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You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.
Sonny Rollins
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Sonny Rollins
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: September 7
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Saxophonist
Harlem
New York
Theodore Walter Rollins
Play
Jazz
Many
Musician
Hard
Lived
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Dives
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Inferior
United
Inferiors
America
Musicians
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Accepted
More quotes by Sonny Rollins
I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
Sonny Rollins
I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.
Sonny Rollins
I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.
Sonny Rollins
I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.
Sonny Rollins
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins
Jazz is an endless source of ideas, because you can use anything. You can play operatic arias. You can incorporate them into jazz. You can play gypsy music and incorporate it into jazz. You can European classical and you can incorporate it into jazz. You can use anything and jazz it up, as they used to say.
Sonny Rollins
I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.
Sonny Rollins
I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.
Sonny Rollins
I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.
Sonny Rollins
Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
Sonny Rollins
Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
Sonny Rollins
There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
Sonny Rollins
I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
Sonny Rollins
...this is my dilemma. I'm a guy who makes things up as I go along, so nothing is ever finished - there are so many layers. So when you solo, yeah, you might get into one thing, but then, hey, everything has implications! You can hear the next level. And that's how I feel about improvising - there's always another level.
Sonny Rollins
Jazz never ends... it just continues.
Sonny Rollins
I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.
Sonny Rollins
America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms its humor its music.
Sonny Rollins
I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.
Sonny Rollins
I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
Sonny Rollins
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
Sonny Rollins