New York Review
Review by Walter Cummins
I’ve been listening to Sonny Rollins’ saxophone for decades, including one live performance with bad acoustics that he still managed to overcome, and I keep looking forward to more. There always seems to be a joy behind his inventions, along with a frequent wit as he turns non-jazz songs such as “I’m an Old Cowhand” and “Some Enchanted Evening” into brilliant inventive renditions. My assumption was that he was playing a musical game, challenging himself to transform the source, and transform he did. But these notebooks, originally stimulated by his hours of solo rehearsing on the Williamsburg Bridge, reveal a man of great depth, seeking a wisdom beyond music but using music as his means of striving to achieve it.
He shares a belief in the inseparability of spirituality and music with John Coltrane, his admired contemporary, whose thinking, which grew from a different religious tradition, was well-known during his brief lifetime, even leading to the creation of a church in his name. In contrast, Rollins’ meaningful probing will come as a surprise to most.
The time alone on the bridge was hardly the dedication of a novice. Rollins, only twenty-eight, withdrew from public performing to overcome his dissatisfaction with where he was as a creative artist even though most of his contemporaries believed he was already at a peak, a master with significant recordings to his credit. He, however, sought much more and documented the thinking behind his quest in these notebooks, an accumulating collection of musical techniques and philosophical insights.
His musical explanations and observations, his spiritual beliefs, his health and exercise advice, and his social-political observations are organized in four sections by editor Sam V. H. Reese—”1959-1961 The Bridge Years,” “1961-1963 Fantastic Saxophone,” “1963-1973 What I Am,” and “1979-2010 Legacy.”
The approach changes as the collection proceeds. “The Bridge Years” emphasizes notations of his musical experiments and what he has learned about his instrument: “Among things which must be observed daily is breath-blow exercise. This leads to a sort of double tongue-ing effect when done faster—e.g. B♭ would be hit more or less open and accented; B would be closed up by tongue; and so on chromatically up.” He includes his findings on posture, finger placement, breathing, and more.
The later sections, written when Rollins was back playing in venues around the world, contain much less of what might be considered music theory, now offering commentary on specific performances—when he feels he did well and when others in his groups compensated for his weaknesses. He also reveals the jazz musicians he admires most, especially Coleman Hawkins, his musical idol, whom Rollins first heard when very young and made him want to be a saxophonist.
Those later sections also expand upon ideas introduced in “The Bridge Years,” especially the importance of jazz and all that it represents to humanity: “Yes, jazz is a free planet where everything is happiness and love. It fills everyone’s need for something stable to cling to in this world (on this planet) of changing appearances and material illusion, for in jazz all conflicts are resolved, all people recognize and adhere to this universal tongue. Jazz is the personification of music. It should then be accorded the presented respect it must occupy to be made potent for its service to mankind.”
In that vein he opposes the notion of divisions—between black and white people and between forms of music, as he links Miles Davis and Bach. Rollins comes across as an open and accepting person, inspired by spiritual sources such as Zen, yoga, and the Bhagavad Gita. He is drawn to Japanese culture, working to learn the language.
His initial positivity is strong, related to his goals in the hours devoted to perfecting his craft. His only criticism in the early pages is his attack on the night club owners who hire and disrespect jazz musicians and frustrate mixing of the races.
But by the final section of the notebooks, Rollins becomes socially and politically pessimistic, especially after his decades-long wife and business manager, Lucille, died in 2004. He was also feeling his age though performing and recording into his eighties. Difficult as saving our world might be, he still seeks a way:
It is becoming increasingly apparent that we shall not have the benefits of this world much longer. The imminent and expected destruction of the life cycle of world ecology can only be prevented by a radical shift in outlook from our present naïve conception of this world as a testing ground to a more mature view of the universe as a comprehensive matrix of life forms. Making this shift in viewpoint is essentially spiritual or religious not economic or political.
The book opens with a thorough introduction by Sam V. H. Reese, who edited it, giving extensive background about Rollins’ career. He illuminates many of Rollins entries in their wider context. Rollins was writing notes for himself, not a book for publication, with quick personal references as shorthand for what might need elaboration for a reader. Reese provides that.
Fortunately, his editing facilitated the journal’s publication. The capturing of Rollins’ voice and the depths of his thinking reads like one of his extended solos, filled with surprises, what has been called harmonic daring. Not only one of our greatest saxophonists, Sonny Rollins has been an exceptional human being.
