David and Art - Sonny

Walter Theodore “Sonny” Rollins was born in Harlem on September 7, 1930. His mom and his dad—who was a U.S. Navy veteran—immigrated to Harlem from the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.

When he was still a little boy, something about Harlem’s jazz musicians made them his heroes. He listened to them play their sets through the basement windows of clubs. One evening, at the age of eight, he snuck into one. Finally, his mother gave him a secondhand alto saxophone. Then he acquired a tenor sax. That became the instrument of his fame.

He made his first recording in 1949, when he was about 19, and for a few years recorded as a sideman to some of the greats. In 1956 he recorded Saxophone Colossus, his breakthrough album as a leader. In reviewing it, Billboard magazine called him “one of the most vigorous, dynamic and inventive of modern jazzmen,” one who “develops each solo with great architectural logic.” Indeed, some critics came to regard Rollins as simply the greatest improviser in the history of jazz. His solos, said one French writer, would be more accurately thought of as sermons.

Rollins was named a “Jazz Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1983 and received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 2004.

In 2010 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the next year received both a National Medal of Arts and was named a Kennedy Center Honoree.

In 2024, Rollins became the last survivor of the 58 musicians portrayed in photographer Art Kane’s famous photo “Harlem 1958”—often referred to as “a great day in Harlem”—that Kane took for Esquire magazine.

In that picture, alongside Rollins, were also Count Basie, Art Blakey, Dizzy, Coleman Hawkins, Horace Silver, Monk, Mingus, and Lester Young. All of them among the greatest American musicians of the 20th century.

And now, all of them gone. Last Monday, Sonny Rollins died at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was 95.

Today, put on his 1956 tune “St. Thomas” and listen to the clarity and richness of his tone. Listen to the shape of his phrases, each one as coherent as a sentence. Feel the smoothness of this most sublime communication as it reaches and envelopes you. That’s the eternal sound of a gifted artist.

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