Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins improvises the way a great storyteller talks – taking a small motif, a scrap of melody, and turning it over, examining it, developing it into a long, logical, surprising solo that hangs together as a single thought. This thematic approach, building a whole improvisation from a tiny seed, set him apart even in an era thick with brilliant tenor players.

He has a huge, robust tone and a sly wit, fond of weaving unlikely tunes – calypsos, show tunes, cowboy songs – into hard-driving jazz. “St. Thomas,” his calypso, became a signature, joyful proof that depth and fun aren’t opposites. By the mid-1950s, records like Saxophone Colossus had made him one of the most admired musicians in jazz.

He’s also famous for walking away. Twice he stopped performing publicly to woodshed and rethink, most famously in the late 1950s when he practiced for hours alone on the Williamsburg Bridge rather than coast on his fame. That restless self-criticism, the refusal to repeat himself, is part of what makes him great.

He kept playing into his eighties, a living link back to the bebop founders he’d come up with, still searching, still building those long melodic arguments. Among musicians the title sticks: the Colossus, the last titan of the tenor.