I have to think of an idea and then

play it, by that time the moment has passed and it's stale. If I'm thinking too much, I

know I've got to change course.

Q: That's the great struggle of improvisation: the complex interplay of the

conscious and unconscious minds.

A: It is complicated but you can will yourself to do it. I just try and act the other way

and get to that other side of the mind where I just let things happen.

Q: It used to be that if you weren't having a good night, the entire creative

mechanism would appear to shut down. Are you better able to work through

those periods?

A: Yeah, that's about it. I'm able to work through it better.

Q: Let's talk about the origins of your style: First, the incredible rhythmic

looseness and variety in your phrasing.

A: When we were coming up we listened to all of our idols -- Charlie Parker and

Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. We slowed down the vinyl records to hear

what they were doing. I did my homework. But I remember an incident where I was

with one of my peers in this little band we had.

We were playing a song and I started to solo and then he got mad and said, "Uh, oh!

There he goes again!" Because I was beginning to play against the time but still, of

course, within the time. I guess I was beginning to perfect a way of playing time with

more elasticity. I didn't particularly work on it. It was how my playing matured.

Q: What is the source of your penchant for thematic improvising and melodic

paraphrase?

A: I think the fact that I'm more of a linear player rather than a vertical player. Playing

themes and developing them was natural to my style from the get-go. I didn't work on

it. I think of melody as the prime basic improvising tool or method.

I never think about rhythm. Rhythm just comes to me. It's something that's so

intrinsic in the whole process that I never even think about it.

Q: There's also so much humor in your improvising -- musical jokes, the way you

play an idea and repeat it with a nutty twist, the way you use melodic or rhythmic

rhymes.

A: Well, when I was a little boy my friends used to call me the jester because I used

to be a guy who was always playing jokes. It's possible that carried over into my

improvising.

Q: How much of an impact did working with Thelonious Monk have, given the

humor in his music and his use of melodic variation to organize solos?

A: I don't know. I was playing with Monk when I was in high school so maybe there's

something to that. But it might be too facile a way to explain my playing. Without

denying anything I got from Monk, I would want a caveat that everything might not be

that simple.

Q: Are you still having fun?

A: Yeah, but I don't like the characterization of 'having fun' because I sort of have a

Buddhist view of life. Life is not necessarily to have fun. If you mean, "Am I enjoying

the challenge?" Then, yes. But if having fun denotes using drugs or eating a lot of ice

cream or gambling, then no.

I have fun because I realize what a tremendous privilege life is and what a

tremendous opportunity we have to clean up our karma. I always have fun when I'm

practicing my horn. Performing is a little bit different because I've got a lot of

responsibility because I'm so well known.

Q: Would the ultimate for you be if you could practice and play without having to

concern yourself with a career?

A: That would definitely be the most fun with one caveat. When you're performing, it

raises the level of what you're doing. I can learn so much during an hour

performance -- things that you might not get to by practicing at home for six months

because there's such an intensity of concentration.

But other than that, if there's such a place as heaven, where I could be like one of

those angels playing their harps, I'd just be playing my saxophone.

[JSngry]

Thanks, Michael. That may well be the most open interview with Rollins I've ever seen. One of the most open, for sure.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Yeah, but no bells!

Mike

[Chuck Nessa]

DAMN!

Sonny was one of my first "jazz gods" and having just now read the NYT piece and Stryker's interview I'm back in "high school idolatry" land.

Sure wish I liked the bulk of the recordings from the last 40 years more.

[JSngry]

Don't we all!