Don't know if I give credence to the model that what's good for an individual as a person is ultimately less important than what is important for the industry in which they labor.
I tend to see it as an art form.
Well. ok. but an "art form" that entertains the wants of its consumers as well as its creators is a business, and a business that is about getting product to market eventually becomes an industry.
So, if Sonny Rollins has failed to provide you with what you want/need, he has failed his industry, even though he might have served his own personal wants and needs just fine.
I don't expect anybody to listen trough all the 40+ years of brilliances and thudbooms of misses and "worship". But hostility on the grounds that the man had a faulty personal agenda/business plan, that if he HAD done XYZ then everything would have been allright, that's supremely industrial in it evaluation. Sonny "failed" because he didn't have the right parts installed, something like that, like the only thing that effects a player is who's on the stand that night or in the studio that afternoon, just show up and execute. Get that model SR back into R&D and don't come out until all the glitches and bugs have been removed.
Sorry, just not feeling that. If the guy wanted to play with David S. Ware, he would have. As it is, didn't they practice together for a while? That's where you'd really learn, one on one practice sessions. The whole "record/concert=reality" thing, that's basically industry glimmer to get in you eyes when the smoke clears. Now, sure, ther are plenty of peole who WANT to fo it like that, but not everybody does. One size does not fit all.
It's art first, commerce second. I think Sonny failed his art after 1970 or so. Commerce has succeeded brilliantly in marketing him. Money has been made, so no complaints there. I give Sonny the respect of looking at him as an artist, a person, not a myth or a god. Serving one's own personal needs and wants doesn't necessarily translate into serving the art. It's just solipsism. Sonny's greatness came as much from other musicians as from himself; in other words, he fed off them, and they fed off him. When he began playing with sock puppets, there was nothing to feed off, except himself, and that's the sound of on hand clapping.
love rollins but following his impulse albums he faded away from me (or me from him ?)....the musicians he "used" thereafter may have been a reason......always admired his capability to "reinvent" himself, which IMO was exhausted or lost from the 70s onwards.....