Quote

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

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
Great
Jazz
Work
Musician
Really
Seen
Small
Funky
Dies
Obscure
Working
Musicians
Death
Clubs
Able
Drinking

More quotes by Sonny Rollins

Image
I feel that I have an obligation to jazz and also to myself to play as good as I can play.
Sonny Rollins
Image
Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
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
I'm fortunate that I'm making a living at it now because I'm not equipped to do anything else.
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
There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
Sonny Rollins
Image
Music represents nature. Nature represents life. Jazz represents nature. Jazz is life.
Sonny Rollins
Image
I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?
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 am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
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
Jazz never ends... it just continues.
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
I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
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 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
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
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
Image
Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins