Sonny Rollins Quotes

Even the most jingoistic person would have to admit that even American cultural music comes from Europe. That's what classical music is, real European music.

My mother came from St. Thomas. I heard that melody and all I did was actually adapt it. I made my adaptation of sort of an island traditional melody. It did become sort of my trademark tune.

I'm not supposed to be playing, the music is supposed to be playing me. I'm just supposed to be standing there with the horn, moving my fingers. The music is supposed to be coming through me; that's when it's really happening.

I have seen great jazz musicians die obscure and drinking themselves to death and not really being able to get any work and working in small, funky jazz clubs.

Jazz is the type of music that can absorb so many things and still be jazz.

How ironic that the Negro, who more than any other people can claim America's culture as his own, is being persecuted and repressed; that the Negro, who has exemplified the humanities in his very existence, is being rewarded with inhumanity.

I'm now a legend, whether I want to be or not.

I've played with all of the heavyweights in the modern jazz, progressive jazz movement. I've been fortunate enough to play with them, a who's who. All of those guys, I've been fortunate enough to have performed with.

I think what we need is a more welcoming mode from the people who put on a hundred million country-western shows on television. How about a monthly jazz show?

Improvisation is the ability to create something very spiritual, something of one's own.

I'll know when I find the ultimate sound.

The thing is this: When I play, what I try to do is to reach my subconscious level. I don't want to overtly think about anything, because you can't think and play at the same time - believe me, I've tried it (laughs).

There have been many great musicians that, Clifford Brown is one great example, I mean he died very early, 25.

I miss playing with Miles. I did play with him a little while before he left the planet, but even at that time I longed to maybe do some things together.

I have always been a person who is concerned with the dignity of jazz music and the way jazz musicians have been treated and are treated, and the fact that the music has not been given the kind of due that it deserves.

I feel that L.A. has not always been my strongest base for support. That can be for various reasons.

What I am more concerned about is whether our whole civilization will be around in the next 25 years.

Jazz never ends ... it just continues.

I feel that Jazz improvisation is the ultimate. You have to create on the spot, the essence of this music.