Sonny Rollins Quotes (47 Quotes)

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

Very much so. When I was in India at an ashram, my teacher told me, When you are playing your horn, that's meditation.' And that is a way of worship,

'St. Thomas' is actually an island melody, sort of a traditional island melody, so all I did was sort of make my arrangement on it.

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons.

As the years went by and jazz got more popular and social conditions changed, you were able to have jazz as a topic introduced into the music curriculum in universities, ... I think that one thing that hip-hop and jazz have in common is that they are both coming out of the minority subculture and we've faced some of the same problems. They are attacked in different ways . . . but they are a minority in a majority culture, so they are unfortunately discriminated against by the larger portion of the majority community.

What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years.

We were right on the margins of society. Who really cared about jazz

I don't think jazz should try to change. I think jazz is varied enough and there is so many different kinds of jazz. So jazz doesn't need to change.

I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.

Jazz has an audience all around the globe and has had for many decades, I think speaking of the United States, let's say that what we need is more of an official recognition.

Many jazz artists go to L.A. seeking a more comfortable life and then they really stop playing.

If you could do that, it's great to do it. And a lot of great musicians have done it. A lot of musicians get to a point and stay in that groove all of their career. I have just not been able to do it because I don't think I'm a good enough musician. Someo

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

I simply want to reach a level where I will never cease to make progress. . . . So that, even the bad evenings, I may never be bad enough to despair.

Charlie Parker stuck out in my mind.

America is deeply rooted in Negro culture its colloquialisms its humor its music.

I think we are in the midst of this period where we are committing this suicide on the planet and everybody is just using up all of our natural resources like a bunch of insane people. That's what I worry about more than I worry about jazz.

It was a distinct honor because of the people inducted. Some were such giants of the music. I didn't really feel worthy to be included with Fats Waller.

I remember hearing that song around the house, and on the radio and everything, ... Wow, I haven't heard that record in so many years. It's one of my earliest memories of jazz. I believe in things like reincarnation, and it struck a chord someplace in my back lives or something.

So the people over there have a very advanced appreciation of music and they recognize the power and the beauty and the wonderfulness of jazz.

I think the problem starts with the general appreciation of the music in the larger society.

That's a pretty tall order, ... I don't want to sound too grandiose or that I can represent jazz in its entirety. But as one of few remaining people from that period the heyday of bebop during the '40s and '50s, I want to represent myself and the kind of musicians from that period, so that people who are new to the music can say, 'These people were good they aren't just a bunch of old moldy figs.'

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.

My mother came from St. Thomas. I heard that melody and all I did was actually adapt it. I made my adaptation of sort of an island traditional melody. It did become sort of my trademark tune.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

I am a person who thinks about the music first in trying to achieve something musically valid.

I think music should be judged on what it is. It should be very high and above everything else. It is a beautiful way of bringing people together, a little bit of an oasis in this messed-up world.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

Playing in public engenders new paths in your brain that you won't get playing alone. In other words, I can learn something playing in public in five seconds. If I was learning it in private, it might take me three months to get.

I am always happy to be practicing. Period, ... I enjoy just playing my horn and going into the type of meditation that playing involves. It puts me mentally in a place that is always transcendent and above real life. I love playing just for myself. It's a great experience.

There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.

How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

I think as long as people are around and can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz.

There are a lot of jazz musicians, however, who do have to go to Europe and most of their work is in Europe. That's not true for me.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

But if I didn't have to make money, I would still play my horn.

The whole creation of jazz is sort of leading toward the ultimate. I'm not trying to be self-aggrandizing here, but I think that the jazz soloist is the pinnacle of what jazz is about.

I am interested in my music lasting only while I'm alive. I'm not writing for the future.

I guess fortunate that I'm still around and I emphasize I guess because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have.

There was a period which I refer to as the 'Golden Age of Jazz,' which sort of encompasses the middle Thirties through the Sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time.

Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

I don't want to appear hostile, like I'm hostile to L.A. or that I feel that the people don't appreciate jazz. I don't think it's that. I think it's something more. It's something a little bit more complicated than that.

You had many jazz musicians who lived in the United States, who had a hard time being accepted over here and had to play in sort of these inferior type dives.

I can name a lot of people whose productive, whose creativity dies when they got L.A. Maybe it's too laid back. It's too comfortable.

A lot of guys died very early. Very few guys, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, very few of those guys reached my age of 67, which I am at the present.

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.

It's all about creation and surprise. It just needs to be appreciated and watered like flowers. You have to water flowers. These peaks will come again.