Sonny Rollins, Giant of the Jazz Saxophone, Is Dead at 95
He surrounded himself with an ever-shifting cast of talented musicians, ranging from young experimentalists (he alienated many old fans and won some new ones by enthusiastically, if briefly, working with avant-gardists like the trumpeter Don Cherry) to the venerable Coleman Hawkins, the saxophonist he called his idol, with whom he recorded an album in 1963.
The 1960s were a busy and productive time for Mr. Rollins. But before the decade was over, he had vanished again.
He did no recording and almost no performing between 1966 and 1972, spending much of his time in Japan and India on what he later said was a spiritual quest. He returned to the studio in 1972 to record “Sonny Rollins’ Next Album” for the small Milestone label, for which he would continue to record for more than 30 years, and he was soon back at the forefront of the jazz world.
Critics were often unkind to Mr. Rollins in the years following his comeback, especially when, like many of his fellow jazz musicians in the 1970s and ’80s, he embraced electric instruments and rock rhythms. He even collaborated with the Rolling Stones, overdubbing saxophone parts to three tracks on their album “Tattoo You” (1981), although he turned down an offer to tour with them. In performance, he began emphasizing the more obviously crowd-pleasing elements of his music, notably his penchant for calypsos.
“I’m often criticized about the ’70s and ’80s because I used a backbeat and guitars and all, but I don’t understand a lot of it,” he said in 2001. “I was trying to find different ways to make my music relevant. I’ve never thought of myself as being on some pinnacle where I can’t play a calypso or a backbeat.”
The criticism he received — which continued beyond the 1980s — was often marked by an unusual mixture of admiration and regret. Reviewing a concert in 1993, Peter Watrous of The Times praised Mr. Rollins as “one of the greatest improvisers walking this earth,” but also called him “a man bent on misspending the capital of genius” who “plays music that rarely challenges his own historical achievements, and that in its simplicity seems to pander to his audience.” Mr. Rollins, he wrote, “seems unable, or unwilling, to present himself in a context that would give dignity to his great ability, or even just acknowledge it.”
