Remembering jazz giant Sonny Rollins

This is Fresh Air, I'm David B. and Cooley. Tenor saxophone as Sonny 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 Sonny Rollins. But first we have this appreciation from jazz historian Kevin Whitehead. He says no figure in jazz was more universally revered. [Music] Wagon Wheels, Old Cowboy Song written for Broadway, Zigfeld 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 is 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. [Music] Wagon Wheels also speaks to Sonny Rollins' love of unlikely material. On Way Out West he also does, I'm an Old Cowhand. Just as he'd recently cut there's no business like show business and how are things in Glockamora. And then there's this imposing sometimes garish sound. And when he saxophone tone in his 1950s pride is as durable and flexible a steel reinforced rubber. And he got plenty of mileage out of it. [Music] [Music] That's St. Thomas from 1956, the first of many Rollins colipsoes. His parents came from the West Indies. The guitar Rollins was born and raised in Harlem and was nicknamed Sonny 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 colipsos 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 cool the observer of his progress. [Music] [Music] You can divide Sonny Rollins' career into three acts. The first came Rollins the surcher, 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 ornate Coleman side men and a brassy big band, plus C-Rote music for the film Alfie. Sometimes his playing revealed a harder edge and harder rhythm that looked ahead to his next phase. This is the 1965 Calipso Holden Joe. [Music] Sonny 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. He was gearing up for the long haul, conserving his energy for the stage. But also, his glorious, pliable tone had become more metallic and yackety as his solos became more riffy and groove-oriented. It was still exciting, but different. [Music] [Music] Sonny Rollins' 1981 on the Dolly Parton favorite "Here You Come Again." This Latter-day music was designed to be more accessible. Backing musicians came and went, but it hardly mattered. His old bands were gloriously interactive. Now they 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 Lewis 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 out. 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. [Music] 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 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 guy who blazed so brightly early on, he paced himself well. [Music] Jazz historian Kevin Whitehead. Coming up, we listen to Terry's 1994 interview with Sonny 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, Thelonius Monk, Miles Davis, Max Roach, and Clifford Brown. Terry Gross spoke with Sonny Rollins in 1990. They began with his tenor saxophone solo from his 1972 recording of the Hogi Carmichael song "Skylark". The music was played by a man named "Skylark" by a man named "Skylark". Monks said to me one time that if it wasn't for music, life wouldn't be worth while living. I mean, I'm not, 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 realize, well, I haven't played my horn for a few days. When you're performing in your improvising, are you thinking? Ah, well, no, not really. No, no, I don't think. That's why I really practice when I keep these exercises and so on. Because when I actually on the stage and 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 when actually it's 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 statute probably just perform and not exactly practice anymore. Well, you know, when you play a read instrument, and it might be true with other instruments as well, but when you play a read instrument, you have to deal with your ombature, 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'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 when my friend Mike's Roach said that a lot of me's itch and shouldn't really practice. Practicing is cheating after a certain point. So that may be right, but in the case of just keeping my ombature from bleeding and my lip from splitting, I like to play a certain amount every day, you know? And 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 Tutsi and I'm an old cowhand and old coward songs. Are these, a lot of these songs you grew up with? Yeah, a lot of them, 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 seven of the composers. And we'd see Louis Armstrong and Pictures and different musical personalities that I enjoyed. 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 didn't want to play them? And even back in the days when you were playing with Miles Davis or Clifford Brown, did they share your musical taste? I would say basically, yes, people like Cold Train 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 propose playing something like Tetsi and have other musicians like you like you were crazy? Well, they might have thought so, but they wouldn't dare to 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. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] "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 violinist. 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 I see years went on. I was really the guy that was out going to jazz clubs and all that. And these things were frowned on at that time. "Sunny Rollins" recorded in 1994. He died Monday at age 95. Coming up after a break, we continue our interview with Rollins. And here from film critic Justin Chang, who is just returned from Cannes. Here's "Sunny Rollins" and "Talonius Monk." I'm David B. and Cooley. And this is Fresh Air. [Music] (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - The Jazz Life, when you started to play, actually had a lot of heroin involved with it. - Right. - 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 Holiday would be the singer she is regardless of what happened to her. I mean, even though she may sing about power 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 with 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. So, 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 make start to make records and so on like that. So 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, was arrested, unfortunately. I had to get involved with the, just the system and all of this stuff, you know. But I was always lucky because I was able to get involved with music programs and those. - 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 say she's like, what, 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 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 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 park cars and in garages and all that 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 person in non-grader at home, I could always perhaps get by, sneak into the house and 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 homes? - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Yeah. - 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'm always, that I always feel good about myself was that I was able to overcome that. Because I really had to struggle. 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." And this is good. And I really went through the classic scene of fighting myself, saying, "Well, gee, if I go with them, it wouldn't be so bad, it's just one time." Maybe I should do it and why not? And then the other part of me saying, "No, don't do it." 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 is my music. So how do you use that strength in your music? Well, I don't know. I think, 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 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 had sort of gotten close enough to what I was doing that I felt if I stayed there, it 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 were in 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. of the subway, the trains, which came across the bridge underneath you. - You were on the pedestrian walk? - Yeah, the pedestrian walk. So it's really a nice space up there, and you sort of right in the middle of everything, you can see the 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, but 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. - Sunny 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 Gum's 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 Gum's Murphy. Young Lisa Simpson, who was 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 Rollins visits Lisa in response, but eventually she realizes he's a hologram too. - Here, she done left me records. Once again, I write protesting your holographic exploitation of Blues icon Bleeding Gum's Murphy. I call for a boycott and girlcott of your entire catalog and tell you, "Won't get me, 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 packs of cord to Dwight Eisenhower. Holograms have introduced some of our leading dead people to a new audience of people with money. Resetting, resetting, from two packs of cord to Dwight Eisenhower. - You're a hologram, aren't you? - No, resetting, resetting. (buzzer) - Have you no shame? - 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, well, he eventually threw away, get taken away. You know, I had left my piano there, which was very sentimental to me. A lot of the guys played on that monkey, you should play on it. I was a little bit emotional, people came by to my house. And I lost a lot of clothes that I had there. I lost a lot of books. - Why did you leave your piano behind? - Well, because I was so afraid of the fact that toxic material 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 certain that they would be able to handle it and take care of it in the proper way. 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 and. - Did that have to do in part with having walked down 39 steps? - Yeah, I think so. - 39 flat 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 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 Barclay Square. It's a beautiful version of it. And how did you first hear this song? - Well, you know, a Nightingale sang in Barclay 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 Barclay Square may have had some connection to World War II. And the scene when I was evacuated and I walked down those steps that day, when I came downstairs, it was very reminiscent of those World War II pictures when there was a 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 some place 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. (upbeat music) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The first Cannes Film Festival I ever attended in May 2006 was a deliriously star-studded affair. Penelope Cruz, Ethan Hawke. rock, and Kirsten Dunst walked up the red carpeted steps. Future Oscar hopefuls like Volvere, Babel, and Maria Twonette 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 Pants Labyrinth, and emerged, knowing I'd seen a classic. This year's can kicked off with the 20th anniversary screening of Pants Labyrinth, but otherwise there wasn't much of that 2006-era razzle dazzle. 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. To me more in Stele and Skarsgard 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 business with the Russian mob. Driver and Teller are outstanding, and Scarlett Johansson is heartbreakingly good as a family member forced to deal with the fallout. Driver 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 2007 for the movie Four Months, Three Weeks, and Two Days. In Fjord, Sebastian Stan and Renata Reinsfei 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. 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 audiences when it opens later this year. I hope there will also be robust turnout for Minitar, a perfectly chilled tale of adultery and murder that won the Grand Prix, or second place. It's a remake of the 1969 Claude Chabraldrama La Femme Enfidel. This time set in Russia, not long after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The director of Minitar, André Zviaginsev, 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. What 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-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 Shonebrun, 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 Miosma. Starring a very game Hanna Einbinder and Julian Anderson, the movie is a clever homage 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 Miosma 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. Things like the gorgeous and moving Rwanda set drama, "Deniamana," about efforts to bring about truth and reconciliation years after the 1994 genocide. The film earned its director, Marie Clémentine de Sabé Jambou, the camera door prize for best debut feature. My favorite film at Cannes this year was "All of a Sudden" from the Japanese director Rusuke Hamaguchi. But 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 Stordor prior 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 prior. We talk about the N-word, growing up as prior's daughter, and why, late in his career, he swore to never say the word again. Hope you can join us.