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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
Deeply
Humor
Culture
America
Music
Negro
Rooted

More quotes by Sonny Rollins

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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 a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.
Sonny Rollins
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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
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Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.
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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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Jazz never ends... it just continues.
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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 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
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Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.
Sonny Rollins
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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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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 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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I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.
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.
Sonny Rollins
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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.
Sonny Rollins
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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.
Sonny Rollins
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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.
Sonny Rollins
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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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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