After 7 Decades, Sonny Rollins Can't Get Music Off His Mind
Everyone knows the legendary names of 20th-century jazz, but there are only a handful of those greats still around to tell their stories. One of them is saxophonist Sonny Rollins. He recently donated his personal archives, which cover a seven-decade career, to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library.
NPR's Audie Cornish and Christian McBride, bassist and host of NPR's Jazz Night In America, spoke with Rollins about his collaborations with fellow jazz legends, the unseen work that goes into improvisation and the contents of his archives. Rollins began by talking about his childhood in Harlem, and how he took up music when he was just 7 years old. Read on for an edited transcript.
When my mother got me a saxophone, of course, you know, I mean, this was Depression time. It took her a while for me to convince her that yeah, I really want to play. ... But anyways, when she got me myI had that played saxophone in Harlem. So she got me this used horn. So boy, I got this horn, man — I went in a room, I shut the door and I was in heaven. My momma had to knock on the door: "Sonny, Sonny, it's time to eat dinner, come on!" I didn't know what I was doing on the horn, but I was doing it!
