Saxophone Colossus (1986) - full transcript
Tenor saxophone master Sonny Rollins has long been hailed as one of the most important artists in jazz history, and still, today, he is viewed as the greatest living jazz improviser. In 1986, filmmaker Robert Mugge produced Saxophone Colossus, a feature-length portrait of Rollins, named after one of his most celebrated albums.
- Before a concert
I try to meditate
on what I have to do,
I try to block out
any extraneous thoughts.
I try to think about what
it's going to be like,
I try to will the
band to sound good.
I try to act in a positive way,
and I try to create a
picture of what I hope
is going to happen on the stage.
So it's sort of a
meditation, in a way,
prior to performing.
(upbeat jazz music)
(crowd applauding)
Of course, I was born here,
number one, in Harlem,
and the great excitement
here in New York, of course.
I always felt New York was
the center of a lot of music,
at least during the time
when I was growing up.
52nd Street was where
everybody was playing
and I had a chance to
really hear some of
the great musicians.
And you know, there's
just the energy,
the wonderful energy that is
in New York and nowhere else.
- My first memories of
Sonny Rollins is when he
recorded with J.J
Johnson for Prestige.
I had been hearing
about him a little bit,
they kept saying there's
this tenor player up town
who's really upsetting everybody
and I heard that some of the
test pressings on this date
and was kind of impressed
and was told about him
in the studio,
they way he stood,
I guess he impressed
this friend of mine
who had seen him and that
he really assumed the very
planted stance and
dug in and just blew.
I guess the first reaction
to hearing him in person was,
and also on that
record was that,
here was a guy who had
heard Charlie Parker
and was putting that
kind of knowledge
into the tenor saxophone
differently, say,
than Dexter Gordon, who was
acknowledged to be the first
to translate Charlie
Parker's mode to the tenor.
Because at that time, people
were very rigid and they said,
"Oh yes, you can sound like
that on alto, like Bird,
"but you can't play
like that on tenor."
And each little step of
the way had to be won
in people's minds.
Sonny, even in his rawest
period, in that first period
when a lot of critics
were putting him down,
I felt he had something very,
very personal and unique
to say and certainly he was
not the polished Sonny Rollins
that he would become
after the Chicago period
and coming back with Max
Roach and Clifford Brown
and really turning
everyone's heads arounds,
that's when he really
established himself.
But I feel all through
the earlier period,
'51 through '53, he played
a lot of valuable music
as we know from
listening to the records.
- I started listening to
Sonny in 1965 and 1966,
and the thing that
hit me the most
was the extraordinary
personal authority of the man
in the way he played, in the
way he addressed the audience,
in the way he addressed
the piece of music.
The incident at Saugerties
where he jumped off the cliff
is not uncharacteristic of
Sonny because he always had
a very strong visual sense,
he's a performer who likes to
keep the audience entertained.
I remember the one time
there was a concert in '66
called Titans of the Tenor
that he shared a bill on
with Coleman Hawkins, Zoot
Sims, and John Coltrane,
and Dave Lampert was
the MC and he said,
"And now Sonny Rollins,"
and a much shorter
fellow walked out,
it was Yusef Lateef, whom
Sonny had just convinced
to come along for the
gig, who was not billed,
and after Yusef
played several chords,
Sonny walked out, all in black,
black Keds sneakers, black
pants, black T-shirt,
walked straight to
the back of the stage,
and started to improvise
chords behind Lateef
and then came up for,
I think he was playing
Hold 'Em Joe with Calypso,
and then went into
a whole incredible
15, 20 minute solo thing.
And the control of
the horn, the time,
the phrasing,
everything about it
just held you in your seat.
And so even if you were a
novice, as I was at that time,
there was something about
Rollins that was so compelling
that you understood him.
I never understood,
I used to see reviews
where people would
talk about him being
too complex or intellectual
and the great
thing about Rollins
is that he is a communicator,
he always tells a story.
I think he's the most
compelling tenor saxophonist
we have right now.
- Whenever talking
about Sonny Rollins
I almost feel the need to
preface anything I might say
by pointing out that
I consider him to be
the greatest living
jazz improvisor.
Of course, that puts
the standards higher
by which you have to
judge Sonny Rollins
and you can only
imagine the standards
by which he must judge himself.
Play time for us is
work time for him.
We just go to
enjoy his concerts.
To him it means something
else, something much greater
seems to be a stake and I
think some of that tension
communicates itself
to an audience
and it becomes
pretty fascinating.
- I dropped out of
the jazz scene in 1959
which was more well known,
that was the bridge period
when I practiced on
the bridge for a while.
As you know, I'm always
trying to improve myself
and I'm partly a
self-taught musician
and all my career I've been
trying to improve my craft.
So at that point
I had dropped out
and figured I'd
stay away from music
and the music
scene and everybody
and just try to
improve my playing
and I studied
piano for it again.
And so, that was a
very important period,
a publicized period.
I had been practicing on
the bridge and I think
a jazz writer had
seen us on the bridge,
seen me on the bridge practicing
and he wrote a
little story about it
and it became famous,
infamous Sonny Rollins
practicing alone on the bridge.
So when I finally came
back to the jazz scene
and I came back to appearing,
I was appearing in a night
club and I made my debut again,
I recorded for RCA at
that time and we thought,
well it would be
apropos if we named
the album The Bridge, or at
least some songs in the album.
- Although I never
saw Sonny Rollins
practicing on the bridge,
I did see him blowing
into a little closet
in his apartment
on Grand Street,
he used that to muffle the sound
so he wouldn't bother anybody
and he could play at any hour.
He also had a board on
which he did exercises.
He was drinking orange juice,
he was into Rosicrucianism,
and a complete contrast
from the guy who had been
strung out a few years earlier.
So he did a complete about-face,
he started really working
on physical fitness and he
knew that in order to be
a tenor player, to
have the endurance
to play that instrument,
that he had to be in shape
and he talked about this.
- Any instrument eventually
gets to be a part
of the person playing it,
it's a very personal thing.
And the saxophone
is closer to me,
I hate to say it's almost
closer than Lucille.
But she knows this already
so she's not jealous.
Before I was married
to Lucille, though,
I did have problems
with girlfriends
and my saxophone
though, I must say that.
And one of them broke up
my saxophone at one time
when she was mad at me.
I was playing a
very important job
at the Five spot with
Mingus and a lot of people.
But the saxophone
is very close to you
and it's a very
delicate instrument
and the slightest
thing can change the
nuance that you put into it.
So it can drive you crazy.
It can drive you crazy
because even if you know what
you want to play, sometimes
it doesn't come out
because of the
differences in the horn
and it might not be
working exactly right
or something like that.
So it's a very
close relationship.
- Obviously I think
he's important.
And just as obviously, I have
a hard time explaining why
to a general audience,
why he is so important.
It's almost gotta be accepted.
In one sense, he's never
been as influential
at any given period
as say, Miles Davis,
well, as Miles Davis
has been throughout
Miles Davis' whole career.
But he's never been
as important as Miles,
he's never been as
influential as Coletrane was
in the mid to late '60s,
or Ornette Coleman during
much of that same time.
And I think one of the
reasons is he's never,
unlike them, he never formed
the band in his own image.
He's never been
successful at doing that.
And in a way, that almost
enhances his appeal,
that lack of context.
It's just Sonny Rollins as
the single most excellent
standard of jazz you
can possibly imagine.
- Jazz is a music that's made
be people playing together
but the master improvisers
are always the ones
who set the tone,
they take the lead,
the bring everyone
in around them
and Sonny Rollins is
someone who has listened
to all the great
players before him
and come up with
something of his own
and that's the way
the music moves along.
His tone is so personal,
that deep sound of his is
like no other saxophonist.
His sense of time, the
rhythmic displacement,
his pauses, his rests,
the way he then comes
rushing up from behind the beat.
His ability to play at length
and still come up
with interesting ideas
is something that
stands out in my mind.
- One of the most important
aspects of Sonny's influence
on jazz is his
ability to improvise
an extended solo and
keep your attention
and not just go through the
cycle of choruses and chords.
I guess the first
examples were, again,
an unlikely song,
Irving Berlin's
There's No Business
Like Show Business,
and There Are Such Things
which has a a terrific
cadenza at the end.
And he figured out how
to alternate the chorus
and the verse in such a way
to constantly keep you
a little bit off balance
while you're listening
to the performance.
And then he developed
this subsequent record
with a piece called Blue 7,
and in writing about that I'd,
Gunther Schuller coined the
phrase thematic improvisation,
well he meant by that was
that Sonny will take a theme
and he will use the
melody to govern
the improvisational ideas
that follow rather than simply
playing rote on
the chord changes.
And actually, Rollins has
a lot of different ways
that he organizes improvisations
but the end product is that
combining them together
he manages to sustain
interest for say,
five, six choruses,
10, 12 minutes in a way
that very few improvisers
have ever been able to do.
And it never becomes just
a self-indulgent howl
or a kind of
emotional outpouring.
It's always logical,
it's always a kind of
Aristotelian perfection
of beginning and a
middle and an end
and he takes you someplace
and you know where he's going.
One of the pitfalls of
that kind of playing
is that with Sonny, as
I mentioned earlier,
there's no hiding for him.
You always know when
he's playing very well
and when he's not because
it's all right there
on the plate for you.
- Whenever I try to
create anything, solos
when I'm playing,
what I'm basically trying
to do is to blot out my mind
as much as possible.
And of course I've already
learned the material,
so after learning the material
then I try to blot
out my mind and just
let it flow by itself.
So I try not to really think
too much about what I'm playing
when I'm soloing.
So I sorta have the
structure already
and then I just try to create
and let it come by itself.
(applauding)
(audience applauding)
- At certain points during
my playing I leave the stage.
Sometimes I go out
into the audience
and I get feedback
from the audience.
They stimulate me to do more
and to get into different areas.
And this is sort of
what I had in mind
when I was doing that concert.
I figured that I
would leave the stage,
jump down off of the stage
and then come back onto stage.
And at first I said no,
I looked and I figured
it might be too steep but I
thought I could manipulate it
and I tried, at first I didn't.
And it was unfortunate because
I did sustain a broken heel.
But I kept playing and I
was very happy about that
and I was happy that a lot
of the people didn't realize
that I was actually
hurt or anything
and they thought it was just
a part of the performance.
- At the time that
Sonny came along,
jazz was grappling with
the problem of standards
and how to play them and what
to do to find new material.
The previous generation,
Parker and Gillespie had taken
a lot of standard tunes and
written their own chords
and their own melodies and
added substitute chords
to the original
chord progressions.
Rollins went back and
found all kinds of pieces
that jazz musicians did
not know what to do with
or would not have
known what to do with
if he hadn't played them.
Things like Jolson's songs
and I'm an Old Cow Hand,
Toot Toot Tootsie and
all kinds of ballads
and he made them credible as
music, let alone as jazz music.
He proved, and Miles Davis
is someone else who did this,
that if you find the right
tempo, the right attack,
the right approach
for a piece of music,
you can make it work for you.
And so Rollins, even at
the height of free jazz,
never had to turn
away from that.
The whole standards record, he
did a lot of those standards,
weren't really standards
until he brought them back
into the jazz meilleur.
- Right, he one time
described it as,
I was starting to
do a list of them,
and he said, he named a
few others and he said,
"Songs no one ever
recorded before
"and no one will
ever record again."
And as somebody else
pointed out to me
when I told that to them,
of course they never
record them again,
it's because Sonny has made
the definitive versions.
It'd be crazy to record
some of those songs again.
- Well, I met Lucille in Chicago
when I was playing
Max Roach's group.
And Lucille was a friend
of a friend of mine,
actually it was a musician
that I was rehearsing with
at the time, and this
musician had a girlfriend
who was a girlfriend of
Lucille's so they both
got together, I think,
and came down to see
us play some place.
- The same girl or woman
that Sonny talked about
who was my friend had
told me a lot about Sonny.
She sort of wanted us to meet.
And when I met him I knew,
I knew right away
that this was going to
be something special.
I don't believe
he did but I did.
And I was determined
that this was the guy.
She told me not to do
this because she said
you're gonna get hurt
and don't get involved.
Just have a good time
but don't get involved.
But I did. (laughs)
I did the booking
for a long time.
Now I just do the managing
and occasional booking.
- Occasionally booking.
- But I love it.
And the producing came
about because I was always
involved anyway and
starting about '78,
there was a particularly
difficult record,
the Don't Stop the
Carnival album,
which was a...
There were great
problems with that album
and Sonny was reluctant to
go in the studio to mix it
so Orrin and I, Orrin Keepnews,
who was Sonny's
producer at that time.
- [Sonny] At that time, yeah.
- Decided that if Sonny
would let us we would mix it
to spare him.
And I think he was
sort of at the point,
he said, "Okay, go ahead."
And so then it just
changed from there.
And finally we decided that
we wanted to do everything
our own way instead
of having anybody else
to say do this this way
or this way or this way,
we wanted to do it the way
that was most
comfortable for Sonny.
And it wasn't
anything against Orrin
because we're still
friends but it was
just we wanted to
do it all our way.
- Sonny Rollins on
records is very often not
the Sonny Rollins
that we hear live.
When I first started
reading jazz criticism
and listening to the records,
I remember a critic reviewing
the recording he made for
RCA in the early '60s of
If Ever I Would Leave You
and saying it's a good record
but it certainly can't
compare with the extraordinary
performance he gave at
such and such a place.
And I thought this
is remarkable.
It seemed to me, I was
very naive of course,
and I thought it's amazing
that they wouldn't keep
doing takes until they
got something as good.
But really that's been a
constant throughout his career.
We all have memories of some
To a Wild Rose that he played
that we'll never forget and
the version on the record
isn't quite up to that.
Every time for a long
time in the mid-'70s
whenever I reviewed
Sonny in concert
I would get letters from
people around the country
telling me that I was nuts.
How can you compare the
latest Sonny Rollins record
with Way Out West or
Saxophone Colossus or Workout?
And I would always tell them
you have to see him live.
And then finally in late '70s,
or I guess it was
maybe the early '80s,
Fantasy put out Don't
Stop the Carnival
and it's got two
performances on it,
Silver City and Autumn Nocturne
that are among the great
Rollins masterpieces.
And two of the people who
had written me those letters
wrote me back and said,
"Just heard that record,
"now I understand what
you were talking about."
So, Rollins really is the
ultimate example of a musician
who proves the old
adage about jazz
which is that the music
is very much a process of
communication between a
player and the audience
and sometimes for Sonny
it just does not happen
when he's playing
to a glass booth.
- In his defense though, Gary,
don't you think the
records are getting better?
- Oh yes, I'm glad
you said that.
- [Francis] He's
abandoned that approach.
Not bringing in Donald
Byrd or whomever.
- Ever since Sonny and Lucille
started producing themselves,
I think the records
have gotten better.
- I get very angry and I
get these nice fantasies.
I think I told you of
having a jazz critic up to
a 39th floor apartment
and telling him
to look out the window and
just step further, further.
I have very nice fantasies.
(speaking Japanese)
(banging drums)
- I've always wanted, actually,
to work in different
musical environments.
The opportunity to do
this piece came about
through my sponsors
here in Japan.
And they asked me would I
like to do an orchestral piece
this time around.
So of course I said
I'd love to do it.
I've never done anything
quite like this before
and because of that, of course,
I sought the help of
a good friend of mine,
old musical companion of
mine, Heikki Sarmanto.
- I was in South America
doing some playing
and I came back to Helsinki,
I flew first to New York
and stayed there one day.
And I was trying to call
my old friend Sonny Rollins
but I couldn't reach
him in New York.
I spent there only one night
and then I commuted back home
to Helsinki and as I
walk into my apartment
with all the luggage in
my hand, the phone rings.
And guess who it is?
It's Sonny.
And Sonny says, "I have
this thing in Japan.
"Would you be interested?"
(piano music)
- The themes were mine.
I labored over
them for some time
trying to come up
with what would sound
proper in this context.
And I asked Heikki to
orchestrate them for me
and to also conduct
the orchestra for me.
(singing)
- And back to the beginning.
And there the trumpets are
beginning this letter here.
Trumpets are coming in.
(singing)
While that's coming, the
trumpets are coming in.
(singing)
Very Spanish feeling.
(Heikki mumbles)
(singing)
Then we go to that theme.
(singing)
That's it, the rest right?
One very important thing
is that those ideas
he had originally created,
those little thematic patterns,
they were so incredibly
strong, melodic,
very meaningful melodies.
They were the seed
for this whole piece.
If you have even a tiny
little thematic pattern,
just a couple of bars, but
if it's really good, strong,
original line, from
that you can make
a whole big tree grow up.
- I have been called
a spontaneous
orchestrator and so on.
Of course this is not a
spontaneous orchestration
in that sense but I hope to
bring some of those qualities
to this piece in that I will
still be improvising myself
on many sections of it.
No two performances of this
concerto will be alike.
And in that sense, it will
be true to what I'm about.
It is very much structured.
And what will be different
will be my relation
to the structure, each
time will be different.
- I put them all together
because we all have to play it.
That should be it because
they keep the whole
thing together.
- They need a little soft...
- Yeah, a little soft there.
I think it's going to
be a dynamite concert.
(laughs)
Probably like most premieres,
it's not gonna be
technically finished yet
but it will have the first
performance excitement.
- I'm actually quite
excited about it
and looking forward to it.
(dramatic orchestral music)
When I first came to
Japan sometime ago
I was very pleased to find
that the Japanese fans
were very much aware
of the birth dates
and the history of all
of the jazz musicians,
myself included.
And I was very much
excited about that.
And I find that they're
a very good audience.
Very fine audience.
They take their
music very seriously.
They keep up with
everything that's happening,
all the latest
developments in the music.
- These musicians here in
the symphony orchestra,
they are just
amazingly professional.
It's a very difficult piece
of music, my goodness,
and they have never been
playing this type of music
because frankly, I have never
heard this type of piece
being written for
symphony orchestra.
So this whole experience
was very new for all of us,
for Sonny, myself
and the orchestra.
- I try to always
inject in my work with a
spiritual quality, it
sounds kind of grandiose
to put it in that way but...
I have studied
Zen in Japan here.
I did study.
I studied yoga in India.
Of course, I was born a
Christian in the United States
and I found elements
of all these religions
that are quite
similar in many ways.
So, philosophy,
religion, spirituality,
all these things, it's
never very far away from
what I'm doing at any time.
And I'm sure that when
I'm playing here in Japan
that's the case as it
is when I'm playing
in the United States and
other parts of the world.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(audience applauding)
My parents come from the
Caribbean area of the world,
the islands, and
it might be significant that
Japan of course is an island.
And on our last trip to Japan,
there's an area of Japan
near Hiroshima and we were
traveling from one part
of Japan to another and
we were nearing Hiroshima
and I happened to, it was
striking the resemblance
between the island and
the area in the Caribbean,
it was very much similar.
And it never really occurred
to me until then but
it so happened that after
that, not too long after that,
a Japanese friend of mine
brought up the fact that
perhaps this is the reason
why I'm so liked in Japan
because the island
connection is there
in some mysterious way.
So being a guy that's
kind of mysterious myself,
I thought hey, it's
alright, why not?
So I'm all for it
if that's happening.
I've been here now, this
will be my twelfth time
that I've been in
Japan for a tour.
So I think the
Japanese people like me
and I like the Japanese people.
I like all people, I
consider myself like most
jazz musicians do as diplomats
of course and ambassadors
for the United States and we're
usually treated quite well
around the world and so I
take my job in that respect
quite seriously.
And I find that I've been
accepted here by the Japanese
and I also accept them and
like them quite a great deal.
(audience applauding)
I'm not that well-known.
I'm not the most famous
person in the world
so a lot of places
where we play,
people don't know
anything about me at all.
I have played places where
I play in front of people
that really don't know
anything about me.
So in a way, when I'm
presented as the greatest
or one of the greatest
or something like that,
it gives me a little leeway
and people are not quite so
hostile and judging of me.
So I'm able to sort of walk
in and feel a little more
able to lead into things
in a more natural way
instead of really having to
prove everything I play
every minute that I play it.
I don't feel I'm the
greatest anything,
I still feel I'm a
developing musician
so as far as I'm
concerned I'm still
proving it to
myself all the time,
but it's good when I don't
have to prove it to audiences.
- One thing I'd like
to say about Sonny,
and we haven't touched
on it, is his marvelous
interpretation of his
West Indian heritage
and the way he plays
those kind of songs.
And I remember being down in
Saint Thomas for the first time
and this was after Sonny
had done the song
called St. Thomas,
and walking along
the street one night
passing under a window where
there was a dance going on
and the saxophone player
in that band down there,
who was not a jazz band,
they were playing Calypso,
but the sound that he
got was exactly the sound
that Sonny can get when he
wants to duplicate that style
in addition to doing
a lot of other things
with the improvisation
on something like
Don't Stop the Carnival
or Hold 'Em Joe.
- There was a time in my
career when I thought that my
soloing and my playing
would be able to turn
the world around.
I'd be able to change
politics and influence things
for the better.
I don't have these
illusions anymore.
Now, all I want to
do is to maybe bring
enjoyment to myself and
enjoyment to those people that
appreciate a little bit of
my art and what I'm doing.
And I think that just being
able to do that is plenty.
- To me, and people could
say I'm not objective,
I feel his playing is much
stronger and more beautiful now
than it's ever been.
I think not only, and I'm
not talking just technically,
but I think because he's changed
as a person over the years
and I sense more, and somebody
else commented on this
the other day so
it's not just me,
that there's now more
warmth and more feeling
and more depth than
ever in his playing.
And I've never heard
him play better
and I honestly mean that.
And I'm in awe of his
playing aside from loving him
as my husband, I think
he's spectacular.
(audience applauding)
(audience cheering)
I try to meditate
on what I have to do,
I try to block out
any extraneous thoughts.
I try to think about what
it's going to be like,
I try to will the
band to sound good.
I try to act in a positive way,
and I try to create a
picture of what I hope
is going to happen on the stage.
So it's sort of a
meditation, in a way,
prior to performing.
(upbeat jazz music)
(crowd applauding)
Of course, I was born here,
number one, in Harlem,
and the great excitement
here in New York, of course.
I always felt New York was
the center of a lot of music,
at least during the time
when I was growing up.
52nd Street was where
everybody was playing
and I had a chance to
really hear some of
the great musicians.
And you know, there's
just the energy,
the wonderful energy that is
in New York and nowhere else.
- My first memories of
Sonny Rollins is when he
recorded with J.J
Johnson for Prestige.
I had been hearing
about him a little bit,
they kept saying there's
this tenor player up town
who's really upsetting everybody
and I heard that some of the
test pressings on this date
and was kind of impressed
and was told about him
in the studio,
they way he stood,
I guess he impressed
this friend of mine
who had seen him and that
he really assumed the very
planted stance and
dug in and just blew.
I guess the first reaction
to hearing him in person was,
and also on that
record was that,
here was a guy who had
heard Charlie Parker
and was putting that
kind of knowledge
into the tenor saxophone
differently, say,
than Dexter Gordon, who was
acknowledged to be the first
to translate Charlie
Parker's mode to the tenor.
Because at that time, people
were very rigid and they said,
"Oh yes, you can sound like
that on alto, like Bird,
"but you can't play
like that on tenor."
And each little step of
the way had to be won
in people's minds.
Sonny, even in his rawest
period, in that first period
when a lot of critics
were putting him down,
I felt he had something very,
very personal and unique
to say and certainly he was
not the polished Sonny Rollins
that he would become
after the Chicago period
and coming back with Max
Roach and Clifford Brown
and really turning
everyone's heads arounds,
that's when he really
established himself.
But I feel all through
the earlier period,
'51 through '53, he played
a lot of valuable music
as we know from
listening to the records.
- I started listening to
Sonny in 1965 and 1966,
and the thing that
hit me the most
was the extraordinary
personal authority of the man
in the way he played, in the
way he addressed the audience,
in the way he addressed
the piece of music.
The incident at Saugerties
where he jumped off the cliff
is not uncharacteristic of
Sonny because he always had
a very strong visual sense,
he's a performer who likes to
keep the audience entertained.
I remember the one time
there was a concert in '66
called Titans of the Tenor
that he shared a bill on
with Coleman Hawkins, Zoot
Sims, and John Coltrane,
and Dave Lampert was
the MC and he said,
"And now Sonny Rollins,"
and a much shorter
fellow walked out,
it was Yusef Lateef, whom
Sonny had just convinced
to come along for the
gig, who was not billed,
and after Yusef
played several chords,
Sonny walked out, all in black,
black Keds sneakers, black
pants, black T-shirt,
walked straight to
the back of the stage,
and started to improvise
chords behind Lateef
and then came up for,
I think he was playing
Hold 'Em Joe with Calypso,
and then went into
a whole incredible
15, 20 minute solo thing.
And the control of
the horn, the time,
the phrasing,
everything about it
just held you in your seat.
And so even if you were a
novice, as I was at that time,
there was something about
Rollins that was so compelling
that you understood him.
I never understood,
I used to see reviews
where people would
talk about him being
too complex or intellectual
and the great
thing about Rollins
is that he is a communicator,
he always tells a story.
I think he's the most
compelling tenor saxophonist
we have right now.
- Whenever talking
about Sonny Rollins
I almost feel the need to
preface anything I might say
by pointing out that
I consider him to be
the greatest living
jazz improvisor.
Of course, that puts
the standards higher
by which you have to
judge Sonny Rollins
and you can only
imagine the standards
by which he must judge himself.
Play time for us is
work time for him.
We just go to
enjoy his concerts.
To him it means something
else, something much greater
seems to be a stake and I
think some of that tension
communicates itself
to an audience
and it becomes
pretty fascinating.
- I dropped out of
the jazz scene in 1959
which was more well known,
that was the bridge period
when I practiced on
the bridge for a while.
As you know, I'm always
trying to improve myself
and I'm partly a
self-taught musician
and all my career I've been
trying to improve my craft.
So at that point
I had dropped out
and figured I'd
stay away from music
and the music
scene and everybody
and just try to
improve my playing
and I studied
piano for it again.
And so, that was a
very important period,
a publicized period.
I had been practicing on
the bridge and I think
a jazz writer had
seen us on the bridge,
seen me on the bridge practicing
and he wrote a
little story about it
and it became famous,
infamous Sonny Rollins
practicing alone on the bridge.
So when I finally came
back to the jazz scene
and I came back to appearing,
I was appearing in a night
club and I made my debut again,
I recorded for RCA at
that time and we thought,
well it would be
apropos if we named
the album The Bridge, or at
least some songs in the album.
- Although I never
saw Sonny Rollins
practicing on the bridge,
I did see him blowing
into a little closet
in his apartment
on Grand Street,
he used that to muffle the sound
so he wouldn't bother anybody
and he could play at any hour.
He also had a board on
which he did exercises.
He was drinking orange juice,
he was into Rosicrucianism,
and a complete contrast
from the guy who had been
strung out a few years earlier.
So he did a complete about-face,
he started really working
on physical fitness and he
knew that in order to be
a tenor player, to
have the endurance
to play that instrument,
that he had to be in shape
and he talked about this.
- Any instrument eventually
gets to be a part
of the person playing it,
it's a very personal thing.
And the saxophone
is closer to me,
I hate to say it's almost
closer than Lucille.
But she knows this already
so she's not jealous.
Before I was married
to Lucille, though,
I did have problems
with girlfriends
and my saxophone
though, I must say that.
And one of them broke up
my saxophone at one time
when she was mad at me.
I was playing a
very important job
at the Five spot with
Mingus and a lot of people.
But the saxophone
is very close to you
and it's a very
delicate instrument
and the slightest
thing can change the
nuance that you put into it.
So it can drive you crazy.
It can drive you crazy
because even if you know what
you want to play, sometimes
it doesn't come out
because of the
differences in the horn
and it might not be
working exactly right
or something like that.
So it's a very
close relationship.
- Obviously I think
he's important.
And just as obviously, I have
a hard time explaining why
to a general audience,
why he is so important.
It's almost gotta be accepted.
In one sense, he's never
been as influential
at any given period
as say, Miles Davis,
well, as Miles Davis
has been throughout
Miles Davis' whole career.
But he's never been
as important as Miles,
he's never been as
influential as Coletrane was
in the mid to late '60s,
or Ornette Coleman during
much of that same time.
And I think one of the
reasons is he's never,
unlike them, he never formed
the band in his own image.
He's never been
successful at doing that.
And in a way, that almost
enhances his appeal,
that lack of context.
It's just Sonny Rollins as
the single most excellent
standard of jazz you
can possibly imagine.
- Jazz is a music that's made
be people playing together
but the master improvisers
are always the ones
who set the tone,
they take the lead,
the bring everyone
in around them
and Sonny Rollins is
someone who has listened
to all the great
players before him
and come up with
something of his own
and that's the way
the music moves along.
His tone is so personal,
that deep sound of his is
like no other saxophonist.
His sense of time, the
rhythmic displacement,
his pauses, his rests,
the way he then comes
rushing up from behind the beat.
His ability to play at length
and still come up
with interesting ideas
is something that
stands out in my mind.
- One of the most important
aspects of Sonny's influence
on jazz is his
ability to improvise
an extended solo and
keep your attention
and not just go through the
cycle of choruses and chords.
I guess the first
examples were, again,
an unlikely song,
Irving Berlin's
There's No Business
Like Show Business,
and There Are Such Things
which has a a terrific
cadenza at the end.
And he figured out how
to alternate the chorus
and the verse in such a way
to constantly keep you
a little bit off balance
while you're listening
to the performance.
And then he developed
this subsequent record
with a piece called Blue 7,
and in writing about that I'd,
Gunther Schuller coined the
phrase thematic improvisation,
well he meant by that was
that Sonny will take a theme
and he will use the
melody to govern
the improvisational ideas
that follow rather than simply
playing rote on
the chord changes.
And actually, Rollins has
a lot of different ways
that he organizes improvisations
but the end product is that
combining them together
he manages to sustain
interest for say,
five, six choruses,
10, 12 minutes in a way
that very few improvisers
have ever been able to do.
And it never becomes just
a self-indulgent howl
or a kind of
emotional outpouring.
It's always logical,
it's always a kind of
Aristotelian perfection
of beginning and a
middle and an end
and he takes you someplace
and you know where he's going.
One of the pitfalls of
that kind of playing
is that with Sonny, as
I mentioned earlier,
there's no hiding for him.
You always know when
he's playing very well
and when he's not because
it's all right there
on the plate for you.
- Whenever I try to
create anything, solos
when I'm playing,
what I'm basically trying
to do is to blot out my mind
as much as possible.
And of course I've already
learned the material,
so after learning the material
then I try to blot
out my mind and just
let it flow by itself.
So I try not to really think
too much about what I'm playing
when I'm soloing.
So I sorta have the
structure already
and then I just try to create
and let it come by itself.
(applauding)
(audience applauding)
- At certain points during
my playing I leave the stage.
Sometimes I go out
into the audience
and I get feedback
from the audience.
They stimulate me to do more
and to get into different areas.
And this is sort of
what I had in mind
when I was doing that concert.
I figured that I
would leave the stage,
jump down off of the stage
and then come back onto stage.
And at first I said no,
I looked and I figured
it might be too steep but I
thought I could manipulate it
and I tried, at first I didn't.
And it was unfortunate because
I did sustain a broken heel.
But I kept playing and I
was very happy about that
and I was happy that a lot
of the people didn't realize
that I was actually
hurt or anything
and they thought it was just
a part of the performance.
- At the time that
Sonny came along,
jazz was grappling with
the problem of standards
and how to play them and what
to do to find new material.
The previous generation,
Parker and Gillespie had taken
a lot of standard tunes and
written their own chords
and their own melodies and
added substitute chords
to the original
chord progressions.
Rollins went back and
found all kinds of pieces
that jazz musicians did
not know what to do with
or would not have
known what to do with
if he hadn't played them.
Things like Jolson's songs
and I'm an Old Cow Hand,
Toot Toot Tootsie and
all kinds of ballads
and he made them credible as
music, let alone as jazz music.
He proved, and Miles Davis
is someone else who did this,
that if you find the right
tempo, the right attack,
the right approach
for a piece of music,
you can make it work for you.
And so Rollins, even at
the height of free jazz,
never had to turn
away from that.
The whole standards record, he
did a lot of those standards,
weren't really standards
until he brought them back
into the jazz meilleur.
- Right, he one time
described it as,
I was starting to
do a list of them,
and he said, he named a
few others and he said,
"Songs no one ever
recorded before
"and no one will
ever record again."
And as somebody else
pointed out to me
when I told that to them,
of course they never
record them again,
it's because Sonny has made
the definitive versions.
It'd be crazy to record
some of those songs again.
- Well, I met Lucille in Chicago
when I was playing
Max Roach's group.
And Lucille was a friend
of a friend of mine,
actually it was a musician
that I was rehearsing with
at the time, and this
musician had a girlfriend
who was a girlfriend of
Lucille's so they both
got together, I think,
and came down to see
us play some place.
- The same girl or woman
that Sonny talked about
who was my friend had
told me a lot about Sonny.
She sort of wanted us to meet.
And when I met him I knew,
I knew right away
that this was going to
be something special.
I don't believe
he did but I did.
And I was determined
that this was the guy.
She told me not to do
this because she said
you're gonna get hurt
and don't get involved.
Just have a good time
but don't get involved.
But I did. (laughs)
I did the booking
for a long time.
Now I just do the managing
and occasional booking.
- Occasionally booking.
- But I love it.
And the producing came
about because I was always
involved anyway and
starting about '78,
there was a particularly
difficult record,
the Don't Stop the
Carnival album,
which was a...
There were great
problems with that album
and Sonny was reluctant to
go in the studio to mix it
so Orrin and I, Orrin Keepnews,
who was Sonny's
producer at that time.
- [Sonny] At that time, yeah.
- Decided that if Sonny
would let us we would mix it
to spare him.
And I think he was
sort of at the point,
he said, "Okay, go ahead."
And so then it just
changed from there.
And finally we decided that
we wanted to do everything
our own way instead
of having anybody else
to say do this this way
or this way or this way,
we wanted to do it the way
that was most
comfortable for Sonny.
And it wasn't
anything against Orrin
because we're still
friends but it was
just we wanted to
do it all our way.
- Sonny Rollins on
records is very often not
the Sonny Rollins
that we hear live.
When I first started
reading jazz criticism
and listening to the records,
I remember a critic reviewing
the recording he made for
RCA in the early '60s of
If Ever I Would Leave You
and saying it's a good record
but it certainly can't
compare with the extraordinary
performance he gave at
such and such a place.
And I thought this
is remarkable.
It seemed to me, I was
very naive of course,
and I thought it's amazing
that they wouldn't keep
doing takes until they
got something as good.
But really that's been a
constant throughout his career.
We all have memories of some
To a Wild Rose that he played
that we'll never forget and
the version on the record
isn't quite up to that.
Every time for a long
time in the mid-'70s
whenever I reviewed
Sonny in concert
I would get letters from
people around the country
telling me that I was nuts.
How can you compare the
latest Sonny Rollins record
with Way Out West or
Saxophone Colossus or Workout?
And I would always tell them
you have to see him live.
And then finally in late '70s,
or I guess it was
maybe the early '80s,
Fantasy put out Don't
Stop the Carnival
and it's got two
performances on it,
Silver City and Autumn Nocturne
that are among the great
Rollins masterpieces.
And two of the people who
had written me those letters
wrote me back and said,
"Just heard that record,
"now I understand what
you were talking about."
So, Rollins really is the
ultimate example of a musician
who proves the old
adage about jazz
which is that the music
is very much a process of
communication between a
player and the audience
and sometimes for Sonny
it just does not happen
when he's playing
to a glass booth.
- In his defense though, Gary,
don't you think the
records are getting better?
- Oh yes, I'm glad
you said that.
- [Francis] He's
abandoned that approach.
Not bringing in Donald
Byrd or whomever.
- Ever since Sonny and Lucille
started producing themselves,
I think the records
have gotten better.
- I get very angry and I
get these nice fantasies.
I think I told you of
having a jazz critic up to
a 39th floor apartment
and telling him
to look out the window and
just step further, further.
I have very nice fantasies.
(speaking Japanese)
(banging drums)
- I've always wanted, actually,
to work in different
musical environments.
The opportunity to do
this piece came about
through my sponsors
here in Japan.
And they asked me would I
like to do an orchestral piece
this time around.
So of course I said
I'd love to do it.
I've never done anything
quite like this before
and because of that, of course,
I sought the help of
a good friend of mine,
old musical companion of
mine, Heikki Sarmanto.
- I was in South America
doing some playing
and I came back to Helsinki,
I flew first to New York
and stayed there one day.
And I was trying to call
my old friend Sonny Rollins
but I couldn't reach
him in New York.
I spent there only one night
and then I commuted back home
to Helsinki and as I
walk into my apartment
with all the luggage in
my hand, the phone rings.
And guess who it is?
It's Sonny.
And Sonny says, "I have
this thing in Japan.
"Would you be interested?"
(piano music)
- The themes were mine.
I labored over
them for some time
trying to come up
with what would sound
proper in this context.
And I asked Heikki to
orchestrate them for me
and to also conduct
the orchestra for me.
(singing)
- And back to the beginning.
And there the trumpets are
beginning this letter here.
Trumpets are coming in.
(singing)
While that's coming, the
trumpets are coming in.
(singing)
Very Spanish feeling.
(Heikki mumbles)
(singing)
Then we go to that theme.
(singing)
That's it, the rest right?
One very important thing
is that those ideas
he had originally created,
those little thematic patterns,
they were so incredibly
strong, melodic,
very meaningful melodies.
They were the seed
for this whole piece.
If you have even a tiny
little thematic pattern,
just a couple of bars, but
if it's really good, strong,
original line, from
that you can make
a whole big tree grow up.
- I have been called
a spontaneous
orchestrator and so on.
Of course this is not a
spontaneous orchestration
in that sense but I hope to
bring some of those qualities
to this piece in that I will
still be improvising myself
on many sections of it.
No two performances of this
concerto will be alike.
And in that sense, it will
be true to what I'm about.
It is very much structured.
And what will be different
will be my relation
to the structure, each
time will be different.
- I put them all together
because we all have to play it.
That should be it because
they keep the whole
thing together.
- They need a little soft...
- Yeah, a little soft there.
I think it's going to
be a dynamite concert.
(laughs)
Probably like most premieres,
it's not gonna be
technically finished yet
but it will have the first
performance excitement.
- I'm actually quite
excited about it
and looking forward to it.
(dramatic orchestral music)
When I first came to
Japan sometime ago
I was very pleased to find
that the Japanese fans
were very much aware
of the birth dates
and the history of all
of the jazz musicians,
myself included.
And I was very much
excited about that.
And I find that they're
a very good audience.
Very fine audience.
They take their
music very seriously.
They keep up with
everything that's happening,
all the latest
developments in the music.
- These musicians here in
the symphony orchestra,
they are just
amazingly professional.
It's a very difficult piece
of music, my goodness,
and they have never been
playing this type of music
because frankly, I have never
heard this type of piece
being written for
symphony orchestra.
So this whole experience
was very new for all of us,
for Sonny, myself
and the orchestra.
- I try to always
inject in my work with a
spiritual quality, it
sounds kind of grandiose
to put it in that way but...
I have studied
Zen in Japan here.
I did study.
I studied yoga in India.
Of course, I was born a
Christian in the United States
and I found elements
of all these religions
that are quite
similar in many ways.
So, philosophy,
religion, spirituality,
all these things, it's
never very far away from
what I'm doing at any time.
And I'm sure that when
I'm playing here in Japan
that's the case as it
is when I'm playing
in the United States and
other parts of the world.
(dramatic orchestral music)
(audience applauding)
My parents come from the
Caribbean area of the world,
the islands, and
it might be significant that
Japan of course is an island.
And on our last trip to Japan,
there's an area of Japan
near Hiroshima and we were
traveling from one part
of Japan to another and
we were nearing Hiroshima
and I happened to, it was
striking the resemblance
between the island and
the area in the Caribbean,
it was very much similar.
And it never really occurred
to me until then but
it so happened that after
that, not too long after that,
a Japanese friend of mine
brought up the fact that
perhaps this is the reason
why I'm so liked in Japan
because the island
connection is there
in some mysterious way.
So being a guy that's
kind of mysterious myself,
I thought hey, it's
alright, why not?
So I'm all for it
if that's happening.
I've been here now, this
will be my twelfth time
that I've been in
Japan for a tour.
So I think the
Japanese people like me
and I like the Japanese people.
I like all people, I
consider myself like most
jazz musicians do as diplomats
of course and ambassadors
for the United States and we're
usually treated quite well
around the world and so I
take my job in that respect
quite seriously.
And I find that I've been
accepted here by the Japanese
and I also accept them and
like them quite a great deal.
(audience applauding)
I'm not that well-known.
I'm not the most famous
person in the world
so a lot of places
where we play,
people don't know
anything about me at all.
I have played places where
I play in front of people
that really don't know
anything about me.
So in a way, when I'm
presented as the greatest
or one of the greatest
or something like that,
it gives me a little leeway
and people are not quite so
hostile and judging of me.
So I'm able to sort of walk
in and feel a little more
able to lead into things
in a more natural way
instead of really having to
prove everything I play
every minute that I play it.
I don't feel I'm the
greatest anything,
I still feel I'm a
developing musician
so as far as I'm
concerned I'm still
proving it to
myself all the time,
but it's good when I don't
have to prove it to audiences.
- One thing I'd like
to say about Sonny,
and we haven't touched
on it, is his marvelous
interpretation of his
West Indian heritage
and the way he plays
those kind of songs.
And I remember being down in
Saint Thomas for the first time
and this was after Sonny
had done the song
called St. Thomas,
and walking along
the street one night
passing under a window where
there was a dance going on
and the saxophone player
in that band down there,
who was not a jazz band,
they were playing Calypso,
but the sound that he
got was exactly the sound
that Sonny can get when he
wants to duplicate that style
in addition to doing
a lot of other things
with the improvisation
on something like
Don't Stop the Carnival
or Hold 'Em Joe.
- There was a time in my
career when I thought that my
soloing and my playing
would be able to turn
the world around.
I'd be able to change
politics and influence things
for the better.
I don't have these
illusions anymore.
Now, all I want to
do is to maybe bring
enjoyment to myself and
enjoyment to those people that
appreciate a little bit of
my art and what I'm doing.
And I think that just being
able to do that is plenty.
- To me, and people could
say I'm not objective,
I feel his playing is much
stronger and more beautiful now
than it's ever been.
I think not only, and I'm
not talking just technically,
but I think because he's changed
as a person over the years
and I sense more, and somebody
else commented on this
the other day so
it's not just me,
that there's now more
warmth and more feeling
and more depth than
ever in his playing.
And I've never heard
him play better
and I honestly mean that.
And I'm in awe of his
playing aside from loving him
as my husband, I think
he's spectacular.
(audience applauding)
(audience cheering)