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Rollins, Theodore "Sonny"
3 articles on Rollins, Theodore "Sonny"
Rollins, Sonny
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1896 to the Present: From the Age of Segregation to the Twenty-first Century
Word Count: 425 Includes: Bibliography(b. 7 September 1930), jazz musician. Sonny Rollins was born in New York City in 1930. Growing up in Harlem, New York, Rollins studied piano and alto saxophone before finally taking up tenor saxophone in 1946. As a teenager he was already working with musicians such as Miles Davis and Bud Powell. He worked extensively with Davis during the early 1950s, and in 1955 he joined a quintet that featured the trumpeter Clifford Brown and the drummer Max Roach. He continued collaborating with Roach after Brown's death in 1957. Three recordings—Sonny Rollins, Volume One (1956) and Sonny Rollins, Volume Two (1957), on the Blue Note label, and Saxophone Colossus (1956), on the Prestige label—established Rollins as perhaps the most talented tenor saxophonist of the late 1950s. Noted for his intellectual style of improvisation and rhythmic sense, Rollins ...
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Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 454 Includes: Bibliography1930–
African American jazz tenor saxophonist and composer. Theodore Rollins, known as “Sonny,” influenced Jazz during the 1950s with his new approaches to musical form and style, then continued to explore new musical frontiers. Born in New York, New York, Rollins began making music at age nine, playing the piano and alto saxophone. Picking up the tenor saxophone in 1948, he led a group that included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor. In 1949 Rollins made his first recording with pianist Bud Powell. For the next six years, Rollins played professionally alongside Powell and other famous jazz artists such as Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro, Max Roach, and Art Blakey. He played most frequently with Miles Davis. “Airegin,” “Doxy,” and “Oleo,” songs that Rollins composed and then recorded with Davis in ...
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Source: African American National Biography
Word Count: 2534 Includes: Further Reading(9 Sept. 1930– ), tenor saxophonist, was born Theodore Walker Rollins in Harlem, New York City, the son of Walter Theodore Rollins and Valborg Solomon Rollins. His parents were both from the West Indies and loved music; they often played Enrico Caruso 78s, and they brought Sonny to see a performance of the Pirates of Penzance when he was two. Sonny spent time as a child with an uncle from Georgia who played records by bluesmen like Lonnie Johnson and the jump blues saxophonist Louis Jordan. He also spent a good deal of time with his grandmother, a follower of Marcus Garvey, and she also brought him to the local Sanctified church, exposing him to the sect's jubilant and rhythmically powerful worship.Rollins began to study piano at age nine, taking up the alto saxophone at age eleven and the tenor ...
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