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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.

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

More quotes by Sonny Rollins

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Jazz never ends... it just continues.
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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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I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.
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I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
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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 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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America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms its humor its music.
Sonny Rollins
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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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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.
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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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Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
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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.
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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?
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