DAVID BIANCULLI, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli. Tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins died Monday. He was 95 years old. For decades, he had been hailed as the greatest living jazz musician. Today, we're going to listen to Terry's 1994 interview with Sonny Rollins. But first, we have this appreciation from jazz historian Kevin Whitehead. He says no figure in jazz was more universally revered.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "WAGON WHEELS")
KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: "Wagon Wheels" - old cowboy song written for Broadway's "Ziegfeld Follies" of 1934. It's from the album "Way Out West," an excellent introduction to a few things that made Sonny Rollins great, like how the saxophone has thrived in the bare bones trio format, which left him fully exposed. Also the clarity of his best improvisations. When you have as much technique as Rollins, it's easy to overdo it. But he leaves so much space, the effect is more like singing than showing off.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "WAGON WHEELS")
WHITEHEAD: And "Wagon Wheels" also speaks to Sonny Rollins' love of unlikely material. On "Way Out West," he also does "I'm An Old Cowhand" just as he'd recently cut "There's No Business Like Show Business" and "How Are Things In Glocca Morra?" And then there's this imposing, sometimes garish sound. Sonny's saxophone tone in his 1950s prime is as durable and flexible as steel-reinforced rubber, and he got plenty of mileage out of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "ST. THOMAS")
WHITEHEAD: That's "St. Thomas" from 1956, the first of many Rollins calypsos. His parents came from the West Indies. Theodore Rollins was born and raised in Harlem and was nicknamed Sonny while still in diapers. He grew up surrounded by established and aspiring jazz musicians. Rollins started on saxophone at 8, practiced like mad and developed quickly, cutting his first session under his own name before turning 21. Months later, he'd record "Mambo Bounce," hinting at those calypsos to come. Even then, he could give you the impression that when he improvises, he's both deep in the moment and standing back to coolly observe his progress.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "MAMBO BOUNCE")
WHITEHEAD: You can divide Sonny Rollins' career into three acts. First came Rollins, the searcher, the saxophone colossus of the 1950s, when he had one of the all-time jazz hot streaks, knocking out one classic album after another. But in 1959, he began a two-year sabbatical from gigging to up his game. He practiced on the Williamsburg Bridge, blowing to the tugboats, an act so New York iconic, Spike Lee restaged it in "Mo' Better Blues."
Coming back in the '60s, Rollins tried on new situations, a quartet with guitar, another with Ornette Coleman's sidemen and a brassy big band. Plus, he wrote music for the film "Alfie." Sometimes his playing revealed a harder edge and harder rhythm that looked ahead to his next phase. This is the 1965 calypso "Hold 'Em Joe."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "HOLD 'EM JOE")
WHITEHEAD: Sonny Rollins' four-decade last act began after a longer sabbatical. In 1966, fed up with the music business, he stopped recording for six years. When he came back in the '70s, much had changed. He was now using electric instruments, which gave the band a rockier edge, but that may have also been a practical move. Easier to tour with a bass guitar than an upright bass. Rollins was gearing up for the long haul, conserving his energy for the stage. But also, his glorious, pliable tone had become more metallic and yakety as his solos became more riffy and groove-oriented. It was still exciting, but different.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "HERE YOU COME AGAIN")
WHITEHEAD: Sonny Rollins, 1981, on the Dolly Parton favorite "Here You Come Again." This latter-day music was designed to be more accessible. Backing musicians came and went, but it hardly mattered. His old bands were gloriously interactive. Now they're the curtain behind the star, and Sonny, for his part, didn't hold back. It was the most big-hearted embrace of the public by a jazz horn player since Louis Armstrong. But where Pops had set solos, Rollins, the improviser, shared his musical thoughts in real time. That made him famously self-critical, but the candor was brave, no matter how it all turned out. And even skeptics went to his shows in case he'd have one of those inspired nights. He had a few, like in Boston, four days after 9/11.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "WHY WAS I BORN?")
WHITEHEAD: And yet with Sonny Rollins, as with Louis Armstrong, when it comes to their records, I tend to reach for the old classics, those first explosions of the creativity they'd later learn to measure out in more sensible doses to keep themselves from burning out. Sonny made it to 95 and performed into his 80s. For a guy who blazed so brightly early on, he paced himself well.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "WAY OUT WEST")
BIANCULLI: Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead. Coming up, we listen to Terry's 1994 interview with Sonny Rollins. This is FRESH AIR.
This is FRESH AIR. Today, we're remembering the great tenor saxophonist and improviser Sonny Rollins. He died Monday at the age of 95. Sonny Rollins started recording in the late 1940s. Early in his career, he played with musicians who were in the pantheon of modern jazz - Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Max Roach and Clifford Brown. Terry Gross spoke with Sonny Rollins in 1994. They began with his tenor saxophone solo from his 1972 recording of the Hoagy Carmichael song, "Skylark."
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
SONNY ROLLINS: Monk said to me one time that if it wasn't for music, life wouldn't be worthwhile living. I mean, I'm not - I'm sort of paraphrasing what he said. But, you know, if I don't play for a little while, I get physically sick. You know, if I don't play my horn for a while, for a few days or whatever, I actually begin to get sick, and I wonder, well, gee, what's the matter with me? Then I realize, well, I haven't played my horn for a few days.
TERRY GROSS: When you're performing and you're improvising, are you thinking?
ROLLINS: Well, no, not really. No, no, I don't think. That's why I really practice and I keep these exercises and so on because when I'm actually on the stage and performing, the optimum condition is not to think. I just want the music to play itself. I don't want to have to think about it. If I have to think about what I'm doing, then the moment is already gone, you know? So there's certain times when I actually - it's an out-of-body experience, so to speak.
GROSS: What do you do when you practice now? I mean, you're a brilliant player. You're a veteran player. I think a lot of people of your stature would probably just perform and not exactly practice anymore.
ROLLINS: Well, you know, when you play a reed instrument, and it might be true with other instruments as well, but when you play a reed instrument, you have to deal with your embouchure, which is the position of your lips around your teeth and the instrument and the mouthpiece of the instrument. And this has to form sort of a cushion. And if you don't play for a while, what will happen is that your lips would bleed when you play, and even split - your lip might split. It's happened to me when I've had to lay off for a period of time. For other things, I'm not certain. I practice a lot of things, but I read once where my friend Max Roach said that a lot of musicians shouldn't really practice. Practicing is cheating after a certain - after you reach a certain point. So that may be right. But in the case of just keeping my embouchure from bleeding and my lip from splitting, I like to play a certain amount every day, you know?
GROSS: One of the things that I love about your playing is your repertoire, the songs that you choose to play. And you have a really diverse repertoire, and you play a lot of old pop songs that many people don't know or have forgotten, as well as some songs that are, like, novelty songs, like, you know, "Toot Toot Tootsie" and "I'm An Old Cowhand" and Noel Coward songs. Are these - a lot of these songs songs you grew up with?
ROLLINS: Yeah. A lot of them are songs that I heard when I was a youngster. When I was growing up, the big thing to do every week was go to the movies on Saturday. And on Saturday, we used to see a lot of these movies that had this - scores in it, you know, by some of the composer. And we'd see Louis Armstrong and pictures and different musical personalities that I enjoyed a lot. Of course, I also heard music around the house and so on, but the movies did provide a certain large part, I think, of some of the things that I play today, you know?
GROSS: When you started performing, was it hard to find other musicians who liked the same songs you did and who wanted to play them? And even back in the days when you were playing with Miles Davis or with Clifford Brown, did they share your musical taste?
ROLLINS: I would say basically yes. People like Coltrane and Clifford Brown, we all had an appreciation of what we would call today the standard songs. In my case, I might have found some more obscure songs.
GROSS: Did you ever, like, propose playing something like "Toot, Toot, Tootsie" and have other musicians look at you like you were crazy?
ROLLINS: Well, they might have thought so, but they wouldn't dare to say it.
GROSS: (Laughter) Why don't we pause here and...
ROLLINS: It was my gig, you know?
GROSS: Right, right. Why don't we pause here and play your recording of "There's No Business Like Show Business? I love what you do with it. This is Sonny Rollins' "There's No Business Like Show Business."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONNY ROLLINS' "THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS")
GROSS: Sonny Rollins is my guest. You grew up in Harlem in New York, and your parents - I believe both of your parents - were from the Virgin Islands.
ROLLINS: That's right.
GROSS: What were your parents' ambitions for you? Did they push you to excel when you were young?
ROLLINS: Yeah. Well, I was the youngest child. I have an older brother who was a very fine classical violinist. He ended up being a physician. Then I had an older sister who was also - sang a lot in church and everything. And so I was supposed to follow in their footsteps. Of course, I didn't because I was somewhat of a black sheep. They were much more studious than I, and I wanted to hang out and play ball, and as the years went on, I was really the guy that was out going to jazz clubs and all that. These things were frowned on at that time.
BIANCULLI: Sonny Rollins recorded in 1994. He died Monday at age 95. Coming up after a break, we continue our interview with Rollins and hear from film critic Justin Chang, who has just returned from Cannes. Here's Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF THELONIOUS MONK AND SONNY ROLLINS' "I WANT TO BE HAPPY")
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Let's get back to Terry's 1994 interview with Sonny Rollins. He died Monday at the age of 95. Rollins was considered one of the greatest jazz saxophone players and a genius at improvisation. He played with Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Max Roach and Clifford Brown. Among the best-known compositions by Sonny Rollins are "St. Thomas," "Doxy" and "Freedom Suite." At the height of his career, in 1959, Rollins stepped away from performing and recording. Instead, he practiced each night on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City. Sonny Rollins grew up in Harlem.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR CONTENT)
GROSS: The jazz life when you started to play actually had a lot of heroin involved with it.
ROLLINS: Right.
GROSS: And you got involved with that for a while when you were young. Do you think you would have tried something like that if it weren't for it being such a part of the jazz world in the '50s?
ROLLINS: I don't think I would have, actually. There would really have been no reason, I don't think, to get involved with that. I got involved with it because a lot of my idols were doing it and so on. So we thought that using drugs was sort of the thing to do. But this is something like asking whether Billie Holiday would be the singer she is if she didn't use drugs. I've had this discussion often with people, and my answer is that, yes, I think Billie Holiday would be the singer she is regardless of what happened to her. I mean, even though she may sing about hard times and all that, she was a consummate musician and beautiful singer. So, yes, I think that she would sing the way she did. Charlie Parker would play the way he did. Everybody would do what they did.
GROSS: It must have been your parents' worst nightmare when you entered the jazz world and then started using.
ROLLINS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, my mother was pretty - since I was a baby, my mother really - she stuck by me, regardless of what I did. She was really in my corner. But I had a lot of problems from the rest of my family. My father, my grandmother, they really were pretty down on me - and my siblings. They didn't really understand where I was coming from anyway. So - but I have to say that my mother really believed in me all the way, and I'm really happy that I was able to get myself together before she left the scene. So she kind of saw me make - start to make records and so on like that. So I sort of made her feel that her trust wasn't exactly all in vain, you know.
GROSS: Were you ever arrested?
ROLLINS: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was arrested. Unfortunately, I had to get involved with the justice system and all of this stuff, you know. But I was always lucky because I was able to get involved with music programs. And in those...
GROSS: In the prison?
ROLLINS: Right. And in those days, there were other musicians there, you know, so...
GROSS: Did it scare you when you were in prison? Did you say to yourself, like, what am I doing here?
ROLLINS: Yeah, it scared me a lot. It scared me a lot. But, again, I was lucky because I could play an instrument.
GROSS: Right.
ROLLINS: And a lot of the other prisoners knew of me, so I immediately had respect from them. But of course, you know, being locked up is no joyride.
GROSS: How did you straighten out?
ROLLINS: Well, it took a little while, but, you know, I slid back a couple of times and everything. But I eventually had gotten down to the complete bottom, so I couldn't have gotten any worse, you know. I mean, I was really in a complete...
GROSS: What was the bottom?
ROLLINS: Well, the bottom was sleeping in parked cars in garages and all that stuff, you know, and what we used to call in those days carrying the stick. Carrying the stick meant that you were homeless. I guess today they would just say a guy's homeless. But I did this mainly when I was in Chicago. Chicago was where I sort of was out there on my own. In New York, even though I was persona non grata at home, I could always, perhaps, get by on - sneak in the house - something. But when I was really away from home, I really had to pay a lot of dues, as we used to say.
GROSS: How would you protect your horn during the periods when you were homeless?
ROLLINS: Well, I didn't protect my horn. I mean, I didn't have a horn, really.
GROSS: Were you borrowing other people's horns then?
ROLLINS: I was borrowing other people's horns.
GROSS: Yeah.
ROLLINS: Yeah. Yeah.
GROSS: What did you learn about yourself during that period?
ROLLINS: Well, what did I learn about myself? Well, I learned that I had the strength to get over something, which was really deep. And I think one of the things that I'm always - that I always feel good about myself was that I was able to overcome that because I really had to struggle. You know, when I came away from the hospital one time and I went back to the nightclub, it was really the classic scene of the old drug pusher standing there saying, come on, man. Come on, you know, and, this is good. I really went through the classic scene of fighting myself, you know, saying, well, gee, if I go with him, it wouldn't be so bad. It's just one time, and maybe I should do it. And why not? And this - and then had the other part of me saying, no, don't do it, you know. I mean, the real classic battle between good and evil, right and wrong, whatever you want to call it. But anyway, I won out, you know, and I'm - and that's one thing that I really feel good about myself, you know. I really went into the lion's den and came out alive.
GROSS: Once you found that strength and knew that you had it, how else were you able to use it in your life?
ROLLINS: Well, then I felt I could do anything, you know, and I could get back to what I really wanted to do, which was my music.
GROSS: So how do you use that strength in your music?
ROLLINS: Well, I don't know. I think - actually, I think I always had strength in my music, even when I was a kid and I used to practice for hours and hours and hours at a time. I mean, I always had something within myself which enabled me to be alone and play and get into what I'm doing and not think about anything else and really get into stuff myself. So actually, by getting rid of these negative elements, I was just able, really, to return to what I had in the beginning, you know.
GROSS: Over the years, you've taken several hiatuses. There have been several periods where you haven't performed. And I think one period, like, that lasted - was it five years? Was that the longest period away from performing?
ROLLINS: I think about - I think the - well, it's hard to say. I took a hiatus on the bridge, which was pretty well documented.
GROSS: Right. This was during the period when you were practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York 'cause it was too loud for you to practice in your apartment.
ROLLINS: Right.
GROSS: So when you take a hiatus, when do you know it's time to get back to performing?
ROLLINS: Well, when I took my hiatus on the bridge, it became apparent because I had sort of gotten what I wanted to do. I was trying to really accomplish something musically. And I had sort of gotten close enough to what I was doing that I felt if I stayed there, it might have turned into a self-indulgence. And that's not what it was about.
GROSS: I'd love to know what it feels like to play your horn on the Williamsburg Bridge. And this was the period when you weren't performing, but you were practicing a lot on the bridge, I guess, in the middle of the night?
ROLLINS: Well, yeah. We played in the night and in the daytime - anytime. It was actually a beautiful place to play because it was a nice space up there. You were really on top of the subway. The trains that came across the bridge were underneath you.
GROSS: You were on the pedestrian walk?
ROLLINS: Yeah, the pedestrian walk. So it's really a nice space up there, and you're sort of right in the middle of everything. You can see the - Manhattan and, on the other side, Brooklyn. And the boats would be coming by at night, and you could blow as loud as you want, and nobody would even look at you. You know, every now and then, people would walk by, but nobody would even look. You know, I mean, this was the sophistication of New Yorkers.
GROSS: Yeah. New Yorkers are immune to everything (laughter). It's just been a pleasure to talk with you. We've been wanting to talk with you on the show for so long.
ROLLINS: Thanks, Terry.
GROSS: Thank you so much for doing it. It's been wonderful.
ROLLINS: Thank you.
BIANCULLI: Sonny Rollins talking with Terry Gross in 1994. Rollins, it's worth noting, was the inspiration for a character in the long-running popular Fox cartoon series "The Simpsons." The character is a musician known as Bleeding Gums Murphy, who, like Rollins, takes the sabbatical to practice nightly on a bridge. In 2013, Rollins himself made a guest appearance on the show in an episode titled "Whiskey Business." He plays himself, not Bleeding Gums Murphy. Young Lisa Simpson, who is a big jazz fan, is writing a letter of complaint because a music company has started taking advantage of artists and their catalogs by presenting them as performing holograms. Sonny Rollins visits Lisa in response, but eventually, she realizes he's a hologram, too.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE SIMPSONS")
YEARDLEY SMITH: (As Lisa Simpson) Dear She-Done-Left-Me Records, once again, I write protesting your holographic exploitation of Blues icon Bleeding Gums Murphy. I call for a boycott and girlcott of your entire catalog until you...
(SOUNDBITE OF SAXOPHONE)
SMITH: (As Lisa Simpson) Sonny Rollins?
ROLLINS: (As self) That's right, Lisa, and I'm here to beg you to stop writing those letters.
SMITH: (As Lisa Simpson) You're siding with record companies?
ROLLINS: (As self) This isn't about money, Lisa. From Tupac Shakur to Dwight Eisenhower, holograms have introduced some of our leading dead people to a new audience of people with money.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATIC)
ROLLINS: (As self) Resetting.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATIC)
ROLLINS: (As self) Resetting. From Tupac Shakur to Dwight Eisenhower.
SMITH: (As Lisa Simpson) You're a hologram, aren't you?
ROLLINS: (As self) No.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATIC)
ROLLINS: (As self) Resetting.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATIC)
ROLLINS: (As self) Resetting.
SMITH: (As Lisa Simpson) Have you no shame?
BIANCULLI: Coming up, more with Sonny Rollins. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BIANCULLI: This is FRESH AIR. Terry spoke to Sonny Rollins again in 2005. At the time, a concert album had been released, recorded in Boston four days after the 9/11 attacks. Rollins lived six blocks away from the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan and saw the second tower fall. Rollins had to evacuate his apartment in Lower Manhattan on the 39th floor. He grabbed his horn, but some things, he had to leave behind.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED NPR BROADCAST)
ROLLINS: Most of the things in there, I had to eventually throw away, get taken away. You know, I had left my piano there, which was very sentimental to me. A lot of the guys played on it. Monk used to play on it, all the people who came by to my house. And I lost a lot of clothes that I had there. I lost a lot of books.
GROSS: Why did you leave your piano behind?
ROLLINS: Well, because I was so afraid of the fact that toxic material might have gotten into the mechanism of the piano. I was afraid that I would be handling something of that sort.
GROSS: Do you know what happened to your piano?
ROLLINS: No, I don't. I don't. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army. So I ended up leaving it in the apartment and explaining to the people in the apartment I was hoping that they would be able to handle it and take care of it in the proper way. You know, I just - I hope so, you know.
GROSS: Well, after you were evacuated from your building on September 12, you drove to Boston, where you were scheduled to play on September 15. So many events were canceled in the days after September 11. Did you speak to the producers at that event and have a long talk about whether you should go on with the show or not?
ROLLINS: Well, I spoke to my wife, Lucille, and I was all for not doing the show because I was really very unsteady on my feet and...
GROSS: Did that have to do in part with having walked down 39 steps...
ROLLINS: Right.
GROSS: ...39 flights of stairs?
ROLLINS: Right, right. It did. And also, you know, I was just really shook up. So I wanted to cancel it. But you know my wife, Lucille. And Lucille was a person that never wanted to violate a contract in any way. And she also may have had a feeling that it would be important to do it - do a concert at that particular time, you know. So anyway, she convinced me to play the concert.
GROSS: I thought I'd play another track from your new CD, "Without A Song: The 9/11 Concert." And this is "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square." It's a beautiful version of it. How did you first hear this song?
ROLLINS: Well, you know, "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square" - I guess I heard it during the '40s when I used to see all the movies that came in town every week. And it's funny that "A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square" may have had some connection to World War II. And the scene when I was evacuated and I walked down those steps that day, when I came downstairs, it was very reminiscent of those World War II pictures when there was a blitz of London with all of the emergency vehicles and the smoke and the fumes. I mean, it was really a - it was really something that - but I guess it's something - I'm trying to say that it's stored someplace in my mind. So I guess since I'm still alive, I might have a way to turn it into some kind of a positive experience.
(SOUNDBITE OF ERIC MASCHWITZ SONG "A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN BERKELEY SQUARE")
BIANCULLI: That's tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins from a live album recorded in Boston four days after 9/11. Rollins spoke with Terry Gross in 2005. He died Monday at the age of 95. Coming up, Justin Chang tells us about the films he saw at Cannes. This is FRESH AIR. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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