There was a time when I felt more intimidated or bothered or upset by-there have been times when I’ve been much more interested in what people say. SR: Well, my career’s been going on so long. JR: Do some of those characterizations of you as a player ever bother you? Do you feel that people don’t get it or it kind of reduces what you’re doing in a certain way?
Just the thinking, the playing, the going on and on and on-that part is mine. The fact that there’s logic to what I’m playing, I’ve been very blessed about that part because I certainly didn’t have anything to do with that-whatever talent that God has given me. You’re a player you can’t spend too much time thinking about what you’re going to play, it comes out so fast. I didn’t think about it beyond what I’m saying now. SR: No, I never really thought about it, Joshua. Is this something that you’ve thought about? I know you’ve heard people talk about you as a thematic improviser. You were able to be completely spontaneous-you say stream-of consciousness-but at the same time your improvisations have this incredible sense of structure and emotional logic and organization to them. JR: One of the things that I really learned from you was this sense of flow and narrative as an improviser. I think that’s where my thing is really at.
#Sonny rollins worktime free
I think that’s why I relate to a lot of the so-called free players and they relate to me because I’m sort of like a free player, really. But as far as what I was practicing, I was always a stream-of-consciousness player, playing for hours, by myself. SR: I remember my saxophone book: I had a Ben Vereecken book it was very famous around that time. JR: When you were practicing at that time, what kind of stuff were you practicing? Were you practicing technique, were you practicing sound, were you practicing tunes? I was able to record with a genius like Bud Powell when I was very young, and so I always try to get myself up as close as I can to that level. I was also lucky to be around some of these great people. My mother used to have to call me to come and eat dinner because I was in there practicing all the time. I just practiced a lot I practiced a lot because I loved playing. It’s kind of intimidating and almost depressing for a musician like me to hear that. You were an absolute prodigy, you were playing on the highest level imaginable. JR: One thing that’s completely astounding to me is I’ve heard recordings that you did when you weren’t even 20, and some of your first recordings you did in your early 20s, and you had been playing the saxophone for less than 10 years. As I grew older, all the great people were living uptown: Coleman Hawkins, Don Redman, Erskine Hawkins, Duke Ellington. And Buddy Johnson said he really dug my playing-I was about 12 years old that was a great feeling. When I was a little kid I tried to sing in front of one of these places on 133rd Street, which years ago used to be a real haven for clubs when people used to come uptown. I remember my man, the great piano player and bandleader Buddy Johnson. I was fortunate, as I said, to be right in the middle of a lot of music, hearing a lot of these cats. My people took care of me just like any good parents would take care of their kids.īut anyway, I listened to a lot of music. You know how it is when you come from a loving family: You don’t know nothing about wars and the Depression. These were the days of the Depression, but not that I as a boy felt any of that. In those days in Harlem you used to see a lot of pianos on the street with the people’s furniture that were being evicted, moving from one apartment to another. Because times were hard, we had to move from that apartment to another apartment, and the piano was left out on the street. I remember when I was really small, around three years old, we used to have a player piano. He was playing more classical, but I really got a kick out of listening to him practice. My older brother played violin he used to be practicing, and I really got a kick out of that. Later on when I was old enough I sort of got my musical education at the Apollo Theater, going there every week and catching all these bands that came through. Always used to listen to the amateur night in Harlem from the Apollo Theater. I had music in the house there was a lot of jazz music. I used to pass by the original Cotton Club when I was walking up and down as a schoolboy, but there were other places that I heard music. I always remember Fats Waller singing “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter”-that was one of his big hits I used to hear that on the radio all the time. SR: I was born in Harlem at the time when Harlem was jumping with music, and I heard a lot of music when I was a kid.
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