Sonny Rollins Interview

[Aggie87]

Interesting interview with Sonny Rollins in today's Detroit Free Press, by Mark Stryker.

Sonny Rollins took the most famous sabbatical in jazz history from 1959-61. Uncomfortable with the fame swirling around him as the most inventive tenor saxophonist in jazz and anxious to reinvestigate the fundamentals of his art, he dropped off the scene, famously practicing his horn on the Williamsburg Bridge, which links lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.

But Rollins, one of the all-time greats, who performs Tuesday in Detroit, began a second, much-less documented sabbatical in the late '60s. His playing had reached new levels of brilliance, but by 1968 he was burned out by the business -- unable to command the money he felt he was worth, unable to secure enough steady work to keep a band together and bamboozled by lawyers for Impulse Records into signing away rights to the score he had written for the film "Alfie."

So he quit. In early 1968 he boarded a plane for India, staying four or five months, living on an ashram and studying Indian religion and yoga.

Continues here

Edited April 4, 2010 by Aggie87

[CJ Shearn]

That's really interesting! I started studying Buddhism myself so that was neat to read about his spiritual journey.