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Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.

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
Many
Speaking
Needs
Jazz
Globe
Think
Sea
Official
Thinking
Audience
Globes
United
Around
Officials
States
Recognition
Need
Decades

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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.
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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.
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I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.
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Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
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I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
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...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.
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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.
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Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
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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.
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Jazz never ends... it just continues.
Sonny Rollins
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I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.
Sonny Rollins
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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.
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There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
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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.
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I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
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Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
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