Quote

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.

Sonny Rollins

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sonny Rollins
Age: 94
Born: 1930
Born: September 7
Bandleader
Composer
Conductor
Jazz Musician
Saxophonist
Harlem
New York
Theodore Walter Rollins
Person
Firsts
First
Musically
Trying
Valid
Something
Thinks
Thinking
Achieve
Persons
Music

More quotes by Sonny Rollins

Image
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
Image
America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms its humor its music.
Sonny Rollins
Image
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
Image
...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
Image
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins
Image
I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
Sonny Rollins
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
Sonny Rollins
Image
I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
Sonny Rollins
Image
There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
Sonny Rollins
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
Sonny Rollins
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.
Sonny Rollins
Image
I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.
Sonny Rollins