Sonny Rollins died last Monday at the age of 95, at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was the last living giant of the bebop generation, and now that generation is gone.
What you’re about to hear was recorded when Rollins could still sit down and talk — about the men he came up with, the men he competed with, the men he outlived. In this conversation, he talks about John Coltrane, about Miles Davis, about Thelonious Monk. Not as monuments. As people he knew.
Rollins and Coltrane were contemporaries and friends, and they locked horns memorably on “Tenor Madness” in 1956 — one of the few recorded documents of what it sounded like when those two were in the same room, pushing each other. He watched Monk get dismissed as too strange before the world caught up. He watched Miles reinvent himself, more than once.
He had opinions about all of it, and he was never careful about sharing them.
Pulmonary fibrosis forced him from the stage years before his death, but his mind stayed sharp and his memory held. This conversation is part of what he left behind.
Listen to Sonny’s reflections on Trane: