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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
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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
Thinking
Create
Lester
Like
Around
Recording
People
Young
Jazz
Great
Record
Trying
Records
Long
Inspiration
Always
Somebody
Think
Hear
More quotes by 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 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 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
There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
Sonny Rollins
Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
Sonny Rollins
I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
Sonny Rollins
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
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'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
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
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
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 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
There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.
Sonny Rollins
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
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
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
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
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
