Pushkin. Twenty twenty four was a rough year for jazz. A lot of legends were lost, from Quincy Jones to Roy Haynes, Low Donaldson and Benny Golson. In fact, after the passing of Benny Golson, only one person remains from the iconic nineteen fifty eight photograph A Great Day in Harlem, where dozens of jazz luminaries gathered together on a stoop and Harlem to have a photograph taken to memorialize that era. That person is with us today, the great Sonny Rollins.
Since I last spoke to Sonny Rollins on the program a few years ago, a couple of interesting artifacts have surfaced. One is the notebook that he kept while he was in self imposed exile for music between nineteen fifty eight and nineteen sixty one. Those were photocopied and made into a wonderful book called The Notebooks of Sonny Rollins, where you can get insight into what he was thinking about at the time, both socially, politically and in terms of
his music. The other are some great live recordings of Sonny in Europe. There was also a great biography published about Sunny Rollins. Since we last spoke by Aidan Levy called Saxophone Colossus The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins. So though last year was a tough year for jazz, I'm honored at the top of twenty twenty five to bring you a conversation with a saxophone colossus himself, Sonny Rollins. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
I'm justin Mitchman. We spoke a couple of years ago and had a really nice conversation. But I guess since that time, lots come out about you. There's been a whole set of records that were previously just bootlegs, that were sets of recordings from Europe in nineteen fifty nine came out and those were really beautiful to listen to. You had a biography come out, pretty substantial biography, and a book of your notebooks curated and distilled down into a book form.
Yeah yeah, So.
I thought, man, maybe maybe it'd be cool to have another conversation and talk about some of the stuff.
Okay, well, I'm down for it. Whatever you think might be important for you or anybody else to know. Give for this shot.
First of all, you did it some pretty substantial interviews. It appears to me from reading the book. For the book, was that an enjoyable process to revisit the entirety of your life the way you did well?
You know, as a guy that's been around so long, if I have now you know which, who knows? I never thought i'd be when there's a large steep of spanding. But I've done a lot of interviews. I had a lot of different times, man, But I'm not a guy that likes to look back at my interviews.
Do you listen to old recordings of yourself anymore? No?
I don't listen to my records. I never have, and which is not always good. I don't think that's good. When I used to work with Mile, she used to every night that we do a concert, he'd have it recorded and come home and listen to it and therefore knowing what he needed to do or needed to delete or anything like that. I wish I had that type of personality, but generally I'm always feeling that I'm not.
You know, Oh God, I hate to hear that, listen to that that it played, I should have played that better, blah blah blah. That's the type of personality that I was damned with. U disfortunately do.
When Miles would listen back to those recordings, would you have you and the rest of the band listen as well?
No, he would use that, I'm sure when he was rehearsing the band, but it wasn't listening everybody listening. I means he didn't need that. He listened to what he thought should be happening. And that was said.
But having had the chance to look through some of the pages of your notebooks that were you were keeping from around nineteen fifty nine through the late sixties, it does appear you were very meaningfully recording thoughts about your plane and where you felt improvements could be made. So there is a part of you that was already doing that, it seems to me, but maybe just in a different and a different way.
Well, I was being interviewed a lot, and I had to make comments, but something if the record came out and I had to talk about it. Yeah, I heard it, whether it was on the radio or whatever, but I didn't take it home myself and listen to it. That's what I mean. But no, I'm when I said is exactly correct. I'm not a guy that really listened. Two things that I did more than once or twice to realize, oh man, I really didn't like that.
Yeah, I want to ask about Freedom Sweet if you don't mind, if you can recall what might have been on your mind around nineteen fifty eight, shortly before you take a bit of a sabbatical and you write and record Freedom Suite. It's a stunning almost twenty minute piece. That is the title song of the album as well, and it seems like it stands out in your early sort of catalog, just that there's nothing quite like that
in your early catalog to that date. And so I was just curious if you can recall what was your feeling around that time when that was composed.
Well, I have always been especially from that period, but also from before. I was sort of very Pabeitico guy, you know. And it's interesting out that there a lot of of no young black musicians which have been out that out that have been out you know, much more recently than either. But when I was growing up, I was born in Harlem. I used to go out when I was I think about three years old with my grandmother.
My grandmother was an activist. She's very much interested in traightening out the UH in a racial situation in Harlem and in any place out the same exist today. I didn't have to explain that to you, how to say the situations. She was an activist. I think she was a member of Marcus Garvey's group at one time.
Wow.
But anyway, she used to carry me with her watching up and down at Lenox Favenue, for instance, and we were complaining about one of the big department stots there I think was called Ballooneberg's, which you know didn't allow the black people to innser that the counters and other kind of stuff. So I remember free Tom Mooney and the Scotts Boy, the Scott'swell boys to has and you know we're accused of rape and all that found out something like the Central Park Cathy sometimes Okay, So I
was introduced to that period of activity. He had an early, very very early age, and as I said, I was the only one. My grandmother and myself. My mother was in there, she said, in power of it. My brother turned out to be a medical doctor, so he was busy, although he did he was interested in music, but not jazz music, so he ended up becoming an m day. So he quit the music thing all together and my sister just turned out to be a mother with two kids.
So what I'm saying is that my grandmother would carry me, and that was I liked that. I made. Of course I such a little baby, but I like that. And then so I got to read people like W. E. B. Do Boys and other people. You guys were into the Black collaboration movement, and as I grew up and they began I remember W. E. B. Duboys. Do you know who he was?
Yeah, great scholar, activist, scholar of the construction.
So w the boys just say that if you ever and he wasn't talking to me, he was talking to anybody black. He said, if you ever got any place in your field, whatever it was, that you should always mention the fact that you were aware of the situation in the United Okay. So when I got to the point that I began make you records, I always used boat from in there and I emigrated. I can't. Oh, you know, I used to be a very good speaker
like this. But what happened with some time ago, about a year ago, I had a very serious accident, and that it has affected my rememberance, my thought rememberance. But actually, do forgive me sometimes but whatever segment drug, I used a lot of uh nebro ballad and I put them my jazz records. You know, the libro natural I A'm from. I put that on my albums a long time ago. Yeah, but uh I think Kenny Dorham was im with me and that. But so I've I've always done that in
my career. Yeah. So the Freedom Street, getting back to your question, was all coming from that place. You know, that's sort of what the Streedom Street was about, and things of your nature. I've just always had that political direction and myself, I read a book reci and it was mentioning all of these guys that they were you know, they were speaking optual, gold independent, lot of these younger magician and I was a little bit said, wait, man, where's me? I was doing this a long time ago.
Yeah.
Yeah, anyway, that's that's all on record. So that was the Freedom Street.
You were mentioning a lot of the black ballads that you would early on, including your sets. It's interesting to me that kind of equal to those was your love of show tunes or tunes that might have appeared I've heard you talk about. You know, for instance, you've seen the movie Swing Time when you were about six years old, with Fredistaire and Ginger Rogers and a Fine Romance being a song that I was stuck with you. Oh yeah, how important were those sorts of songs to you as well?
Well? I don't know. I guess if you looked back, you might say, real, see, how did you like that? And still wanter change you with it? Sire. Tune was sewed up, but didn't in those days. Our television was the movie every week, so I had a chance to ye a lot of Hollywood movie There was nothing in jail with me. For instance. My favorite composer, and I had many of them, but my favorite guy was Jerome
curR oh Man. Jerome Kerr is still my favorite of those Hollywood composers, although I have many of them that I admire, deegally, but Jerome Kern was a man by the way. He did do the picture with Fred Mister and Ginger Rogers.
Swing Time that was that was his tune of Fine Romance and all those other songs.
Yeah yeah, all that stuff, all that and so many of his helf so but there was never any things that made those unaccessible in my I loved string Time and such film as much as I hated the fact that I couldn't go into Bloomberg SIT's with the big department store on one hundred and twenty first Street, and they were buying a soda or something at the bar. You know, my musical and my sensitivity being moved by
these single's all the frame. Yeah, but I think different, not to them, to somebody that might write there, I make fall. They don't. They don't like jad. I've heard that. I've heard the guy that prayed with Johnny Green, who wrote A Body and Soul, I heard him tell me that, oh, well, Johnny Green didn't like I jazzed Beopole, we'll playing its music, you know, which to me, I wonder if that was really true, because when Johnny Green was in college, he
had a group called the Hot Jazz. I mean, so you know a lot of these guys who gave that impression of, oh, our music is better than your music, you know, that kind of stuff, which might dad have really been true.
And then again, if Johnny Green didn't like you guys playing his tunes, oh well, you know, maybe in a sense all the better that you guys were doing it.
Then well I think it did. But whether he liked it or not, nobody could play body and so like Coleman Alkins, yeah that that was his uh masterpiece. Yeah, but it really uh was perfect for jazz, like so many of those films are anyway. I like everything that makes uh beautiful musical sounds and uh beautiful musical people and so it's all the same to me. I never had a problem whenever personally to uh some of those early movies. Bright the way when Lewis Armstrong did a
single in the movie. Now, evidently there's a lot of people that they don't want that America. They want America which is propagated, and that's that's okay. I mean, it's not okay with me, but I uh, I had to accept what they think because that's the way it has turned out. But growing up, I appreciate you that Paul Robeston and all that my really idols and I wanted to be a red like human being without having to be a black human being. It's so in itself for
so it all made sense to me. It still does. I'm muddy enough to realize that there's history to always people fighting each other. The stoop is fighting that they're fighting, that they're fighting that and we haven't gotten to that point yet, or I don't think we may ever get to that point in this world, or I've made my life for what it did. So I like Horded movies, co music, and I love jazz, and uh really nothing strange to my bad combination.
To me, did movies continue throughout your career to be a source of inspiration to you?
Yes, up until the point that I stopped going to movies. But yeah, I would say, I mean the American dream was always in lil and racist and all of this stuff somehow had never stopped me from liking, uh, finding more fashion.
We'll be right back with more of a conversation with Sonny Rollins after the break. You just said that the American dream is always in you. What does that mean to you?
Well, it means that there's a couder and there's a natural good, like Duke Kellington settling. They asked Duke Kellington, Well, gee, do what he thinks about this kind of music in that and Douke was known to say there's only two kinds of music, good music and bad music, and that told it all.
Yeah, nothing else on that note. Would you mind if I read to you an excerpt of something you wrote in your journals from around nineteen fifty nine.
Okay, surprised me because I haven't read my journals or my bigger book, so but go ahead.
Yeah, okay, great, Well, I'm sorry for this. Sets you all let me know, but I think it's really beautiful. You say, even if there are more brilliant quote unquote jazz in the modern interpretations of the word, more brilliant jazz artists and innovators among the quote unquote Negro race, this in no way contradicts the quasi racial nature of jazz. And mustn't we start speaking of music all caps and
not jazz? Cannot this be the same principle by which people are deluded into divisions, divisions which are treacherously misleading by their external manifestations. Who can deny that the greatest of any music is of a oneness which transcends period, style, country, et cetera. It is the same line of reasoning which separates people on the basis of their physical impressions. To be absorbed here is that any definition which seeks to separate Bach from Miles Davis is defeating its own purpose
of clarification. Thus we shall now hereafter and henceforth integrate, if you will, the word jazz into the word music. The musings of Miles is then the bouncing of Bach, both played against each other.
Oh well, okay, but you know, BET's exactly how I feel.
Yeah, it seems to be a core part of you that believe because because just as you said now, you wrote back in nineteen fifty nine, and the same in the same way, that it's all one, not to be discerned by period or style or country or race.
Oh no, I think so. But Bet may be a little bit too, I don't know, heavenly or trum like that. I mean, maybe the world is just not meant to be like that. Maybe the world is meant to be fighting and fighting all the time. But that's okay, that's that I didn't make the world. I'm not God. So if the world is the world is like this, be it must be some reason that I I'm not attuned to. I don't know everything, but the world has produced and
and jazz and the whole thing. If she wanted to go further than talk about America, okay, I think that's for America too. But evidently America is not all everybody that should think like that, Richard. It's sad, but it's it's bad like that's I have to disaccept it. And I've seen people get along that's wintering. I've got a lot of white friends. So that's what I think. For me, with the great environment, my life was went playing music
and trying to get better. It wasn't I could have been better, but I always loved it and I still love it. Yeah, still love Coleman Hawkins and body and Soul, and I still love Jerome Kern. I still love Nat King Cold and the Trail Can Cold till.
Yeah.
Yeah. It was real base and right. So I mean it's all good manterccy. At this point in my life when and the last one standing, I want that to be my epitheph. I love it all. I love it all.
You just referenced me the last man's standing as we're speaking. You know, Benny Golson just passed away, right, and that really does make you the last of that fine day and Harlem photo. Yeah, which is astonishing.
It's trying to change. It's a good word. It is astonishing.
What came up in you when you when you heard Benny Golson had left the planet.
Well, when it came down to Benny and myself at that point, you know, I had thought it for me, what isnt what? It didn't mean, It couldn't mean all that, and one of us had to go. It's okay. I mean, you know, my time is probably quite soon now, I guess. But you know, I feel okay about it. I haven't done everything I wanted to do, but I guess the fact that you're interviewing me here, and so I guess
I've done some things. I've got some things right. That everything right, I've got some things right that I can be grateful for. I do have a very strong situal connection in my life now, and as you know, I've been into Eastern religion for a long time now, so you know that makes things really okay. You know, so whatever comes paid, it's okay.
Do you have a daily spiritual practice these days?
Well, yes, I do, but it's it's not like a prayer or something like that. I do say prayers, but not a specific prayer. You know. I went to India back in the sixties and I got some information there from some people that had something to say that interested me. I wanted to know about should I be practicing and playing and uh, you know with it. In other words, wasn't oh okay what my life was at that time? And they got assurance that it was okay. I needed
that assurance. I received it from some beautiful people on not over there. So yes, that spirituality he had as off. Now I'm so happy that I did begin studying Eastern religion. I did that when I followed this guy powered my Hunter Yoga Nanda Autobiography of a Yogi, which is a very popular book. And I read that book and that boy I got to find out about this. And I had went to California wanting to meet the power Hunter over night. He had just passed over it. But so
I didn't meet him. But I realized, well, look I'm going to India because it's something here. And I got a bag and my own and I went to India. Wow paid off. So glad I did it and learned something.
And you passed it to us. You know in your music, your music always feels very spiritually elevated, you know, just in terms of the biographical details of your life. That's something that people are very interested in, and so it's something that's a gift that you've given all of us. So thank you so much.
Well, there's so much for saying that I ain't loved. Man, I'm not my biggest fan, so I'm not a guy that think that, Oh I'm strunning. Wrong, we get out of here. I'm not my biggest friend at all. That's how we started the conversation about listening to my own music and all that. Yeah, but I didn't get it at all. But I made an impression, and I think I've learned something. I'm glad that some people have appreciated
some of my work. Yeah, but I'm very happy by be but not that I appreciated it, but that I enabled them to get it, which validated me. Because you know, I'm not my biggest fan. Yeah, if you come to my house, you won't find a portrait of me all over the walls.
Okay, yeah, I get that sense. You do not appear to be that person.
Oh god, okay, I'm try from that kid.
Last time I spoke, I neglected to ask you about Rufus Harley bagpipe player. Right, what are you remembering of him? And he's playing.
I always loved Ruverson playing. When I heard him playing, I know he played saxophone before Yeah, he got into the backpacks. But anyway, he was a great magician. I think I had a great concert in New York, got at Town Hall with Dissy Gelesbie, Charlie Mingers, Rulfa Sorry, and myself. I forgot so that. That was my wife, my their departed wife, Lucil, who convinced all of those sep up to make that concert because one of the people had dropped out and that was a important concert
just for my reputation, all that kind of stuff. And she got Mingus. She was a good friends with Mngus's wife for Shu, and so she got Mingus, which is not easy to get Mngus to do something he doesn't want to do. And then she got Dizzy come and make that show that night.
And of course you and Dizzy were great friends. Did you and Mingus get along?
Oh yeah, I mean as much as as one would get along with Mingus. We had a little trouble in the beginning because Mingus didn't know me and I was playing in one of the clubs and he was playing at And you know, there's something that Max Roach and Mingus is to I guess other guys that I didn't know because I was a young guy coming on to the seat. If there were two people on the bill and Mingus would get on the stage, they'd play the whole night, the whole night. Max would do that too.
I've seen Max do that due to guys. So it's kind of but you know, you have to accept it. I did, but i'd got back at Mingus one time at the Village Vanguard, who and Mingus didn't play? And Max god and call me up and I said sure, and I came up and that sort of whut a little ref between Mingus and I. Let's see who was this guy? Uh through a baraka? Oh yeah, do you know him?
Yeah? Yeah, I'm married yea the critic writer, critic.
Right, he was in the club, and they all thought that I would sort of use surping, you know, Mingus, him and everything to play that gig, which would have been his gig. But it gave me a change to get back at Mingus. And after that, Mingus and I became close friends.
Were you around his drummer, Danny Richmond Munch? I always found it interesting that he really never played with many other drum I mean, I think I can think of Max roachs a bit, but I always thought that was such a funny parent great pairing though musically, But no.
I never got a change to pray with Danny Richmond. Danny Richmond was always with Mingers, fevered, and I never got a chance to hardly No, Dad Richard, but no, unfortunately we never played together. Okay, I'm sure it would have been very rockad, but I never did get a chance of private.
Yeah that it would have been interesting to hear you past together, for sure. Yeah, unique player, he was, as are you.
Yeah, oh yeah, No, No, I enjoyed his work, but I only heard him with Mingers. You know.
Yeah, you wound up doing a couple of Stevie tunes, but you definitely did. Isn't she lovely at a certain point? Right, What did you make of the music of Stevie Wonder?
Well, I think Stevie Wonder is great. I mean, Stevie Wonder had that come and touch, if I can put it that way. So he certainly was the person that appealed to the I want to use another term now, which you understand that he appealed to the hip hop generation. But he was also a really great, profound musician who was there for everybody. He was just extremely talented that he had those kind of chops. Yeah, I don't know anything I was going one day. Gear. I wouldn't have he ever played with Miles.
That's a good question. I'm not sure.
Yeah, I don't think so. And what they would think of each other, that would be what I would would wonder. Would they appreciate each other?
You know, there was now that you mentioned it isn't going to say about Stevie wasn't so nice, but yeah, he said, Stevie wondered, Now, now there's a sad motherfucker. He thinks I stole Michael Henderson from him, which I guess was just a player, you know, was a player, No, my.
Complete character from age to say.
Yeah, yeah, When I was reading through your Saxophone Colossus biography and it got to the section where you played a few songs on the Rolling Stones album, and that chapter sort of talked a bit about how that happened and sort of your thoughts about it and the thoughts of others about it. And the response is interesting because I think some people really enjoy that work. Other people may be viewed it as an inauthentic move. I was just wondering the idea of authenticity in jazz music through
the sixties and seventies and eighties. Was that something that you spent a lot of time thinking about.
Well, I did, and actually my wife convinced me to make that album. They finally had a way that that jazz musicians from the States could play in England. They had a band for some unions all right. Anyway, finally they began playing and using British traditions, playing with people getting up, following over there and everything like that. Somehow I found out that men Jagon wanted me to play
in one of their records. So my reaction was that I thought that that would be a come down for me to do that, and I really had to argue with my wife about that, so she convinced me to do it. But to me, it was a come down to do that.
Is that because it felt inauthentic to you or for some other reason.
Well, it didn't. Jeet was of a higher level than the blues that they were playing. Yeah, that's all. I mean, there wasn't anything except that.
Now, I mean, come on, you, what do you want you want to hit Charlie Parker or would you want to hear uh into those guys understand.
Yes, so that's the way I was putting out completely.
Yeah, but then the the Beatles and Stevie Wonder as popular musicians felt much more on a similar plane, at least to you.
Yes, and in the terms of uh, the Beatles that have a more rounded repertoire and sewing than the Romans showings. Yeah, okay, the Roman Stones did ask me to do the tour of that record that they had put out that I would throwing tattoo.
Yeah, that's it. After this last break, we'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Sonny Robins. Would you say, in a sense the different classes of saxophone players from alto soprano, alto tenor baritone, I mean, were those almost like weight classes in boxing in a sense.
Well, tenor saxophone took the prime feet because at one time we had some beautiful Of course, we had the great Charlie Parker, the Beaba Up Originator, and that really shook everything up for a while. But then came the tender Place, whole Train, Pitture, Gordon and what l Gray, all these people, this guy's Funny Rowins, all these guys so the Tender became the folkrom.
I would say, it's almost as if because Charlie Parker on Alto was just so groundbreaking and just so revered that it almost in hindsight appears that everyone just kind of took a different path after this, like maybe we need to steer clear of the Alto And could that have been what sort of made so many great players coalesce around tenor.
We also had the great Coleman Hawkins, a great Lester Young, the great Ben Webster. Yeah, they're great, Showberry. These are some great, great players. Now this led Charlie Parker have it because Charlie Parker did what he did, which was beyond instrumentation, So he was always Charlie Parker or Altough, but Tender began to take pretty dominant position. We all know we couldn't beat Charlie Parker, but we could be less to Young h the great, great great rest to Young. Yeah,
so they each had their own place out though. Of course we had Johnny Hodges, the great great auto player from Duke Elgin's cooop, and we had Benny Carter, another great great Alto player. If you played altough great like these guys said, well, you would set nobody is going to mess with Benny Carter. They could admit and my him admit that he was first christ right. And when it came to ten and wall I February had a
lot of feeble. My favorite the great Coleman Hawkins, but also my other favorite was the great Less to Him, both extremely different than this style for fill so so great.
I just had a point of clarification. I read one place, but I haven't been able to find it anywhere else that you did play in Lionelhampton's band in the early fifties. Did you ever play in Hampton's band when Quincy Jones was in the band? No, no, okay.
I didn't have a lot of big band experience because just as I getting to be extremely famous, I started playing with Small Ghost and so the big brands. In a way, I am missed opportunity, but time just brought me to be the one I never pardon with these guys.
Yeah, what did you make of Quincy Jones? Because he's someone who started in jazz and it never seemed to leave him. It seemed like he always had a deep love of jazz throughout his life, but would often go out into other areas of music.
Well, Quincy had a very wide relationship for jazz. I remember when I first met Clint. We was playing in Philadelphia and we were trying to get the last tray coming to New York and get that last strain after the last show his Philadelphia. Wow. Well boy, then you rushed down to the station and to get that chrain. Sometimes you caught it, sometimes you didn't. I remember with Quincher he didn't catch it one night, a real uh pain in the neck productive at the strain belly, Oh
at night. Good boy. He had a lot of composition and winch He definitely made an impression.
It seemed at first he really did want to be an ace trumpet player, but at some point realized, well I have all these other things that I like and can do composing and arranging. And he did manage to find his place, you know, even if it wasn't the initial thing he set out for.
Yeah, I think that he wouldn't be filled that player. I'm not certain, but she was. When I first got involved with the Quince, he was playing trumpet in Diysy Chalstree's orchestra. No I've never heard of him played trump and half the best. I guess he began composer and pay that took over.
Yeah.
Yeah, he's a terrific a musician to listen musician.
Did you guys keep in touch over the years.
Yeah, meet Quincey a lot of times at the White House and places like that when he both be selected at being extraordinary musician.
So yeah, you guys received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama.
Yeah, and Quincey was probably the day. Yeah, I uh remember one time I stay at the Fourth Seasons in New York and he came Quincy. This was the time of nine and eleven. Quincy came in with some other people and the head on this in head the workers June. So I gets through the writing something that had to do with ninety eleven or something. But he wrote some kind of music, probably commemorate. Yes, had a terrible incident that happened to it.
Now, what about lou Donaldson?
Did you cross past Lord Donaldson? Lord Donaldson was one of my best saxophone this He was just a wonderful a person, you know, as well as great The months of days i't talking about had great, great talent, but they were all twelve wonderful people that thought so great about Chads. All of these guys were wonderful people. Loud Donaldson, I wrote something I loved thing after he passed because I felt so close to low But I never got
a change to see him in later years. But I felt so close to because they were good friends in the early years when he first came on the scene. And uh, we knew each other the way back when we used to follow a New York child had the polo ground to New York. Wow, privilege drive into known, Lord donalds mm hmm. While we're here, you better try to be ready to be judged by something some way, who knows where. But you let me judge. You met
me a good guy. I've seen guys that were not so good, and I've seen some good guys anyway, Lord Donald's ape us. Yeah.
After Quincy passed away, there was a quote circulating where he said that early on he learned that your music can ever be more or less than who you are as a human being. And your comment that so many of these jazz guys and guys were beautiful human beings, I mean, the reason that I feel it seems it must be the reason it's been able to last as long as it has is because of the spirit that's
imbued in it from it's practitioners. It's really you guys are really trying to relate to the human condition as closely as you possibly could, you know, And it feels that way still.
Yeah, I don't know how it happened, but I mean, I guess that's how it happened. We were so close to the human condition through music is pretty great thing. All of the guys I know who had a well known musician were very nice people, very nice people. But wasn't all of this stuff for gree Suddenly now you're competing with this guy or in all this that was not on. Once we played together, they realize, Man, this guy must have really studied. He had a great natural
ability that only God give us. And yet there were beautiful people. I wish there was something else besides that. There's hull of fame to under these people from what they are, from what they had to go through. They were accepted in America. It took a while before everybody realized, wow, we get that artistry. And now you know who was there. Lou Donaldson's on Oh man, well it's stunistain. You know, it's life. I don't control life. I just try to live it right.
Well, we don't control we just experienced it. But it does feel you know. Yeah, I mean since we spoke, we lost those people and and and and also including Roy Haynes.
You know Roy Haynes, the guy that I never thought would not be here. Yeah, well at least I thought tithing out of Hanley, for he would.
It's all they played with different order, first chairs honors and uh he handswered the wonderful person out and and uh through the great honor.
No. Roy had to play with them on many occasions, the uh great much of my music that I played, I remember I did some nation of things and Roy was there right on it and then help. I want to thank Roy. Yes in faith I've been doing before, I wouldn't do it now, man, thanks joys to being being a great guy. Life is really I had to go one dementia. We don't know much about it.
Do you feel as time goes on you get more comfortable with it not knowing?
Oh? Yes I do. I do. Because I tried to get more like a spiritual understanding of life. I have learned a lot and it's comforted me through my uh period of light. I'm just sorry I couldn't hang I was telling my friends. But by being a musician, I've reached a lot of people which I couldn't reach other other than the your music. Yeah, and they hearing my music. So I'm grateful, absolutely grateful, And whatever it is I'll
say soon I can send there for whole good. Whatever happened to me in my life, with what has happened to me and what's going to happen to me, it's all good. Boy, have I have I been but enormous by.
Well, thank you so much. I mean again, I would, you know, love to give you a ring another time and maybe were gonna have another conversation. He's a really enlightening so thank you so much.
Well, remember though I'm one of the last guys standing, well, I am the last guy say so. It's a cop, you know. Don't wait too long.
All right, Thank you so much, sir.
Okay man, God bless, I'll talk to you later.
Thanks so much for Sunny Rollins, for getting on the phone with me and reflecting back about some of his colleagues and about his life and art. I'm so grateful that we still have him here at the age of ninety four. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record Pod. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolladay. Broken Record is a production
of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and athlete listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast aff Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.