Sonny Rollins
...Sonny Please
Artist Interview by: Jim McElroy
February 2007 - It is very difficult to know exactly what to ask someone like Sonny Rollins. What is there left to ask him? He has been here for more years than some of us can remember, he has worked with many who remain among the giants of the jazz world, and he has outlasted most. Do you ask if he still practices everyday? How about what kind of music he listens to? Every question I came up with sounded..well old. So it was with some real trepidation that I dialed his number, and when he answered I do admit to the one gushing music fan opening, "It's a great honor to speak to you." Well, it was "What can I say?"
The occasion of our conversation was the release of Sonny Please on his own Doxy Records label, his first recording in five years. Reason enough to put a smile on any Rollins' fan's face.
In case you have been on Mars for the last several decades, a little refresher. Sonny Rollins started out playing the piano before switching to the alto saxophone, then to the tenor sax in about 1946. His first recording was in 1949, the same year he also recorded with Bud Powell and J. J. Johnson. He began to make a name for himself in the early fifties working with the likes of Miles Davis and Thelonius Monk. His most famous recording Saxophone Colossus, was done in June 1956 and featured Tommy Flanagan on piano, Doug Watkins on bass and Max Roach on drums. In the mid-fifties, Rollins was the pre-eminent saxophone player in the nation known for taking such unconventional numbers such as "There is No Business like Show Business" and making them into grand, improvisational moments.
Never one to simply rest on his laurels, Rollins is always seeking to improve his playing and in 1959, frustrated with his playing, he took the first of two sabbaticals. He dropped out of the music scene went to the Williamsburg Bridge in New York and just practiced. When he finally felt he had gotten it right, he came back and recorded an album for RCA records, aptly titled The Bridge. In the late sixties, again frustrated with his own playing, Rollins took another sabbatical studying Yoga, meditation, and Eastern philosophies. When he returned, the sound he came back with was radically different than before, more electric guitars, electric bass and funk-leaning drummers. Rollins continued to record throughout the seventies, eighties and into the nineties. He is as legendary a live performer as he is a recording artist and has legions of fans worldwide.
On September 11, 2001, Rollins like many other New Yorkers, found himself having to leave his home in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Badly shaken, but undaunted, Rollins traveled five days later to Boston and played a concert at the Berklee School of Music. That concert was recorded and released as a live album Without a Song, The 9/11 Concert, for which he won a 2006 Grammy for his solo on the song "Why Was I Born." Now comes the release of Sonny Please, which gets its title from his wife's favorite expression and the first release on his own record label, Doxy Records.
JazzReview: It is a great honor to speak to you and I want to first extend my congratulations on your Grammy nomination. It must be nice to receive those kinds of accolades.
Rollins: Yeah, it is nice.
JazzReview: I would imagine it is not what you live for, the honors, I would imagine it is the music you make.
Rollins: Exactly.
JazzReview: So Sonny Please is your first studio album in five years right?
Rollins: Well, technically it is. We had started a studio album in late 2004, but my wife who was also my producer, was ill so we were not able to finish it. So we substitute the 911 album, the live album for the studio album. So technically this one is the first studio album in five years.
JazzReview: The 911 album must have been a very emotional album for you to do as it was for us who took a sense of solace from it.
Rollins: It was a very emotional time for the country as a whole. I was in a state of shock myself. I lived six blocks north of the trade center so I heard the planes come in and the whole thing, you know. It is one of those live experiences that you do not expect. You never know what will happen in life and now every time I hear a plane flying low, I look up at it. It is something that you do not forget.
JazzReview: Well, I think that goes for you and half the country. It must be hard in a time like that to continue to make music and go out and play for people.
Rollins: It's not hard really. For professional musicians, playing is natural. It is what we do. I mean, there was a different feeling going around, but for us, it is what we do--so no, it was not that hard. You play and hopefully you add something to what is happening. I mean it's like street cleaners and grocery store owners. You do what you do. Life goes on. Playing music in hard times like these is what I do.
JazzReview: The new album is on your own label, Doxy Records. Does the company name have a significance?
Rollins: It was the name of a song I recorded several years ago. I needed a name for the label and that is the one I picked.
JazzReview: You wrote four out of the seven songs on this album. Is writing something you enjoy or is it work?
Rollins: It's work, and I find as time goes on, it gets a little harder and harder as time goes by.
JazzReview: Do you work in a certain way or is it kind of free flowing?
Rollins: I can sit at a keyboard or maybe a melody will come into my head, or maybe when I am practicing my horn, a certain melody will come to me. So there are several ways that a song will come to me, there is no set way. I find that every once in a while, I run into a brick wall--you know--as a creative person, you have little moments when it is harder to write than others. I think I am going through that kind of time right now so I look forward to a time when it will come a little easier. Maybe I should not say that. (laughs)
JazzReview: Well all writers face a writer's block of some kind right? It is a natural part of the process.
Rollins: Exactly.
JazzReview: When you do record, do you like to do many takes of a song or do you prefer the first one or two?
Rollins: I prefer to do as many takes as humanly possible. I am one of those guys that is always finding fault with what I hear so I try to do take after take to get as close as possible. I find that I am somewhat limited so I never really get what I want, but I get as close as I can.
JazzReview: It sounded to me as if the music was all improvisation. It sounds as if you are really winging it.
Rollins: We are winging it. The music is, the solos are different on every take we do. I am not so good a musician that I can repeat each note the same way on each take so each take we do sounds different than the one before it. When I say that we do many takes, it is because there are certain technical things that I want a certain way an those kinds of things can be the same each time.
JazzReview: It must be a challenge to back you up when things change so often. You really need the best of the best.
Rollins: I do, and that is why I feel so privileged to have the people I do backing me. In order to do what I do, I need the best I can get.
Sonny Rollins is the rarest of the rare. A consummate musician, composer, performer and global human being, he does not rest on what has been. Instead, he looks to what has yet to be. He continues to influence generation after generation. Most recently, he has been the inspiration for a character on the animated television series the Simpsons and a character on a Nickelodeon program called "The Class of 3000." The later is a creation of Outkast lead singer Antwan Patton, who named his lead character "Sonny Bridges" after Rollins and his famous sabbatical on the Williamsburg Bridge. So onward and upward he goes, just "doing what he does" and leaving the world a much better place in his wake.
For more information: http://www.sonnyrollins.com
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