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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.

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
Think
Jazz
Thinking
Appreciate
Like
Bits
People
Littles
Little
Feel
Hostile
Feels
Appear
Something
Complicated

More quotes by Sonny Rollins

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I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
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I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
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Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
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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.
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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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Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
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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 feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.
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Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins
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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'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
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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.
Sonny Rollins
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I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.
Sonny Rollins
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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.
Sonny Rollins
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Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
Sonny Rollins
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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.
Sonny Rollins
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Jazz never ends... it just continues.
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America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms its humor its music.
Sonny Rollins
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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.
Sonny Rollins
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There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
Sonny Rollins