DISGRACELAND - Sonny Rollins: Armed Robbery, Rikers Island, and the Return of the Saxophone Colossus

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Sonny Rollins did time at Rikers Island twice: first for armed robbery and again for using dope. He was a fiend and a pickpocket. He nearly got himself killed when he ran to Miles Davis’ defense after a bloody scuffle with a cop outside Birdland. At the same time, Sonny Rollins was universally acknowledged as the greatest living tenor saxophone player. But he wanted to get better. He knew he could kick dope and kick petty crime. He also knew that in doing so, he could improve his own playing. So at the age of 29, at the height of his musical powers, he disappeared. He left thousands of dollars on the table and retreated to the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City, where he practiced nearly every day, alone, for hours at a time – in hopes that his life would turn around.This episode features Copper Nelson on saxophone.For the full list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed, I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Sunny Rollins are insane. At the age of 29, when he was recognized as the greatest living tenor saxophone player, He disappeared. For two whole years, he played no gigs and recorded no music. Instead, he practiced nearly every day alone on the Williamsburg Bridge. He did this after years of heroin abuse and petty crime. He was a pickpocket. He was arrested once for armed robbery and again for doing dope while on parole, and he did time at Rikers Island, not once, but twice. He took the cure at a government facility where the CIA conducted secret LSD experiments on unsuspecting patients.

And both before and after his now mythical leave of absence, Sunny Rollins, a true saxophone colossus, made great music, some of the greatest jazz music of all time. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Skanks and Praises. MK1. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to The Three Bells by the Browns. And why would I play you that specific slice

of grand old Opry cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on August 25, 1959. And that was the day that Sonny Rollins grabbed a gun, hopped in a cab and made a choice that would alter the course of his life. forever. On this episode, the Williamsburg Bridge, Rikers Island, heroin, armed robbery, and Sunny Rollins. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. From Grand Street, he cut up

Clinton, two blocks over to Delancey, his hand tight on the handle of the case that held his Mark Six tenor sacks. The smell of rye drifted from a kosher deli, sour brine from a pickle vendor on the corner. Taxi cabs conversed with their horns. Hammers pounded out a rhythm from a construction site. Always construction. But he wasn't listening. Something else had his attention. He stopped by the newspaper stand and gazed at the hulking mass of steel in front of him. The Williamsburg Bridge wasn't the Brooklyn Bridge. It wasn't poetic or picturesque, unless graffiti and junkies were your idea of poetry. The Williamsburg Bridge was car wrecks in crime,

a diving board for George Bailey types looking to make one last goodbye in this cruel world. But he didn't see ugly when he looked at that bridge. He saw hope. He saw a sanctuary. A place to disappear for hours at a time, days even, and just blow his horn. Up on the board,

bridge he could do the work he's so desperately he needed to do and not bother anyone. The work was necessary. He was dissatisfied. His sound and his playing needed improvement. He had to get better. He knew it would take time. So he canceled

his upcoming gigs and his studio sessions. He was on bridge time now. He climbed the steps. A subway car rattled overhead. The J, the M, maybe the Z train. He didn't notice. He didn't hear the moan of the tug in the East River below either.

At the top, he found a cranny to hide inside, took his Mark Six out of its case, and began to play. In 1959, at 29 years old, Sonny Rollins was the acknowledged colossus of the tenor sacks. Downbeat magazine's prestigious annual poll ranked him number one. His friend Miles Davis called him brilliant. But it was guys like Miles who were forging a new path forward in jazz. Kind of blue Miles' record was something else.

And not just Miles. John Coltrane, too. Train had giant steps, and Ornette Coleman had the shape of jazz to come. Sonny Rollins' peers were leaving him in the dust. Sure, he played to good audiences, and he got good marks, and he got paid, but it wasn't about the crowds or the critics or the money. It was about something bigger than all that. It was about getting better, being better.

And not better than miles or better than train. It wasn't a quantifiable thing. It was a feeling and intuition, a personal sense of achievement. That feeling was somewhere out there, in the sky, and in the clouds on this bridge. He looked out at the East River, and though he couldn't see it, he knew the 400-acre island was out there, around the bend. on the other side of Astoria, and he never wanted to set foot on that island again.

He can only guess what people were saying about him down on the street this time. Where did Sonny go? Did he retire? Is he back in the pen? Is he dead? Anything was better than what they used to say about him. Years ago, the best piece of advice echoing around Harlem and Manhattan was if you saw Sonny Rollins coming, you walked the other way.

1951, New York City. His nerves were shot, his pockets were empty. He stood in the aisle of the city bus holding onto the step and quickly found his mark. A square, middle-aged, on her way home from work. Standing next to him, pocketbook slung around her shoulder. He made eye contact with the guy standing on the woman's other side, and he waited for the bus to make a wide turn. As it did, he pretended to lose his balance and stumbled into her.

Excuse me, I'm sorry, man. Are you all right? And he grabbed under her arms to steady the both of them. And as he did this, the other guy stuck his hand inside her pocketbook and relieved her of her purse. Sunny Rawlins and his fellow pickpocketer got off at the next stop. They examined their spoils. Ten bucks. Good enough to cop a bag of dope, which, if they split it, would maybe last them half the week. And by then, Sunny would be playing another session for prestige records,

which meant more money for more dope. Sonny Rollins was just 21 years old, still young, still green. He had a brand new record deal, but those motherfuckers of prestige barely paid enough for your next fix, and that's why they called Prestige, the junkies label, because they always kept you coming back. And Sunny needed to come back, just like Sunny needed to steal money from marks on the bus,

because just like Miles and Charlie Parker, just like so many others, Sunny Rollins was deep into a heroin. addiction. At first, the addiction was music. It was Louis Jordan playing three sets a night at the Elks rendezvous in Harlem. Coleman Hawkins with body and soul, a hell of a tune for sure, but Coleman was cool as shit. He wore a nice clothes and drove fancy cars, and that made an impression on young Sonny Rollins. His mom got him a horn and he practiced in his closet where he wouldn't bother anyone. He taught himself to play, taught himself to be cool as shit. Even though he was a horn, even though he was underage. He had a friend in Thelonious Monk. More like an older brother. Thirteen years as

senior. Monk snuck Sonny into the clubs on 52nd Street. That was another lesson. On 52nd Street, you could watch gods play right in front of you. Gods like Charlie Parker. Bird. Bird was a prophet. He played and you listened and everyone did what Bird did. Bird played fast so you played fast. Bird walked funny, so you walked funny. Bird shot dope, so you shot dope too. Heroin came to Harlem in 1948, the same year that the long-playing album came to the record industry. Both of those things had a profound effect on jazz. Longer records meant more space for the music, which had moved beyond jump and swing into bebop and longer improvisation. But dope was the opposite of bebop. Where Bebop

was fast, dope was slow, but it was also powerful, so powerful that Sonny Rollins would do anything to get more of it. Kenny Drew put the pistol in Sonny's hand. This wasn't how he usually did it. Sonny was the guy who distracted the mark, not the one who waved a gun and shouted orders. But they were going to need it, Kenny told him, at least for show. Kenny was one of the best piano players in town. Sunny trusted him in the studio, and he trusted him on this, too. Lifting purses for women on the bus wasn't cutting it anymore. Sunny needed bigger scores. Bigger scores meant bigger wrists. Sunny, Kenny, and a mutual friend climbed into a taxi cab, and they had the driver stop at 59th in Lexington. The plan was to find a place that

was open and empty. Maybe Midtown or the Upper East Side robbed them at gunpoint, split the cash and get a fix. They barely made it out of the cab when a voice spoke behind them. What do you think you're doing, son? Sonny felt the hand on his back and he knew it was a cop. He also knew the cop didn't need a reason. Three black men getting out of a cab on a street corner after midnight was all the reason the white cop needed. They didn't fight it, didn't argue about whether or not the needles on the floor of the cab were theirs because they'd already lost this one. At least Sonny had. A cop pulled the gun from Sunny's pocket.

What's this? Shouldn't have fucked around, nook. Down at the detention center, his gut felt rotten. There was pounding in his veins, cold sweat on his face, panic attack, maybe, or just a Jones for more junk. His body began to tremble, and then it shook violently. One cop called another for backup, but they couldn't hold him. That meant subjugation. That meant extreme force.

That meant a straight jacket. He was calmer in the courtroom. Cool, collected. He was no longer strapped up. He didn't look crazy. He didn't have a rap sheet. And he hadn't actually fired the gun. The judge saw something different.

The judge saw an addict with a loaded weapon, a menace to society. The judge called it armed robbery. So in early 1952, Sonny Rollins didn't get to read all the good press he was finally receiving for his music. Nor did he hear that Miles Davis. Davis wanted him for a prestigious gig at Birdland, because Sonny Rollins was on that 400-acre penal colony in the middle of the East River,

doing one to three years on Rikers Island. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast. Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face, and he knows something happened.

His father just grabs him and says, she's gone, she's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube. wherever you get your podcasts.

Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien. And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause?

Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was.

Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over. From hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the Iheart Radio app. Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Up on the Williamsburg Bridge, the wind howled. The gloves on his fingers barely provided comfort, and he was cold and he had a piss.

But Sunny Rollins was a monk. Every second of every day spent in prayer. Sunny Rollins was a samurai, hours at a time repeating the same motif on his horn. He got in the reps, and the reps built strength and stamina. Below him, life went on. Miles, train, monk. They all kept playing and recording and doing their thing. Sunny's wife, Lucille, worked a secretarial job to keep the lights on. God knows they couldn't rely on Sunny's royalty checks alone.

Because even though this was work, up here for six, eight, even 12 hours a day, every day, it didn't pay. The hardest work never does. A year had passed since Sunny Rollins first climbed the stairs of the Williamsburg Bridge and began to practice. A year without gigs. A year without the money that came from those gigs. I'm talking two grand a week, easy. That's equivalent to $20,000 today. Per week. No shit. And he gave up that kind of living and the kind of lifestyle for a whole year and counting, just so that he could pursue artistic excellence. And that's what it was all about.

getting out of that scene and then getting above it. Not just musically, but literally. Temptations were too much, like dope. But dope was in the past, despite what some were saying. Sunny wasn't up on that bridge to kick heroin. He'd already done that. Sunny was up on that bridge to kick another bad habit. Stay away from Charlie Parker and stay away from Sunny Rollins.

In 1952, that kind of advice was appreciated but not surprising. Because although Sunny Rollins was out of Rikers, having served only 10 months for getting busted with Kenny Drew's gun, he wasn't rehabilitated. Rikers was an overcrowded mess of junkies, thieves, murderers, and rapists. Rikers didn't rehabilitate shit. Rikers reinforced who you already were, the person you were quickly becoming. Sonny Rollins went in a junkie, and Sonny Rollins came out a junkie. He was still a thief, but his code had changed. It wasn't just squares who were marks anymore.

Anyone was fair game. So most cats kept their distance. They didn't want to work with Sonny, let alone get within arm's reach. Fellow junkies, however, were a different story. Miles Davis didn't pick pockets, but Miles pimped women, and Miles played that desperation game. Charlie Parker, Bird, he was desperation incarnate. The legendary player that God the Prophet, now nothing more than a pariah,

strung out, nodding off, banned from stepping inside Birdland, the jazz club that was named after him. Bird was the reason so many players like Sonny got turned on to heroin. Bird couldn't help but feel responsible for their addictions. And if he couldn't offer them a cure, the least he could do was offer them a gig. Bird hired Sonny and Miles for a session. Bird asked Sonny point-blank if he had finally kicked the habit. Sunny lied and told him he had.

That's good, Bird said, but Sonny saw the way Bird looked at him for the rest of the session. Bird knew Sunny was full of shit. Bird was disappointed, insulted even. He didn't talk to Sonny after that. Not even when Sonny pulled the kind of arrogant bullshit he was known for when he took his solo. Coded the melody from Irving Berlin's, anything you can do, I can do better. the student wagging his tongue at the master. Just like dope, this was what Sonny perceived to be the path to greatness.

A total lack of humility. Total arrogance. The New York City clubs didn't care if Sonny was arrogant or not. His cabaret card had been revoked back when he was arrested. In the 1950s, jazz musicians were required to have a cabaret card in order to perform live. If you were convicted of a crime, that card was taken away as possible. punishment. And no one would look the other way and hire you because NYPD enforced the law and club owners didn't want to risk their place getting shut down for a junkie. The law targeted

jazz players because jazz was only performed in quote unquote cabarets and not in the places where the upper crust congregated. Jazz consisting mostly of black players and the upper cross being exclusively white. Cabaret cards were bullshit. Sunny Rollins knew this. It wasn't just about his right to make an honest living. It was about as right as a human being. Even worse, if he wanted to get the card back, he had to debase himself further, not through official channels,

through back doors, under the table, off-site. Sonny approached the guy at the agreed-upon meeting spot, blocks away from the precinct, flat-top haircut, glasses, white shirt, cackies, total herb. He wasn't wearing a uniform, but he screamed, Nark. Sonny approached him cautiously. The alleyway was far enough off the beaten path that anything could happen and no one would be the wiser. Not that anyone would give a fuck about a dead horn player.

The plain-closed cop cocked his head slightly. You bring the money, Rollins? Sonny pulled a 20 from his pocket and tried to look casual as he slipped it into the cop's hand. This is it? Come on, man, that's all I got, Sonny pleaded. He also needed another fix, Pronto. The cop just shook his head. I'll take this for now, but there's something else you've got to do for me.

Some friends of mine at City Hall really want to see this new Broadway show. I need you to buy them some tickets and then go to this place on Chamber Street and hand-deliver them. Do that for me and I'll consider letting you get back to work. Bribing cops and city officials was not sustainable. Neither was the constant harassment from his parole officer who bugs on me constantly about getting a 9-to-5 job, about living like a regular person, not a junkie. But Sonny Rollins was a junkie. He was deeper into the stuff now than he'd ever been before.

And if he was busted again, that would mean a much longer second bid back at the rock. There was one option, however. If Sonny turned himself into the police for a parole violation, the max sentence he could catch was 90 days. He knew it wasn't a matter of if he'd get busted again. It was just a matter of when. He thought about his idol, Charlie Parker, nodding, off in the studio, barely coherent one moment and disgusted with his legacy the next.

The legacy of doper acolytes like Sunny. Sunny Rollins was determined to avoid the same fate. In March of 1954, after 17 months on the outside, Sunny went to the police and confessed that he had violated his parole by getting high. He was sent back to Rikers. Once again, prison was no different than the street. There were guards to bribe, pushers to befriend, corruption to navigate. It was just 90 days. He could do this. Sunny blocked it all out, like he was a kid all over again, inside the closet of his bedroom blowing his horn in solitude. He made nice with the prison chaplain, played Sunday morning hymns at the chapel on a horn donated by the Salvation Army. And he practiced. He wrote. While at Rikers that second time, he could,

composed three songs, Arogen, Doxy, and Olio, all of which would later become jazz standards. The incarcerated world spun around him in its violent depravity. When his 90 days were up, Sonny Rollins knew he'd be stepping right back into a world of temptation and vice. It was a vicious cycle, a cycle he needed to break, a sickness he needed to cure.

Down a long hallway, inside a secluded room on a wing of the Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, a patient was given a small cup of water to drink. The patient thought the liquid contained medicine as part of a trial to find a cure for schizophrenia. That's what he signed up for, at least. But what the patient didn't know was that the water was dosed with LSD, and that he was an unwitting participant in a top-secret government experiment. Sunny Rollins didn't know anything about M.K. Ultra.

No one did. No one at the Public Health Service Hospital, a.k.a. the narcotic farm, aka narco, or simply the farm, knew that the U.S. government was using human beings as guinea pigs to test the long-term effects of LSD. Guys like Sunny were at the farm to take the quote-unquote cure, dolophine to wean you off junk,

10 to 14 days of detox, followed by four months in the general population. The Lexington facility was famous for getting many jazz musicians off dope. Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, Elvin Jones, Lee Morgan, even Sammy Davis Jr., all took the cure at the farm at one point. Sonny was at the farm when he heard the news. Charlie Parker was dead.

Only 34 years old, but his junkie lifestyle had been so rough, the coroner pegged him for 60. Sunny mourned Bird's death. He still wanted to be like his one-time mentor, but now only in the way he played. Because now Sunny was clean. He was no junkie. he was determined to stay that way. Things would be different. Berg was dead.

Sonny was born anew. And nothing. We'll be right back after this. Word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either.

We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands.

I said, oh, hell no. I vowed I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple, podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, host of the Wicked Words podcast.

Each week I sit down with the true crime writers behind some of the most compelling true crime stories and discuss their years spent investigating and why it still matters. He sees his father coming out of the woods with his hands over his face and he knows something happened. His father just grabs him and says she's gone. She's gone. These are the cases that leave survivors, families, and the journalists who cover them changed forever. Working in national television, it'll push you to your limits, and you'll end up doing things you never thought you do. You know, you look back at it and you're like, I can't believe that really happened. Join me and step inside the investigation.

New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Wicked Words on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie de Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien.

And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes.

Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to your movies I love you on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The term shedding, as in woodshedding,

as in you've got to get outside yourself, your routine, and go out to the proverbial woodshed to work on your craft, refers to the time an artist takes to practice, to grow, to hone new material, and with any luck, level up. Perhaps you do this at a shed out in the woods, hence the woodshed thing,

and you can imagine that said woodshed is where all that chopped wood is kept, hence the other saying, great chops. As in, that horn player has great chops. Okay, that last part isn't true. I really wanted it to be true for a minute. I was like, great chops, chopped wood, and I thought I was on to something about the slang chops. In actuality, refers to a horn player's jaw or mouth,

but I digress. When Sonny Rollins decided it was time to woodshed, he sequestered himself not in a shed in the woods, but up on the Williamsburg Bridge overlooking the East River in New York City. He was up there just about every single day for two years, rain or shine, hot or cold, hiding in plain sight, hyper-focused on one thing, to get better. Getting better wasn't just about refining his own sound in the face of his peers' innovations,

and it wasn't just about distancing himself from a life of drugs and crime. Sunny Rollins was on that bridge to make a life change, because he nearly died on the streets below. The old radio in Sunny Rollins' apartment crackled. Breaking news from Midtown, from Birdland. but not from inside Birdland, from outside Birdland. It was August 25th, 1959, around midnight. NYPD had just beat the shit out of Miles Davis, for the offense of standing outside,

for smoking on the sidewalk for refusing to move along at his own gig. Sunny felt sick to his stomach as he listened to the DJ detailed a vicious assault. Sunny had remained clean after his time at the farm, so he and Miles no longer bonded over getting him. a fix. But Miles remained a friend, a champion of Sonny's playing, and an attack on a friend, an attack on a fellow horn player. It was an attack on Sunny, an attack on all of them. Sunny sprang into action. He grabbed a starter pistol from a desk drawer, just a tiny thing, loaded with blanks. Nothing like the one he'd used with Kenny Drew years ago. It was necessary,

necessary to show the cops he was serious. Fucking NYPD. They'd put him in a straight jacket, revoked his cabaret card, shipped him off to Rikers like he was a junky nobody. He ran out the door of his apartment in a flash, held a cab, and the taxi shot off into the night, up FDR Drive, and the nocturnal glow of passing headlights like blood coursing through a vein. Sunny can only imagine how bad the scene would be when he got there, the blood running down Miles's head, ruining his pristine white suit. Miles taking his defiant rap while the cops swung their nightsticks some more. Police loved it when he mouthed off. to them. A crowd would gather, some with horror and disgust on their faces, others with that sanctimonious

look in their eyes. The look that said jazz was deplorable and led to scenes like this one, to bloodshed and fear the motherfucker brought it on himself, all that shit. Sonny shook with anger, and he stuck his hand in his pocket. He felt the starter pistol, and he told the cabby to hide tail it. It was time to get his hand dirty. For nearly four years, Sunny Rollins have been living the clean life. The life championed by guys like Max Roach and Clifford Brown, jazz musicians who proved you didn't have to shoot up to be a good player. In fact, you were better without dope. Sunny channeled that newfound freedom into one of the most prolific stretches of his career.

From 1955 to 1959, he released a stirring of classic albums as a leader. Worktime, tenor madness, saxophone, colossus, way out west, Freedom Suite. He played on Monk's Brilliant Corners, an all-timer of Thurricular. there ever was one. He was named Downbeat Magazine's tenor player of the year. He was better than ever. He was the greatest, and he didn't let anyone forget it. While recording the title track for Tenor Madness, which featured Sonny's old friend John Coltrane, Sonny was still pulling the kind of cocky immature shit he pulled on that session with Byrd. In Sunny's eyes, he was the man, and Train was just a kid, a hungry upster, worshipping at the feet of the master. Sunny was

laid back while Train blew hard, Sonny barely tried. He can do this with both eyes closed. And the two players traded fours. And then Sonny fuck with Train just for show. Train played a lick and Sunny flipped it around and played the lick back in reverse. Train felt the heat. Every tenor player felt the heat coming from Sonny Rollins. Possibly the most incisive and influential jazz instrumental is since Charlie Parker.

And that's a quote from the New Yorker at the time. Train knew he had to do something different, play with sheer passion and force, sheets of sound. Sunny didn't know what the hell he was hearing when Train started to make that shift. It confused him. That confusion in turn made him frustrated. And then he, Sunny Rollins, was the one feeling the heat. Train was on his way to some interstellar region. But that wasn't the only heat Sunny Rollins felt.

There was more than it was emanating from a club in Manhattan. The cab pulled over at 16. In 1778 Broadway, Sunny hopped out. He pulled the starter pistol from his pocket. He was ready for anything, ready to stand his ground and defend his friend. But the sidewalk outside Birdland was empty. Miles was gone, and so were the cops. All there was left were dark patches of blood on the pavement.

Sunny stared down at all of Miles' blood, and suddenly the sick to his stomach feeling came back. Only this time it wasn't because of what had happened. but because of what didn't happen. What the hell was he thinking? Rushing down to Birdland with a pistol in his hand? The cops wouldn't know it was loaded with blanks. They would have taken one look at Sunny and it would have been over. All of it, shit, they beat Miles Davis till he bled for standing there

for nothing more than the crime of being black and playing jazz. Just imagine what they would have done to Sunny with a fucking piece in his hand. He shuddered at the thought. He shuddered at the scene. In a matter of months, he left that scene. seen behind as he made his way over to Delancey Street and climbed the steps of the Williamsburg Bridge for the first time. Sunny Rollins began his descent with a flashlight in one hand and his tenor sacks in the other.

It was dark and he could barely see. see, he kept moving. He'd been up here for a day and a half now, hyper-focused once again, practicing, scales, melodies, snippets of old standards, anything that passed the time, anything to take his mind off of what was going on around him. Around him was chaos, not the usual chaos. It was smoke and fire, a cloud of toxic dust slowly blanketing New York City. He saw it with his own two eyes. But not from up on the bridge. He was in his apartment on the 39th floor when it happened.

No power, no contact, no way out, and no way of knowing who was alive and who was dead. It was around 36 hours later when the National Guard evacuated the building. Sunny held the flashlight in front of him as he walked down all 39 flights, all the way to the ground floor, outside on the street, just six blocks from the World Trade Center, or at least the spot where the World Trade Center used to be. Both towers were now just rubble and smoke.

Sunny boarded an evacuation bus, the Mark Six in his hand. He never went anywhere without his horn. The horn was it. It was practice, discipline. It was a completion of the circle. The person on stage and off. The person up on the bridge and up in that apartment, they were one and the same.

When he'd left the Williamsburg Bridge for the last time, exactly four decades earlier in 1961, Sonny had been missing from the jazz scene for two years. When he returned, John Coltrane was now the saxophone colossus. That meant the pressure was off. Sunny no longer worried about what other people thought about him anyway. And the only person he wanted to be the best for was himself. Plus, demand for Sunny Rawlins was at an all-time high.

He picked up gigs immediately. He signed a $90,000 six-album deal with RCA Records, a huge deal for a jazz musician, and the biggest deal RCA had ever given a black artist at the time. More important than a record deal, though, was how he was now playing. It wasn't at all like he played before. That's not to say he no longer sounded like Sonny Rollins,

because he did. But all that practice, that focus, that time alone, all the tapping into something bigger, something up in the clouds that you can't see with the human eye, but you knew was there. It changed him. He wasn't playing that arrogant shit anymore like he pulled on bird and train. He was humble. He was pious. He played not like who he was, but like the person he wanted to be. And over the ensuing years, he continued to practice, to play, to get better, and became that person.

Parker laid the groundwork and Coltrane went interstellar, and Ornette went way out, and Dexter Gordon had tone for days. All of those guys are giants in their own right. Sonny, however, is the master. He's been called the greatest living improviser. A petition has been brought before New York City Council to rename the Williamsburg Bridge in his honor. But in 2014, at the age of 84, Sunny Rollins was forced to stop. playing altogether due to pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that leaves lung tissue damaged and scarred. Now in 2003, at 92 years old, Sunny has outlived Miles, trained, monk, bird, and all the other

major jazz players that he came up with. His cultural impact is massive. He has left us with great music. He is the consummate ambassador of jazz. But he can no longer practice. And in Sunny Rollins' eyes, practicing was a never-ending journey. The journey was not allowed to finish. And thus, he never achieved the level of personal satisfaction that he chased for decades. I dedicated my life to music, he said. And I never got it to where I wanted to be. Disgrace.

I'm Jake Brennan. It's Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership.

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and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. Rockerola. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves.

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