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America is deeply rooted in Negro culture: its colloquialisms its humor its music.

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
Culture
America
Music
Negro
Rooted
Deeply
Humor

More quotes by Sonny Rollins

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Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
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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 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 am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.
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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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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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...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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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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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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Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.
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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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I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
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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.
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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'll know when I find the ultimate sound.
Sonny Rollins
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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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There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.
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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