Sonny Rollins Interview (page: 3 / 8) Greatest Living Jazz Soloist	Print Interview

When did you start playing professionally?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Sonny Rollins: Once I started, when I was around eight years old or so, I knew that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a musician. So I kept playing, I was really at it. You know, there is one thing about me, I was a guy that would practice. Once I started practicing, my mother had to call me to stop practicing. "Come and eat dinner!" Because I was in my own world, and I am like that up to this day really, except that I am older now, and I can't practice like 15 hours a day, but I still have the same inclination and same spirit. But I kept at it, and by the time I was about 14, I guess, we got a little neighborhood band. Then, by the time I was 17, we had a neighborhood band, and I was beginning to get recognized by some of the older people, older musicians. Then, by 18, I made my first recordings. So I was straight, I was on that track. I was on the track to be a professional from that early age, from eight years old I would say.

[ Key to Success ] Passion

By the time you were 20 you were playing and recording with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Monk, Bud Powell. That is rarefied company for a young man. What did they see in you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Sonny Rollins: That is what gave me encouragement, that they would take to a young kid. Then I knew, "Well gee, I must have something going." Even though I was never shy about playing with them, but I was still in awe of them. So the fact that I was accepted by Thelonious Monk and all these guys, I mean they looked at me almost as being an equal. In fact, some of them did. Talking about it now it is somewhat embarrassing to me, but in actuality, some of these great musicians looked at me as being contemporary with them. Of course, I was much younger, at least four or five years younger than most of the guys.

So it was a source of gratification to me that they thought I was good enough. That really gave me the impetus. "Well, I must be on the right track. Keep playing."

You became known as a great improviser and innovator. Was that true even then as a young man?

Sonny Rollins: Well, I guess they called me that, I don't know, you know.

Sonny Rollins: I don't know how technical you want to get, but...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I consider myself sort of a "stream-of-consciousness" player, or what later was to be known as a "free jazz" player. I think I am basically. That's what I am. I just play stream of consciousness. So I had to sort of learn in a way how to play with the strictures of be-bop and all these things. I had to learn that, because I am really just a natural player, you know.

Where do you find your inspiration? Where do you get your musical ideas? Where do they come from?

Sonny Rollins: As a kid, as I said...

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I listened to my brother playing the violin, études, practicing. I listened to a lot of music around. Fats Waller and all of these James P. Johnson piano rolls. We had a piano roll of his. I just heard a lot of music. Louis Jordan. I used to hear the Amateur Night in Harlem from the Apollo Theater. All the bands would come through for one week. So I just heard a lot of music, you know. I went to a lot of movies, because in the days when I was growing up, that was the television of the day, movies. So I went to a lot of movies, I heard a lot of movie music, and liked a lot of the music, Jerome Kern and all of these people. Jerome Kern is one of my favorites, but I have others, too. So that's where I guess I get my inspiration from. I just have a lot of music in my mind that I heard as a child, and I guess it comes out when I am playing. I know a lot of songs, words of some of them, but I mean I know a lot of melodies. My head is just filled with music, and when I'm improvising, they come out at different times. It surprises me. Gee, I played something that I didn't know was in my mind, the recesses of my mind.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

I guess that's where you might say I get my ideas from, if you wanted to put it that way.

How would you put it?

Sonny Rollins: Those things are in my mind, but I am looking for a deeper level of creation. These sources are sort of on the surface, but I find that I am looking for something deeper. I think there is a deeper level that comes in at some point, but without a doubt, these are my influences that are in my mind, are the movies and jazz bands, and everything, all music. I like all kinds of music, really.

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