Fresh Air - Remembering jazz giant Sonny Rollins

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

The great jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins died Monday at the age of 95. He was known for his improvisation and technique, his full bodied sound that could erupt into grunts and brays, and his love of songs. Rollins said of improvising: “When I'm actually on the stage and performing, the optimum condition is not to think. I just want the music to play itself. I didn't want to have to think about it.” We listen back to Terry Gross’s 1994 interview with Rollins. Also, jazz historian Kevin Whitehead pays tribute. Finally, critic Justin Chang tells us about the highlights from the Cannes Film Festival. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is fresh air. I'm David B. and Cooley. Tenor saxophonist Sunny Rollins died Monday. He was 95 years old. For decades, he had been hailed as the greatest living jazz musician. Today, we're going to listen to Terry's 1994 interview with Sunny Rollins. But first, we have this appreciation from jazz historian Kevin Whitehead. He says no figure in jazz was more universally revered. Wagon wheels. Old cowboy song. written for Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies of 1934.

It's from the album Way Out West, an excellent introduction to a few things that made Sonny Rollins great, like how the saxophone has thrived in the bare-bones trio format, which left him fully exposed, also the clarity of his best improvisations. When you have as much technique as Rollins, it's easy to overdo it, but he leaves so much space,

the effect is more like singing than showing off. Wagon Wheels also speaks to some of, Sonny Rollins' love of unlikely material. On way out west, he also does, I'm an Old Cow Hand, just as he'd recently cut, there's no business like show business, and how are things in Glacomora? And then there's his imposing, sometimes garish sound.

Sunny's saxophone tone in his 1950s prime is as durable and flexible as steel-reinforced rubber, and he got plenty of mileage out of it. That's St. Thomas from 1950s. 56, the first of many Rollins calypsos. His parents came from the West Indies. Theodore Rollins was born and raised in Harlem and was nicknamed Sunny while still in diapers. He grew up surrounded by established and aspiring jazz musicians. Rollins started on saxophone at 8, practiced like mad and developed quickly,

cutting his first session under his own name before turning 21. Months later, he'd record Mambo bounce, hinting at those calypsos to come. Even then, he could give you the impression that when he improvises, he's both deep in the moment and standing back to coolly observe his progress. You can divide Sonny Rollins' career into three acts. First came Rollins, the searcher, the saxophone colossus of the 1950s, when he had one of the all-time jazz hot streaks, knocking out one classic album after another.

But in 1959, he began a two-year sabbatical from gigging to up. his game. He practiced on the Williamsburg Bridge, blowing to the tugboats, and act so New York iconic Spike Lee restaged it in Mo Better Blues. Coming back in the 60s, Rollins tried on new situations, a quartet with guitar, another with Ornette Coleman sidemen, and a brassy big band. Plus, he wrote music for the film Alfie. Sometimes his playing revealed a harder edge and harder rhythm that look ahead to his next phase. This is the 1965 Calypso, Holden Joe. Sunny Rollins' four-decade last act

began after a longer sabbatical. In 1966, fed up with the music business, he stopped recording for six years. When he came back in the 70s, much had changed. He was now using electric instruments, which gave the band a rockier edge, but that may have also been a practical move. easier to tour with a bass guitar than an upright bass.

Rollins was gearing up for the long haul, conserving his energy for the stage. But also, his glorious, pliable tone had become more metallic and yakety as his solos became more riffy and groove-oriented. It was still exciting, but different. Sunny Rollins, 1981 on the Dolly Parton favorite, Here You Come Again. This lighter day music was designed to be more accessible. Backing musicians came and went, but it hardly mattered. His old bands were gloriously interactive. Now there were the curtain behind the star, and Sonny, for his part, didn't hold back.

It was the most big-hearted embrace of the public by a jazz horn player since Louis Armstrong. But where Pops had set solos, Rollins, the improviser, shared his musical thoughts in real time. That made him famously self-critical, but the candor was brave no matter how it all turned down. And even skeptics went to his shows in case he'd have one of those inspired nights. He had a few, like in Boston, four days after 9-11. And yet, with Sonny Rollins, as with Lewis Armstrong, when it comes to their records, I tend to reach for the old classics. Those first explosions of the creativity they'd later learned to measure out in more sensible doses

to keep themselves from burning out. Sonny made it to 95 and performed into his 80s. For a guy who blazed so brightly early on, he paced himself well. Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead. Coming up, we listened to Terry's 1994 interview with Sunny Rollins. This is fresh air. Today, we're remembering the great tenor saxophonist and improviser Sonny Rollins. He died Monday at the age of 95. Sonny Rollins started recording in the late 1940s. Early in his career, he played with musicians who were in the pantheon of modern jazz.

Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Clifford Brown. Terry Gross spoke with Sunny Rollins in 1994. They began with his tenor saxophone solo, from his 1972 recording of the Hogi Carmichael song, Skylark. Monk said to me one time that if it wasn't for music, life wouldn't be worth while living. I mean, I'm sort of paraphrasing what he said. But, you know, if I don't play for a little while, I get physically sick. You know, if I don't play my horn for a while for a few days or whatever,

I actually begin to get sick. And I wonder, well, gee, what's the matter with me? Then I realized, well, I haven't played my horn for a few days. When you're performing and you're improvising, Are you thinking? Well, no, not really. No, no, I don't think. That's why I really practice and I keep these exercises and so on

because when I'm actually on the stage in performing the optimum condition is not to think. I just want the music to play itself. I don't want to have to think about it. If I have to think about what I'm doing, then the moment is already gone. you know. So there's certain times

and actually it's an out-of-body experience, so to speak. What do you do when you practice now? I mean, you're a brilliant player. You're a veteran player. I think a lot of people of your stature would probably just perform and not exactly practice anymore. Well, you know, when you play a reed instrument,

and it might be true with other instruments as well, But when you play a reed instrument, you have to deal with your ambiture, which is the position of your lips around your teeth and the instrument and the mouthpiece of the instrument. And this has to form a sort of a cushion. And if you don't play for a while, what will happen is that your lips would bleed when you play and even a split, your lip might split, it's happened to me when I,

when I've had to lay off for a period of time. For other things, I'm not certain. I practice a lot of things, but I read once where my friend Mike's Roach said that a lot of musicians shouldn't really practice. Practicing is cheating after you reach a certain point. So that may be right, But in the case of just keeping my armature from bleeding and my lip from splitting,

I like to play a certain amount every day, you know. One of the things that I love about your playing is your repertoire, the songs that you choose to play. And you have a really diverse repertoire, and you play a lot of old pop songs that many people don't know or have forgotten, as well as some songs that are like novelty songs like, you know, T-Tutzi. and I'm an old cow hand, and an old coward songs. Are these, a lot of these songs you grew up with? Yeah, a lot of songs that I heard when I was a youngster. When I was growing up, the big thing to do every week was go to the movies on Saturday.

And on Saturday, we used to see a lot of these movies that had this scores on it, you know, by some of the composers, and we'd see Louis Armstrong and pictures. different musical personalities that I enjoyed a lot. Of course, I also heard music around the house and so on, but the movies did provide a certain large part, I think, of some of the things that I play today, you know. When you started performing, was it hard to find other musicians who liked the same songs you did

and who wanted to play them? And even back in the days when you were playing with Miles Davis, or with Clifford Brown, do they share your musical taste? I would say, basically, yes, people like Coltrane and Clifford Brown, we all had an appreciation of what they would call today the standard songs. In my case, I might have found some more obscure songs. Did you ever, like, proposed playing something like Titit Tutsi and have other musicians look at you like you were crazy?

Well, they might have thought so, but they wouldn't dare say it. Why don't we pause here? It was my gig, you know. Right, right. Why don't we pause here and play your recording of There's No Business like Show Business. I love what you do with it. This is Sunny Rollins.

There's no business like show business. Sunny Rollins is my guest. You grew up in Harlem, in New York, and your parents, I believe both of your parents were from the Virgin Islands? That's right. What were your parents' ambitions for you? Did they push you to excel when you were young? Yeah, well, I was the youngest child. I have an older brother who was a very fine classical violin.

He ended up being a physician. Then I had an older sister who was also saying a lot in church. and everything. And so I was supposed to follow in their footsteps. Of course, I didn't because I was somewhat of a black sheep. They were much more studious than I, and I wanted to hang out and play ball. And as the years went on, I was really the guy that was out

going to jazz clubs and all that. These things were frowned on at that time. Sonny Rollins recorded in 1994. He died Monday at age 95. Coming up, after a break, we continue our interview with Rollins. And hear from film critic Justin Chang, who has just returned from Cannes. Here's Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk. I'm David B. Incouli, and this is Fresh Air.

The Jazz Life The Jazz Life when you started to play, actually had a lot of heroin involved with that. And you got involved with that for a while when you were young. Do you think you would have tried something like that

if it weren't for it being such a part of the jazz world in the 50s? I don't think I would have actually, there would really have been no reason. I don't think to get involved with that. I got involved. with it because a lot of my idols were doing it and so on.

So we thought that using drugs was sort of the thing to do. But this is something like asking whether Billy Holiday would be the singer she is if she didn't use drugs. I've had this discussion often with people. And my answer is that, yes, I think Billy Holliday would be the singer she is, regardless of what happened to her. I mean, even though she may sing about hard times and all that, she was a consummate musician and beautiful singer.

So, yes, I think that she would sing the way she did. Charlie Parker would play the way he did. Everybody would do what they did. It must have been your parents' worst nightmare. when you entered the jazz world and then started using. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, my mother was pretty, since I was a baby. My mother really, she stuck by me regardless of what I did.

She was really in my corner. But I had a lot of problems from the rest of my family, my father, my grandmother, they really were pretty down on me. and my siblings, they didn't really understand where I was coming from anyway. But I have to say that my mother really believed in me all the way, and I'm really happy that I was able to get myself together before she left the scene. So she kind of saw me start to make records and so on like that. I sort of made her feel that her trust wasn't exactly all in vain, you know.

Were you ever arrested? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I was arrested. Unfortunately, I had to get involved with the justice system and all of this stuff, you know. But I was always lucky because I was able to get involved with music programs. In the prison? Right. And in those days, there were other musicians there, you know, so...

Did it scare you when you were in prison? You said yourself, like, what am I doing here? Yeah, it scared me a lot. It scared me a lot. But, again, I was lucky because I could play an instrument. Right. And a lot of the other prisoners knew of me, so I immediately had respect from them. But, of course, you know, being locked up is no...

there's no joy right. How did you straighten out? Well, it took a little while, but, you know, I slid back a couple of times and everything. But I eventually had gotten down to the complete bottom, so I couldn't have gotten any worse, you know. I mean, I was really in a complete... What was the bottom? Well, the bottom was sleeping in...

parked cars and garages and all their stuff, you know. And what we used to call in those days, carrying the stick, carrying the stick meant that you were homeless, I guess today they would just say guys homeless. But I did this mainly when I was in Chicago. Chicago was where I was sort of was out there on my own. In New York, even though I was persona non-grata at home,

I could always perhaps get by or sneak in the house or something. But when I was really away from home, I really had to pay a lot of dues, as we used to say. How would you protect your horn during the periods when you were homeless? Well, I didn't protect my horn. I mean, I didn't have a horn, really. Were you barring other people's horns? I was borrowing other people's horns.

Yeah, yeah. What did you learn about yourself during that period? Well, what I learned about myself? Well, I learned that I had the strength to get over something, which was really deep. And I think one of the things that I always feel good about myself was that I was able to overcome that because I really had to struggle.

You know, when I came away from the hospital one time and I went back to the nightclub, it was really the classic scene of the old drug pushers standing there saying, come on, man, come on, you know, and this is good. I really went through the classic scene of fighting myself, you know, saying, well, gee, if I go with them, it wouldn't be so bad. It's just one time and maybe I should do it and why not and this. And then that's the other part of me saying, no, don't do it. You know, I mean, the real classic battle between good and evil, right and wrong, whatever you want to call it.

But anyway, I won out, and that's one thing that I really feel good about myself. I really went into the lion's den and came out alive. Once you found that strength and knew that you had it, how else were you able to use it in your life? Well, then I felt I could do anything, you know, and I could get back to what I really wanted to do, which was my music. So how did you use that strength on your music?

Well, I don't know. Actually, I think I always had strength in my music, even when I was a kid and I used to practice for hours and hours and hours at a time. I mean, I always had something within myself, which enabled me to be. be alone and play and get into what I'm doing and not think about anything else and really get into stuff myself. So actually, by getting rid of these negative elements, I was just able really to return

to what I had in the beginning, you know. Over the years, you've taken several hiatuses, there have been several periods where you haven't performed, and I think one period like that lasted, was it five years? Was that the longest? I think about I think the well it's hard to say

I took a hiatus on the bridge which was pretty well documented Right this was during the period when you were practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York Because it was too loud for you to practice in your apartment Right So when you take a hiatus When do you know it's time to get back to performing

Well When I took my hiatus On the bridge It became apparent because I had sort of gotten what I wanted to do. I was trying to really accomplish something musically, and I'd sort of gotten close enough to what I was doing that I felt if I stayed there

might have turned into a self-indulgence, and that's not what it was about. I'd love to know what it feels like to play your horn on the Williamsburg Bridge, And this was the period when you weren't performing, but you were practicing a lot on the bridge. I guess in the middle of the night. Well, yeah, we played in the night. And at daytime, anytime, it was actually a beautiful place to play because it was a nice space up there.

You were really on top of the subway, the trains that came across the bridge were underneath you. You were on the pedestrian walk? Yeah, the pedestrian walk. So it's really a nice space up there. You're sort of right in the middle of everything. You can see Manhattan and on the other side, Brooklyn, and the boats would be coming by at night, and you could blow as loud as you want,

and nobody would even look at you. You know, every now and then people would walk by where nobody would even look. You know, I mean, this was the sophistication of New Yorkers. Yeah, New Yorkers are immune to everything. It's just been a pleasure to talk with you. We've been wanting to talk with you on the show for so long. Thank you so much for doing it.

It's been wonderful. Thank you. Sonny Rollins talking with Terry Gross in 1994. Rollins, it's worth noting, was the inspiration for a character in the long-running popular Fox cartoon series The Simpsons. The character is a musician known as Bleeding Gumbs Murphy, who, like Rollins, takes a sabbatical to practice nightly on a bridge. In 2013, Rollins himself made a guest appearance on the show in an episode titled Whiskey Business. He plays himself not Bleeding Gums Murphy. Young Lisa Simpson, who is a big jazz fan, is writing a letter of complaint because a music company has started taking advantage of artists and their catalogs by presenting them as performing holograms.

Sunny Rawlins visits Lisa in response, but eventually she realizes he's a hologramed, too. Dear, she done left me records. Once again, I write protesting your holographic exploitation of blues icon bleeding gums Murphy. I call for a boycott and girl cut of your entire catalog until you... Sunny Rollins? That's right, Lisa, and I'm here to beg you to stop writing those letters. You're siding with record companies? This isn't about money, Lisa.

From two-packed Shakur to Dwight Eisenhower. holograms have introduced some of our leading dead people to a new audience of people with money. Resetting, resetting. From Tupac Shakur to Dwight Eisenhower. You're a hologram, aren't you? No. Resetting, resetting. Coming up, more with Sunny Rollins. This is Fresh Air. Terry spoke to Sunny Rollins again in 2005. At the time, a concert album had been released, recorded in Boston,

four days after the 9-11 attacks. Rollins lived six blocks away from the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan and saw the second tower fall. Rollins had to evacuate his apartment in Lower Manhattan on the 39th floor. He grabbed his horn, but some things he had to leave behind. Most of the things in there, I had to eventually throw away, get taken away. I had left my piano there, which was very sentimental to me. A lot of the guys played on that monk used to play on it.

All the people that came by to my house. And I lost a lot of clothes that I had there. I lost a lot of books. What did you leave your piano behind? Well, because I was so afraid of the fact that toxic material might have. might have gotten into the mechanism of the piano. I was afraid that I would be handling something of that sort. Do you know what happened to your piano?

No, I don't. I don't. I tried to give it to the Salvation Army. So I ended up leaving it in the apartment. and explaining to the people in the apartment, I was hoping that they would be able to handle it and take care of it in the proper way. You know, I just, I hope so, you know.

Well, after you were evacuated from your building on September 12th, you drove to Boston where you were scheduled to play on September 15th. So many events were canceled in the days after September 11th. did you speak to the producers at that event and have a long talk about whether you should go on with the show or not? Well, I spoke to my wife, Lucille, and I was all for not doing the show because I was really very unsteady on my feet. Did that have to do in part with having walked down 39 flights of stairs? Right, right. It did. And also, you know, I was just really shook up.

So I wanted to cancel it, but you know my wife, Lucille, and Lucille was a person that never wanted to violate a contract in any way. And she also may have had a feeling that it would be important to do a concert at that particular time. you know so anyway she convinced me to to play the concert I thought I'd play another track from your new CD without a song the 9-11 concert and this is a nightingale sang in Berkeley Square it's a beautiful version of it and how did you first hear this song well you know a nightingale sang

in Barkley Square, I guess I heard it during the 40s when I used to see all the movies that came in town every week. And it's funny that Nightingale sang in Barkley Square may have had some connection to World War II. And the scene when I was evacuated

and I walked down those snaps that day. When I came downstairs, it was very reminiscent of those World War II pictures when there was the Blitz of London with all of the emergency vehicles and the smoke and the fumes. I mean, it was really a, it was really something that, but I guess it's something, I'm trying to say that it's stored someplace in my mind, so I guess since I'm still alive, I might have a way to turn it into some kind of a positive experience. That's tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins from a live album recorded in Boston four days after 9-11. Rollins spoke with Terry Gross in 2005.

He died Monday at the age of 95. Coming up, Justin Chang tells us about the films he saw at Cannes. This is fresh air. The Cannes Film Festival has been a launchpad for some of the most acclaimed films in recent years, including Drive My Car, The Zone of Interest, Anora, and last year's Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent. Our film critic, Justin Chang, returned from the festival earlier this week. He says that although it wasn't a banner year for it.

can, there still were many good movies and even a few great movies to look forward to. The first Cannes Film Festival I ever attended, in May 2006, was a deliriously star-studded affair. Penelope Cruz, Ethan Hawke, and Kirsten Dunst walked up the red-carpeted steps. Future Oscar hopefuls like Volver, Babel, and Marie Antoinette competed for the Palm Door, the festival's top prize. There were world premieres of blockbusters like The Da Vinci Code and X-Men The Last Stand, terrible movies, but great photo ops. And near the end of the festival, I walked into a film I knew nothing about called Pan's Labyrinth,

and emerged knowing I'd seen a classic. This year's can kicked off with a 20th anniversary screening of Pan's Labyrinth, but otherwise there wasn't much of that 2006-era-Razzle. The major Hollywood studios tightened their belts and stayed home, perhaps with still fresh memories of the stinging can reception for the last Indiana Jones movie back in 2023. But there were stars here and there. Demi Moore and Stellan Scarsguard were on this year's jury.

Adam Driver and Miles Teller showed up for the world premiere of James Gray's terrific 1986 set crime drama, Paper Tiger, in which they play brothers who unwisely go into bed, business with the Russian mob. Driver and Teller are outstanding, and Scarlet Johansson is heartbreakingly good, as a family member forced to deal with the fallout. Paper Tiger deserved a prize, but it left the festival empty-handed. Instead, the jury awarded the Palm Door to the gripping and sometimes infuriating

small-town drama, Fjord. It's the second Palm win for the Romanian filmmaker Christian Munju. He won his first in 2000. for the movie four months, three weeks, and two days. In Fjord, Sebastian Stan and Renata Reincewe are almost unrecognizable as an evangelical Christian couple, who have recently moved from Romania to a small Norwegian town with their five children. In this scene, they sing a hymn with their church friends. my heart all the way.

It was there by faith, I received my sight, and now I am happy all the day. When the couple are accused of child abuse, Fjord becomes a fierce battle between the forces of religious conservatism and secular liberalism. It may be set in Norway, but it's likely to resonate with American autism. when it opens later this year. I hope there will also be robust turnout for Minotar,

a perfectly chilled tale of adultery and murder that won the Grand Prix, or second place. It's a remake of the 1969 Claude Schaubral drama La Femm and Fidel, this time set in Russia not long after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The director of Minotar, Andres Vyaganzev, nearly died of COVID during the pandemic, and it was moving to see him back in Cannes, with a film this powerful and uncompromising

in its critique of the Putin regime. One of the busiest out-of-competition titles was Club Kid, a hugely enjoyable comedy directed by the actor, writer, comedian, and social media star Jordan Firstman. He plays a gay New York City club promoter who's sent reeling when he learns that he has a 10-year-old son.

The result is basically a ketamine-loyal. laced version of every adult bonds with cute kid movie you've ever seen. But Firstman is a real talent. He's also one of several queer filmmakers who made a bold impression at the festival this year. Jane Schoenbrun, the director of the inventive transgender allegory I Saw the TV Glow, came to Cannes with their third feature, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Starring a very game Hannah Einbinder and Julian Anderson, the movie is a clever among to and deconstruction of 80s and 90s slasher thrillers,

digging deep into the often unspoken connections between our love of pop culture and our hang-ups about sex and desire. Along with Paper Tiger, Club Kid and Camp Miasma were welcome reminders that American cinema isn't close to dead, at Cannes or anywhere else. Even so, I can't say that I minded the general absence of Hollywood at the festival this year. One of the reasons I keep returning to Cannes is that it shows interesting movies from all over the world. Movies like The Gorgeous and Moving Rwanda set drama, Dan Yamanah, about efforts to bring about truth and reconciliation years after the 1994 genocide.

The film earned its director, Marie Clementine de Sabe Jambo, the Camera Door Prize for Best Debut Feature. My favorite film at Cannes this year was All of a Sudden, from the Japanese director Rusuge Hamaguchi. Set in and around a Parisian elder care home, it uses the close bond between two women, one French and one Japanese, to raise haunting questions about how we live,

how we die, and most of all, how we talk to each other. Like Hamaguchi's Oscar-winning, Drive My Car, all of a sudden is a reminder that something as simple as a conversation between friends can make for sublimely moving cinema. I can't wait to see it again, and I can't wait for you to see it too.

Justin Chang is a film critic for the New Yorker. On Monday's show, historian Elizabeth Storedore Pryor spent years lecturing on the most charged word in American English and never told a soul that her father was the man who infamously used it, the legendary comic Richard Pryor. We talk about the N-word, growing up as Pryor's daughter, and why, late in his career, He swore to never say the word again. Hope you can join us. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. in Cooley.