The Pop Corporation

There was almost something instinctual about the way Sonny Rollins played his music. In Jazz, there’s a lot of academics and blowhards – but Rollins was a different prospect, and an absolute titan of the scene to boot.

One of the Hall of Famers for sure, a generational talent, he has died at the mighty age of 95 years old.

The statement which announced his passing, quoted Rollins who had already reflected about when his time would be up: “I think when the creative person ends, he continues in the next existence. I’m a person who believes this life isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything. A spiritual person doesn’t feel like that.”

Of all the Bebop legends, Rollins was one of the last men standing despite the trials and tribulations which are so common in the world of Jazz and looking at his roll call of collaborators and gigs, his life has been a minor miracle, working with John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey, and countless others.

With this new guard, he took jazz from the standards and dance era to wild and expressive new places. Rollins in particular could take a standard and bend it all out of shape, and on top of that, give the world his own music and which could be experimental, as well as melodious and ear-wormy.

One of the great improvisers, he once referred to himself as “primitive – I’m going with my feelings more than my brain”, and what instincts and a brain he had. If Davis and Charlie Parker are the poster boys for the new breed of Jazz, then Rollins is at the same table.

He went AWOL for a decade, sent to prison for his part in crimes to fund his drug habit, but he got clean and what followed was a remarkable run of creativity, including the remarkable ‘Saxophone Colossus’ in 1956 and ‘Freedom Suite’ in 1958.

Rollins would play in the street to get the hours in the Williamsburg Bridge, which inspired ‘The Bridge’ and then took time off to study yoga and philosophy in an Indian ashram.

As the years progressed, he would infuse soul music and rock into his sound, and even ended up providing a solo on the Stones’ ‘Tattoo You’ LP in 1981, as well as providing music for the ‘Alfie’ movie.

He rightly earned a lifetime achievement Grammy award in 2004, and once noted that his aims were how he wanted “to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress” and even while weighing up his retirement in 2013, he said: “People say, ‘Sonny, take it easy, lean back. Your place is secure. You’re the great Sonny Rollins; you’ve got it made.’ I hear that and I think, ‘Well, screw Sonny Rollins. Where I want to go is beyond Sonny Rollins. Way beyond.’”

RIP.