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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
Hard
Lived
Time
Type
Dives
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Inferior
United
Inferiors
America
Musicians
States
Accepted
Play
Jazz
Many
Musician
More quotes by Sonny Rollins
I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.
Sonny Rollins
I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.
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
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
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 think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.
Sonny Rollins
I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
Sonny Rollins
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
Sonny Rollins
It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.
Sonny Rollins
Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
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
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
I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
Sonny Rollins
I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
Sonny Rollins
How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.
Sonny Rollins
I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.
Sonny Rollins
I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
Sonny Rollins
Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
Sonny Rollins