Sonny Rollins - Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.achievement.org:80/achiever/sonny-rollins/","20181029151315","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1540825995"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <title>Sonny Rollins - Academy of Achievement</title>  <meta name="description" content="The last survivor of the generation of giants who revolutionized jazz in the 1950s, Sonny Rollins played and recorded with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk while still in his teens. By the end of the decade, he reigned supreme as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz. Rather than follow the easy path to commercial success by repeating his past performances, he left the stage for three years at the height of his fame to practice alone on New York's Williamsburg Bridge, single-mindedly pursuing his own elusive ideal of perfection. Throughout his career he has taken leaves of absence for travel, study and meditation, always to return with a new approach to music. He has recorded in a dazzling variety of styles, from the hard bop of his youth to the free jazz, avant-garde, fusion, Latin jazz, funk and R&B of subsequent decades. A formidable composer and bandleader, he is unparalleled in his imagination and expressiveness as a soloist. Armed with a devastating technique and an encyclopedic knowledge of popular song, he holds audiences spellbound with a seemingly endless flow of melodic invention. A 1956 album title still captures his enduring stature in the world of jazz: Saxophone Colossus. In his ninth decade, he is still going strong. Always spontaneous, always unpredictable, with Sonny Rollins every performance is a once-in-a-lifetime experience."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Sonny Rollins - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">The last survivor of the generation of giants who revolutionized jazz in the 1950s, Sonny Rollins played and recorded with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk while still in his teens. By the end of the decade, he reigned supreme as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz. Rather than follow the easy path to commercial success by repeating his past performances, he left the stage for three years at the height of his fame to practice alone on New York's Williamsburg Bridge, single-mindedly pursuing his own elusive ideal of perfection. Throughout his career he has taken leaves of absence for travel, study and meditation, always to return with a new approach to music.</p> <p class="inputText">He has recorded in a dazzling variety of styles, from the hard bop of his youth to the free jazz, avant-garde, fusion, Latin jazz, funk and R&B of subsequent decades. A formidable composer and bandleader, he is unparalleled in his imagination and expressiveness as a soloist. Armed with a devastating technique and an encyclopedic knowledge of popular song, he holds audiences spellbound with a seemingly endless flow of melodic invention.</p> <p class="inputText">A 1956 album title still captures his enduring stature in the world of jazz: <i>Saxophone Colossus</i>. In his ninth decade, he is still going strong. Always spontaneous, always unpredictable, with Sonny Rollins every performance is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rollins-2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">The last survivor of the generation of giants who revolutionized jazz in the 1950s, Sonny Rollins played and recorded with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk while still in his teens. By the end of the decade, he reigned supreme as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz. Rather than follow the easy path to commercial success by repeating his past performances, he left the stage for three years at the height of his fame to practice alone on New York's Williamsburg Bridge, single-mindedly pursuing his own elusive ideal of perfection. Throughout his career he has taken leaves of absence for travel, study and meditation, always to return with a new approach to music.</p> <p class="inputText">He has recorded in a dazzling variety of styles, from the hard bop of his youth to the free jazz, avant-garde, fusion, Latin jazz, funk and R&B of subsequent decades. A formidable composer and bandleader, he is unparalleled in his imagination and expressiveness as a soloist. Armed with a devastating technique and an encyclopedic knowledge of popular song, he holds audiences spellbound with a seemingly endless flow of melodic invention.</p> <p class="inputText">A 1956 album title still captures his enduring stature in the world of jazz: <i>Saxophone Colossus</i>. In his ninth decade, he is still going strong. Always spontaneous, always unpredictable, with Sonny Rollins every performance is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="Sonny Rollins - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/rollins-2-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20181029151315\/http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebSite","@id":"#website","url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20181029151315\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/","name":"Academy of Achievement","alternateName":"A museum of living history","potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20181029151315\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/search\/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}</script> <script 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container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Sonny Rollins</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Greatest Living Jazz Soloist</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-3037 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-musician"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">Giving yourself to something you believe in, that is success.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 9, 1930 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p>Theodore Walter Rollins was born in New York City to a family that had immigrated from the Virgin Islands. He grew up in Harlem at a time when this crowded district at the northern tip of Manhattan was the vital center of African American culture. His politically active grandmother had been a follower of the Jamaican Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey, who promoted solidarity among all peoples of African descent. She took a strong role in raising Sonny, as he was known from an early age, along with his older brother and sister, while their father served in the United States Navy.</p> <figure id="attachment_19230" style="width: 718px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19230 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19230 size-full lazyload" alt="Young Sonny Rollins." width="718" height="939" data-sizes="(max-width: 718px) 100vw, 718px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny.jpg 718w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny-291x380.jpg 291w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny-581x760.jpg 581w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Young Sonny Rollins. Rollins grew up in Harlem where he received his first alto saxophone at the age of 7 or 8.</figcaption></figure><p>Harlem in the 1930s and ’40s was home to the latest developments in jazz, and jazz musicians were admired members of the community. Music was also an important part of life in the Rollins home; Sonny’s brother and sister studied violin and piano. The example of the pioneering rhythm-and-blues star Louis Jordan inspired the young Sonny Rollins to take up the alto saxophone. He switched to tenor sax when he fell under the spell of Coleman Hawkins, a highly sophisticated improviser who first established the tenor saxophone as a lead instrument in American jazz.</p> <figure id="attachment_19209" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19209 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19209 size-full lazyload" alt="Saxophonist, bandleader, vocalist, songwriter and all-around entertainer, Louis Jordan was a popular star in the 1940s, and a hero to the young Sonny Rollins. Louis Jordan's style of "jump blues" provided a transition from the swing music of the 1940s to the rock and roll of the 1950s. (John Springer/CORBIS)" width="2280" height="2945" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181-294x380.jpg 294w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181-588x760.jpg 588w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Saxophonist, bandleader, vocalist, songwriter and all-around entertainer, Louis Jordan was a popular star in the 1940s, and a hero to the young Sonny Rollins. Louis Jordan’s style of “jump blues” provided a transition from the swing music of the 1940s to the rock and roll of the 1950s. In the 1970s, after Rollins returned from a sabbatical from jazz, inspired by Jordan, he emerged with a looser, more extroverted kind of performance. (John Springer)</figcaption></figure><p>In the years following World War II, Harlem was the scene of the musical revolution known as bebop. A new generation of musicians broke with the dance-oriented big band music of the pre-war era to experiment in small groups with a new style of jazz, featuring advanced harmonies drawn from modern symphonic music, and a loose but hard-driving rhythm that provided the perfect setting for the imaginative flights of virtuoso soloists like trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxophonist Charlie Parker. The teenage Sonny Rollins and his friends eagerly followed the new music and idolized its players, particularly the high-flying Parker, known as “Bird” to his friends and admirers. Rollins and other young musicians from his Sugar Hill neighborhood formed a band of their own, which included the gifted alto player Jackie McLean.</p> <figure id="attachment_19215" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19215 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19215 size-full lazyload" alt="Old friends Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins reunited at The Newport Jazz Festival in 1957. (Getty Images)" width="2280" height="2384" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10-363x380.jpg 363w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10-727x760.jpg 727w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Old friends and legendary musicians Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins reunited at The Newport Jazz Festival in 1957.</figcaption></figure><p>By age 18, Rollins had gained such a reputation that he was joining his heroes on the bandstand and in the recording studio. He made his recording debut in 1949 with vocalist Babs Gonzales. Later that year, he recorded with the great bebop pianist Bud Powell. He recorded with the great pianist and composer Thelonious Monk and shared the stage with his idol, Charlie Parker. In the early 1950s he joined the band of another rising star, trumpeter Miles Davis.</p> <p>Rollins’s talent was evident to everyone on the scene, but like a number of young musicians of the era, his adulation of the gifted but tragically unstable Charlie Parker had led him to emulate Parker’s drug use. Addiction led to petty crime and run-ins with the law. For a time, it appeared that a promising career had come to a premature end, but Sonny’s mother refused to give up on him. Charlie Parker himself urged Rollins to seek help before his habit consumed him. Rollins finally entered the federal rehabilitation facility in Lexington, Kentucky, where he found the treatment he needed. Freed of his addiction, he returned to New York City and embarked on a period of staggering productivity.</p> <figure id="attachment_19218" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19218 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19218 size-full lazyload" alt="American jazz musician Sonny Rollins playing the tenor saxophone in the mid-1950s. (Photo by Bob Parent/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1499" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10-380x250.jpg 380w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10-760x500.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">American jazz musician Sonny Rollins playing the tenor saxophone in the mid-1950s. In early 1950, Rollins was arrested for armed robbery and spent ten months in Rikers Island jail before he was released on parole. In 1952, he was re-arrested for violating the terms of his parole by using heroin. In 1955, Sonny Rollins entered the Federal Medical Center, at the time the only assistance in the United States for drug addicts. While there, he volunteered for then-experimental methadone therapy and was able to break his heroin habit. Sonny Rollins initially “feared that sobriety would impair his musicianship but then went on to greater success.” (Bob Parent/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>In 1955, Rollins joined a quintet led by pioneering bebop drummer Max Roach, also featuring the gifted trumpeter Clifford Brown. In addition to recording under Max Roach’s name, the quintet produced an album as <em>Sonny Rollins Plus Four</em>, the first collection to feature Rollins as leader. The untimely death of Clifford Brown in a 1956 automobile accident was a blow to the entire jazz world. Rollins stayed with the Roach quintet through this difficult transition, but he was soon producing recordings of his own at an extraordinary pace.</p> <p>Max Roach supported the younger man’s efforts, playing drums on Rollins’s album <em>Sonny Rollins, Volume One</em>. In the follow-up collection, <em>Volume Two</em>, Rollins was joined by two great pianists: one of the original architects of bebop, Thelonious Monk; and the leading proponent of the new “hard bop” style, Horace Silver. Rollins was now a leading jazz star. The album, <em>Saxophone Colossus</em>, introduced his signature composition, “St. Thomas,” based on a traditional calypso his mother had sung to him in childhood. Major collections from Rollins in this period include the albums <em>Tenor Madness</em> — featuring him in a duet with an up-and-coming rival on the tenor, John Coltrane — and <em>Newk’s Time</em>. A number of Rollins’s friends had taken to calling him “Newk” because of his supposed resemblance to Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe.</p> <figure id="attachment_19213" style="width: 476px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19213 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001236.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19213 size-full lazyload" alt="November 3, 1957: Sonny Rollins as he plays the tenor saxophone during the live recording session for his "A Night at the Village Vanguard" album, November 1957. (Mosaic Images/CORBIS)" width="476" height="480" data-sizes="(max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001236.jpg 476w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001236-377x380.jpg 377w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001236.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1957: Sonny Rollins plays the tenor saxophone during the recording session for <em>A Night at the Village Vanguard</em>.</figcaption></figure><p>Two hallmarks of Rollins’s career were now well in evidence. One was his penchant for “thematic improvisation,” in which the soloist performs a series of spontaneous variations on a single musical idea. Another was his affection for familiar popular songs and show tunes that other young musicians of the day had come to disdain. Rollins seemed to delight in showing that no melody was so shopworn that it could not be mined for new improvisational riches. A number of outstanding live recordings followed these studio sessions, including <em>A Night at the Village Vanguard</em>, which show Rollins in extraordinary form, supported only by bass and drums. This piano-less saxophone trio was a new concept in jazz. With no piano providing harmonic support, Rollins found unexpected melodic byways that lay beyond conventional harmonic structures.</p> <figure id="attachment_19216" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19216 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19216 size-full lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins in 1965, back from his sabbatical and taking on all comers. (Photo by Frank Driggs/Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images)" width="2280" height="1755" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10-380x293.jpg 380w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10-760x585.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Sonny Rollins in 1965, back from his sabbatical and taking on all comers. (Photo by Frank Driggs/Getty Images)</figcaption></figure><p>As the 1950s drew to a close, Sonny Rollins was the most admired, talked-about, sought-after tenor player in jazz, the biggest sax star since Charlie Parker. But Rollins felt this acclaim was undeserved, that his playing did not meet his own high standards. At the height of his fame, he withdrew from public performance and recording. He remained in New York City, and found a congenial place to practice on the Williamsburg Bridge spanning the East River, not far from his home on the Lower East Side. Musicians and neighbors were surprised to find the one-time headliner standing on the bridge at all hours, playing for no one but himself, while he honed his technique and searched for a more spiritually meaningful form of musical expression.</p> <figure id="attachment_19225" style="width: 1204px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19225 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19225 size-full lazyload" alt="<em>The Bridge</em> is a studio album by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, recorded in 1962. It was his first release, in 1959, following a three-year hiatus, and was his first recording for Bluebird/RCA Victor. The saxophonist was joined by the musicians with whom he recorded for the next segment of his career: Jim Hall on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on double bass and Ben Riley on drums. The album was selected for the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015." width="1204" height="1204" data-sizes="(max-width: 1204px) 100vw, 1204px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd.jpg 1204w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd-190x190.jpg 190w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd-380x380.jpg 380w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd-760x760.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text"><em>The Bridge</em> is a studio album by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, recorded in 1962. It was his first release, in 1959, following a three-year hiatus, and was his first recording for Bluebird/RCA Victor. The saxophonist was joined by the musicians with whom he recorded for the next segment of his career: Jim Hall on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on double bass and Ben Riley on drums. The landmark album was selected for Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.</figcaption></figure><p>While Sonny Rollins took his sabbatical, revolutionary changes were again shaking the jazz world. He emerged from his three-year exile with a strengthened technique — demonstrated on his comeback album, <em>The Bridge</em> — ready to adapt to all of the innovations that had taken place in jazz during his absence. Throughout the 1960s, Rollins met the challenge of every new development head-on, participating in the avant-garde and “free jazz” experiments of younger musicians, and finally recording with his childhood hero Coleman Hawkins. During this eclectic phase of his career he performed Latin jazz, recorded an album of standards and composed a popular soundtrack for the 1966 hit film <em>Alfie</em>, starring Michael Caine. Toward the end of the ’60s, Rollins took another break from his musical career to immerse himself in the study of Eastern religions. For a while he lived in Japan, then traveled to India, where he studied yoga and spent a long retreat meditating in a monastery. By the early ’70s, he was ready to return to active recording and performing. His spiritual journey had brought peace to his restless soul, and he addressed his audiences with a new sense of joy and acceptance. He found continued inspiration in traditional Caribbean melodies, and embraced the use of electric instruments and the rhythms of contemporary funk and R&B. These adventures led him into musical territory far from the hard bop of his youth. He startled both jazz and rock fans with an unexpected appearance on the 1981 Rolling Stones album, <em>Tattoo You</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_19227" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19227 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19227 size-full lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins receives the Gold Medal of the Academy of Achievement at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. Basketball Hall of Fame great and Awards Council member Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke of the inspiration he had derived as a young athlete from hearing Sonny Rollins perform. (© Academy of Achievement)" width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Sonny Rollins receives the Gold Medal of the Academy of Achievement at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. Basketball Hall of Fame great and Awards Council member Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke of the inspiration he had derived as a young athlete from hearing Sonny Rollins perform. (Academy of Achievement)</figcaption></figure><p>In addition to his work with large electric groups, he pursued the opposite extreme, performing as a solo artist without accompaniment of any kind. In this setting, his solos took the form of long, stream-of-consciousness monologues, drawing on his seemingly bottomless repertoire of classic songs. This side of his creative personality was reflected on his 1985 recording, <em>Solo Album</em>. His solo performances scaled heights of inspiration that transcended all considerations of style and genre, and brought him some of the greatest acclaim of his career.</p> <figure id="attachment_19224" style="width: 1692px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19224 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19224 size-full lazyload" alt="March 2, 2011: President Barack Obama presents the 2010 National Medal of Arts to Sonny Rollins for his contributions to American jazz music, March 2, 2011. (Ruth David)" width="1692" height="1668" data-sizes="(max-width: 1692px) 100vw, 1692px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David.jpg 1692w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David-380x375.jpg 380w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David-760x749.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2011: President Obama presents the National Medal of Arts in the East Room at The White House to Sonny Rollins.</figcaption></figure><p>Rollins was at home in Manhattan, not far from the World Trade Center, when his native city was attacked on September 11, 2001. Only a few days after the catastrophe, Rollins recorded a live concert, <em>Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert</em>, as a tribute to his fallen neighbors. Other recent releases include <em>Road Show, Volume 1</em>, a compilation of some of his most dynamic live performances from the last 30 years.</p> <figure id="attachment_19207" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19207 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19207 size-full lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins, 2014. (John Abbott)" width="2280" height="3420" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2014: Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded more than sixty albums and a number of his compositions have become jazz standards.</figcaption></figure><p>The publication of a new biography of Sonny Rollins, <em>Saxophone Colossus</em>, by John Abbott and Bob Blumenthal, was timed to coincide with his 80th birthday. Other celebrations included a gala concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre. In his ninth decade, Sonny Rollins is still touring the world, playing with undiminished power and invention, an enduring exemplar of personal and musical integrity.</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> <figure class="achiever__video-block"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/VU64O5celyM?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=481&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Savion-Glover-and-Sonny-Rollins-2006.00_07_28_08.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Savion-Glover-and-Sonny-Rollins-2006.00_07_28_08.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video__copy m-t-1"> <p>Sonny Rollins performs an improvisational duet with tap-dancing legend Savion Glover at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles, to an audience of Academy youth delegates, Council members, and fellow Golden Plate awardees.</p> </figcaption> </figure> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 2006 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.musician">Musician</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> September 9, 1930 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">The last survivor of the generation of giants who revolutionized jazz in the 1950s, Sonny Rollins played and recorded with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk while still in his teens. By the end of the decade, he reigned supreme as the most talented and innovative tenor saxophonist in jazz. Rather than follow the easy path to commercial success by repeating his past performances, he left the stage for three years at the height of his fame to practice alone on New York’s Williamsburg Bridge, single-mindedly pursuing his own elusive ideal of perfection. Throughout his career he has taken leaves of absence for travel, study and meditation, always to return with a new approach to music.</p> <p class="inputText">He has recorded in a dazzling variety of styles, from the hard bop of his youth to the free jazz, avant-garde, fusion, Latin jazz, funk and R&B of subsequent decades. A formidable composer and bandleader, he is unparalleled in his imagination and expressiveness as a soloist. Armed with a devastating technique and an encyclopedic knowledge of popular song, he holds audiences spellbound with a seemingly endless flow of melodic invention.</p> <p class="inputText">A 1956 album title still captures his enduring stature in the world of jazz: <i>Saxophone Colossus</i>. In his ninth decade, he is still going strong. Always spontaneous, always unpredictable, with Sonny Rollins every performance is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/-pYcjfzixME?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=3472&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_41_59_15.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_41_59_15.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement</h2> <div class="sans-2">Los Angeles, California</div> <div class="sans-2">June 2, 2006</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>How would you describe the life of a jazz musician?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: The life of a jazz musician is a very precarious life. A good friend of mine, a pianist who has got a good reputation, he just had sort of an altercation, and he was hurt. Jazz musicians, they want to express everything, and their life is sort of right out there on their sleeve, but we live in a world in which you can’t always be that way. Playing is great, but you can’t live your life like you’re on the bandstand. You have to live a different life when you are off the bandstand. You have to be a little more conformist, and most jazz musicians find that difficult. Artists find it difficult to be a more normal person when they are off the bandstand.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/ONmdsPCbihM?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.01_07_33_27.Still010-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.01_07_33_27.Still010-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">The life of a jazz musician is a difficult life, because you want to play, you want to be, you want to get to the inner spirit and sometimes you drink or you use drugs or you smoke a lot. You do all these things to try to get the spirit out. So it’s a difficult existence and a lot of the great people that I have known, and in history, they kind of over-indulge, and they never sort of are able to balance their musical life with their personal life. Maybe it’s not necessary to do that. That is another question, I don’t know, but I’d like to see young musicians coming up that don’t smoke and that don’t drink to excess and don’t use drugs, and don’t sort of debilitate themselves. I think that’s where we should go. I think that is what guys should be doing. I don’t think you have to drink and use drugs to play good jazz, but that’s been the model for so long that a lot of guys get caught up in that, you know.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19208" style="width: 2023px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19208 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19208 size-full lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins, 1956" width="2023" height="2258" data-sizes="(max-width: 2023px) 100vw, 2023px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright.jpg 2023w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright-340x380.jpg 340w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright-681x760.jpg 681w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">June 22, 1956:  Rollins’ widely acclaimed album <em>Saxophone Colossus</em> was recorded on that date in New Jersey.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>Early in your career, you encountered great success and recognition, but you also experienced some of these problems — drugs and prison. Can you talk about that?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/lN9QyfAyZoc?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_55_33_25.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_55_33_25.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">Sonny Rollins: I used to be reticent about talking about that, because it was always like, “Well, let’s stigmatize this jazz musician. Let’s talk about, Oh, he’s a criminal.” But my wife, my dear departed wife used to tell me, “Well, no, Sonny, don’t be afraid. Don’t not want to talk about it, because after all, you have been through it, you came through it, and it’s a great experience. You have conquered it, so to speak.” So I don’t mind talking about it now.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p class="inputtext">Sometimes I wonder why I am asked that.</p> <p class="inputtext"><b>It’s important to understand the kind of obstacles people have to overcome to come out on the other end and achieve something great, as you have. That’s the only reason.</b></p> <p class="inputtext">Sonny Rollins: Well, that was the rationale actually, not to be ashamed about it. Most people might ask for the same reason, but people that are involved are super-sensitive, perhaps, anyway. But anyway, yeah, I got involved.</p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/V44ZTIM6Z6o?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_26_23_29.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_26_23_29.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">We were following our idols. Charlie Parker. And we were told Billie Holliday used drugs, and all this stuff. But my main influence — <i>our</i> main influence — was Charlie Parker; he was our messiah. And Charlie Parker used drugs, so all of us figured that, “Oh, if he used drugs, it’s okay.” But it wasn’t okay, because guys drop through the holes, you know. In my case, I followed Charlie Parker and began using. Well, a lot of guys were using drugs really. Fats Navarro, the great trumpet player, died at a very early age from drugs, and a lot of the guys were on drugs really, a lot of the great bebop players. And I went along and I got messed up, and it took me quite a while to straighten myself out, you know.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19210" style="width: 377px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="size-medium wp-image-19210 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-Q2001237-377x380.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-medium wp-image-19210 lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins takes a break during the recording of his 1957 album, "Sonny Rollins, Volume II." This photo by Francis Wolff has become one of the iconic images of jazz in the '50s. (© Mosaic Images/CORBIS)" width="377" height="380" data-sizes="(max-width: 377px) 100vw, 377px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-Q2001237-377x380.jpg 377w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-Q2001237-753x760.jpg 753w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-Q2001237-377x380.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Sonny Rollins takes a break during the recording of his 1957 album, <em>Sonny Rollins, Volume II</em>. That year, Rollins pioneered the use of bass and drums, without piano, as accompaniment for his saxophone solos, which became known as “strolling.” This photo by Francis Wolff has become one of the iconic images of jazz in the ’50s. (Corbis)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>How tough was it?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: It was pretty tough. It was very tough.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/cGQA7fM1VFs?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_27_14_19.Still015-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_27_14_19.Still015-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">I went through some really terrible times. I don’t know whether I should really even mention it, but you mentioned that I had to go to prison and all that stuff. I was in a state where they had me in a straitjacket at one time. Can you understand what it would feel like to be in a straitjacket? I know. I couldn’t either, but I was, and it was brought about by sort of a drug psychosis in prison. I mean I just went completely… But it was tough, it was tough. I mean at that time they put you in — there’s a place in New York they used to call the Tombs. You’ve probably heard of it. I mean it was like a living tomb, with all the people. So I was there, and the withdrawal — physical symptoms, which were unbelievable.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19214" style="width: 476px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19214 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001239.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19214 size-full lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins plays the tenor saxophone during the recording session for his "Newk's Time" album, September 1957. (Mosaic Images/CORBIS)" width="476" height="480" data-sizes="(max-width: 476px) 100vw, 476px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001239.jpg 476w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001239-377x380.jpg 377w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001239.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Sonny Rollins plays the tenor saxophone during the recording session for his <em>Newk’s Time</em> album, September 1957. Rollins acquired the nickname ‘Newk’ because of his resemblance to Brooklyn Dodgers’ pitcher Don Newcombe.</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">But I had my family. I was a very bad guy. I used to steal from my house. I was just an outlaw, an outcast. My father was in the Navy, he wasn’t really around during this time.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/WDXKx2_gIWo?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=110&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_44_57_09.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_44_57_09.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">I was a pretty bad guy. But my mother’s love and her belief in me, I think — and Charlie Parker, who took me aside and told me that this was not the way to be — that had a tremendous effect on me, so that I finally realized that, well, I am not going anyplace. I’m a pariah. People see me coming, they go across the street, you know. So I eventually was able to go to a hospital. There used to be a big hospital in New York — not in New York — in Kentucky, Lexington, which was a very good place. It was a place where you were able to treat addicts, something like the Betty Ford Clinic in later years. Anyway, you were treated in a humane manner, as a sick person, not as a criminal, and you went there for a certain amount of time, and you took what they called “the cure.” I went there voluntarily, and by that time I was determined to get away from drugs, so I was able to go there, and through my determination to do it, that place served me well.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p>If I didn’t have the determination to stop, it would not happen, because there are people that went there, that still used drugs when they came out. Several people over the years have come to me, asking me about Lexington. In fact, there was recently a guy who wants to write a book about Lexington, the rehabilitation center there.</p> <p><strong>During all this time, were you without your music?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: I wouldn’t say I was without my music. I always had my music. I would get involved with the bands in these institutions. My music was always with me.</p> <figure id="attachment_19226" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19226 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19226 size-full lazyload" alt="Legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins performed a solo improvisation on American themes at 20th Century Fox Studios during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement) " width="2280" height="1520" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins performed a solo improvisation on American themes at 20th Century Fox Studios during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement)</figcaption></figure><p><strong>You have described it, if you were quoted correctly, as walking into the lion’s den and coming out alive. Is that right?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Yeah, I guess so, although I think I might have a better chance with a lion than with some of these substances. But yeah. That, in effect, is what happens.</p> <p><strong>A lot has been written about the so-called sabbaticals that you have taken, this willingness to turn your back on your career, and not perform in public for a period of time, like when you went to practice on the Williamsburg Bridge. How do you explain these breaks in your career?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/QIHFzS2Dumk?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_15_01_24.Still013-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_15_01_24.Still013-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/integrity/">Integrity</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">Sonny Rollins: I have always been a person that has had a strong sense of right and wrong, a strong spiritual guide or guardian angel or belief maybe, I don’t know how to explain it, but a conscience maybe. There was always something inside of me that was talking to me all the time. When something talks to me, like the thing with the drugs, I realized something said, “Yeah,” and it finally came to me, “This is not the way to go.” I just have that in me, and when I find something that I want to do, I block out everything else, and I would do it. It’s the sense of right and wrong, so it doesn’t matter to me that people were saying, “How can you leave the music? Because they won’t accept you back if you go away. You will lose your edge,” and all. This was inconsequential to me, because I had an idea that I wanted to improve my <i>self</i>, my musical arsenal, if you will. So I do what I want to do, and that’s that. I am very strong about that, and this has held me in good stead, just listening to the inner voice. This is what I do, and I am happy about it, that I have that much determination, if you want to call it that. That’s what I have done all my life, and the sabbaticals were the same.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19220" style="width: 2000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19220 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19220 size-full lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" width="2000" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720.jpg 2000w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">On September 18, 2007, Sonny Rollins performed at Carnegie Hall in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of his first performance there. In the 2000s, Rollins regularly toured worldwide, playing venues throughout Europe, South America, Australia, and the Far East. Sonny Rollins has not performed in public since 2012. (John Abbott)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext">I went away from music for certain reasons. The bridge was the one you mentioned. That was sort of self-improvement.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/lcx5YTgQIu0?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0&end=41&version=3" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_08_11_08.Still002-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_08_11_08.Still002-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/integrity/">Integrity</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p class="inputtext">I realized I wasn’t sounding as good as my reputation was, so I wanted to kind of get to that point where I wouldn’t be ashamed to go on the bandstand, which happened to me one time on a job I was playing with… Elvin Jones, at that time, was the drummer playing with me. We used to go around, had a big sign, “Sonny Rollins is coming to town,” everybody was there, but I didn’t sound good, and I knew I wasn’t playing up to what I should be. So I said, “Okay, I am getting out of here. I am going to go and woodshed,” as they say, and get myself together.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><p class="inputtext">So I do things like that, if I feel that there is some reason to do it. Anyway, that was the bridge and other things.</p> <figure id="attachment_19205" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-19205 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-19205 size-full lazyload" alt="Sonny Rollins, 2014 (John Abbott)" width="2280" height="3420" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott.jpg 2280w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20181029151315im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Sonny Rollins moved to Woodstock, New York in 2013. That spring, he made a guest television appearance on <em>The Simpsons</em> and received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Juilliard School in New York City. (J. Abbott)</figcaption></figure><p class="inputtext"><b>How did you end up practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City? Could you even hear yourself while you were out there?</b></p> <p class="inputtext">Sonny Rollins: Well you know, that was an accident. I lived down on the Lower East Side, and experienced some of the problems with trying to play a horn with neighbors, so I had to find someplace to practice. I practiced in the house because I had to practice, but I felt guilty sometimes, because I’m a sensitive person, and I know that people need privacy in the apartments. So anyway, I just happened to be walking on Delancey Street one day. That was the neighborhood I was in. I had moved down to the Lower East Side, and we had a small apartment there. It was a nice time. I had a lot of friends there. I was welcomed really in the neighborhood by the people on the Lower East Side at that time. Anyway…</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20181029151315if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/xasVpPgHlbA?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_46_34_14.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-2006-Upscale-1-of-2.00_46_34_14.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I was walking along Delancey Street, and I just happened to look up and see these steps. I wasn’t thinking about anything, so I just walked up there, and I walked up the steps, and there, of course, was the bridge, and it was this nice, big expanse going over. There was nobody up there. So I walked, I started walking, I said, “Wow. This is what I have been looking for. This is a private place. I can blow my horn as loud as I want.” Because the boats are coming under, and the subway is coming across, and cars, and I said, “Wow, this is perfect,” and it was just serendipity. Then, I began getting my horn and going up there, and it was a perfect place to practice. Every now and then somebody would come across, but it was perfect. I would go up there at night, I would go up there in the day, I would go up there, I would be up there 15, 16 hours.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>To go back to the beginning, please tell us what your childhood was like. What was it like to grow up in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: I was born in Harlem in 1930, and of course, I don’t know how to compare it with anyplace else. I never grew up anyplace else, but it was a nice place. I had a lot of friends. There was a lot of music, a lot of music around. I had music in my home, but there was also music in a lot of after-hour clubs and speakeasies. So it was a place where — even though I was too young to go into places like the Cotton Club and Elks Rendezvous — I sort of imbibed all of this black culture which was around me. So I think it was a beautiful place to grow up, especially for a person that wanted to be a musician like myself.</p> <p><strong>What kind of a kid were you?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: I used to make a lot of jokes and play around when I was a kid. They used to call me Jester, that was one of my nicknames. I guess I was a pretty good guy. When I was about 13 or 14, although the guys around me were a little older, they selected me to be the president of our little club on the block we lived on. Years later, that struck me. I said, “Well gee, why did they select me?” Not trying to be, “Gee, what a great guy I am!” but that might have had something to do with the fact that I eventually ended up being a band leader. Anyway, I liked sports. I played a lot of city sports as a youth on the streets of New York. Stickball, boxball, marbles, all of these things that we played in New York City. I guess you could say that I was sort of an athletic person.</p> <p><strong>Did you like school?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: I liked school, but I had one teacher in school when I was in elementary school, her name was Mrs. Love, and she was the most wonderful woman. I’ll never forget her because she skipped me into a higher grade. I was doing the work, but she inspired me to do good school work, and I will never forget Mrs. Love or Miss Love. I don’t know if it was Mrs., you know. But she was the first teacher that really inspired me to excel, and so I guess I began to like school a little better, and then, of course, I had a few other teachers, a few, but Mrs. Love was sort of the one that I always remember. Because of her, I guess I would have to say that I liked school.</p> <p><strong>Do you remember any books that you especially liked?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Books? Well, I guess I went to sort of a disadvantaged high school. We did take <em>Macbeth</em>, but I really didn’t understand it. It wasn’t explained very well. The teachers were a little bit lacking. When I was a kid, there was a book that I got. My father was a career Navy person, he was in the Navy all of his career, so one time they took the children of the Navy families to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he was stationed at the time, and had a Christmas party, and I remember that one of my gifts was a book about Chinese outrigger boats, and I never forget that.</p> <p>I wasn’t a particularly avid reader until later. Later on I became really a voracious reader, and I sort of educated myself, because I just went to high school, you know. I just had a high school education, and probably a sub-par high school really.</p> <p><strong>Did you have a useful education?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Yes. My brother was sort of a classical player — of violin, my older brother — and he used to practice around the house all the time, and then my sister, my older sister, she played, and they were both classically trained. So I was the youngest kid, and I listened to them playing and I enjoyed it tremendously. So they tried to start me on piano — about six years old, I guess it was — but you know, by that time I was more interested in playing in the street. So I never — it wasn’t until I wanted to play the saxophone that I began. So then I had a saxophone teacher, and went to little music schools and stuff like that, not private teachers. But I never had sort of the formal education that my older brother and sister had, so I always felt inferior to them.</p> <p><strong>Do you remember getting your first saxophone?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Oh yeah. My first saxophone. I had an uncle that played saxophone, and my mother took me over to see him. I think his name was Hubert, so she said, “Well Hubert, he wants to play saxophone.” So anyway, Hubert got me this little used horn, of course. I mean it was okay, but I mean it was a used alto saxophone. And I remember, boy, when I got that horn, I was really happy. I played it, and it was great. I had pictures taken with it and everything. This was, I was about eight years old at that time.</p> <p><strong>Did you take to the horn right away? Was there something inside of you that just responded to this instrument?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Well, I listened to a lot of music, and I became enamored of this fellow Louis Jordan. He had a rhythm and blues band, I guess you would call it today. My uncle’s girlfriend had a lot of his records. My uncle used to take care of me a lot, quite a bit. In fact, I loved going to my Uncle Reuben and Lizzie, his girlfriend. I loved going there because he would take me to these cowboy movies and then I would hear this music. She had all of these old blues records, guitar players like Arthur Crudup and Lonnie Johnson. So I loved it when my uncle had to take care of me in the day sometimes. Anyway, I listened to Louis Jordan. Also, just as a coincidence…</p> <p>Louis Jordan was playing in the club right next to my elementary school in Harlem, and every day, coming out of school, I would see these 8 by 10s with Louis Jordan. He had on the cutaway tuxedo, and the shiny horn, and the white bowtie, the whole thing, you know. So boy, I said, “This is what I am going to be. This is what I want to be, a saxophone player.” And I liked his music. So I sort of decided pretty early that that’s what I wanted to do.</p> <p><strong>Who else influenced you?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: You mean in the musical sense?</p> <p><strong>In any realm, in any way.</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Well, okay. I was influenced also besides — well, in the musical realm, I had Coleman Hawkins. After Louis Jordan, I began to gravitate to a more sophisticated — I might put it that way — not comparing the two, but Coleman Hawkins had a more intellectual approach maybe to music. He played a lot of very difficult things. So he really became my idol. I wanted to play tenor, and had alto before. So anyway, in the musical field, I would say those were my early idols — saxophone. I always loved Fats Waller, because I heard him as a boy, and I just loved anything he did.</p> <p>Other than the, my grandmother was what you may call a black activist. She was involved with Marcus Garvey. You know, Marcus Garvey and the Communist Party, all these things were sort of lumped together. I don’t believe she was a Communist, but she was a black nationalist. Certain groups would lump them all together, but there were distinctions. At any rate, I became a devotee of Paul Robeson, because my grandmother used to take me to a lot of his rallies, and I remember marching and everything for Paul Robeson. Let’s see, who else was a big influence on me? Marcus Garvey was a little bit before. I knew of him, but I didn’t really know him enough. Paul Robeson, I was there and saw him speak and everything, and saw him in the movies, so he was a big hero to me.</p> <p><strong>How do you think you were affected by that kind of activism when you were a young man?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: It’s an interesting question. I am a very politically aware person. I am not anti-white or something like that, never been like that, but I am a politically active person. One of the big favorites in the house was Henry Wallace, President Roosevelt’s Vice President. I think he ran on the Communist Party. Did he?</p> <p><strong>I think he ran as an independent.</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Independent, right, okay, right. But he was a big person in the house. We were fans of the New Deal, of course. We were also on what they called “home relief” at that time. I remember going to the home relief place and getting the boxes of food.</p> <p>Franklin Roosevelt was a pretty big person, so I think that is what I reflected. I was very politically active all my life, but as I said, I am not an angry person. I am not angry at anybody. Every now and then you get mad, but I am not an angry person, I never was. It’s just against my personality. I think I have a very mild, spiritual side, which doesn’t allow me to get too politically active. I think I might be a conscientious objector or something like that if it ever came down to it, but I certainly believe in human rights.</p> <p><strong>Did you experience discrimination?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Oh sure. I think it’s impossible to be black in the United States and not experience discrimination. In fact, I was talking to Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) tonight, and he was asking me about when I went to Benjamin Franklin High School.</p> <p>My group of students, coming from Edward Stitt Junior High School, were sort of the first black, integrated busing group really, because Benjamin Franklin High School was a brand-new high school, which was built down in an Italian part of town, Little Italy — no, not Little Italy, because Little Italy is downtown — this was Italian Harlem, 116th Street and Pleasant Avenue. Anyway, this was a brand-new school and I guess they were having trouble with the student population and they needed to disperse it, or whatever the reason, but we were the experiment, and we went. I took the bus and then the train down to Benjamin Franklin High School. We met a lot of resistance from the neighborhood. Frank Sinatra came down to our school and sang — and told the kids not to fight — in our little auditorium. The Nat King Cole trio came down, and said, “Don’t fight,” and all of that, and it was good. I think it helped a lot, and the kids began to get along.</p> <p>Coming from that neighborhood, there was also a Communist person who was a big hero in our house, Vito Marcantonio. He was a Communist, and he came from that part of Harlem, Italian Harlem. Vito Marcantonio was a very liberal person. See, these lines are blurred, because to be in favor of treating a black person as an equal, some people would say, “Oh well, he’s a Communist,” automatically. This is the thinking that prevailed, as you know, in many parts of the country. Vito Marcantonio was great, and he was from where we went to school, that area. So I was a politically active person. I was always interested in how to make the society a better place. I still am, because it’s still not a perfect place.</p> <p><strong>When did you start playing professionally?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Once I started, when I was around eight years old or so, I knew that’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a musician. So I kept playing, I was really at it. You know, there is one thing about me, I was a guy that would practice. Once I started practicing, my mother had to call me to stop practicing. “Come and eat dinner!” Because I was in my own world, and I am like that up to this day really, except that I am older now, and I can’t practice like 15 hours a day, but I still have the same inclination and same spirit. But I kept at it, and by the time I was about 14, I guess, we got a little neighborhood band. Then, by the time I was 17, we had a neighborhood band, and I was beginning to get recognized by some of the older people, older musicians. Then, by 18, I made my first recordings. So I was straight, I was on that track. I was on the track to be a professional from that early age, from eight years old I would say.</p> <p><strong>By the time you were 20 you were playing and recording with Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Monk, Bud Powell. That is rarefied company for a young man. What did they see in you?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: That is what gave me encouragement, that they would take to a young kid. Then I knew, “Well gee, I must have something going.” Even though I was never shy about playing with them, but I was still in awe of them. So the fact that I was accepted by Thelonious Monk and all these guys, I mean they looked at me almost as being an equal. In fact, some of them did. Talking about it now it is somewhat embarrassing to me, but in actuality, some of these great musicians looked at me as being contemporary with them. Of course, I was much younger, at least four or five years younger than most of the guys.</p> <p>So it was a source of gratification to me that they thought I was good enough. That really gave me the impetus. “Well, I must be on the right track. Keep playing.”</p> <p><strong>You became known as a great improviser and innovator. Was that true even then as a young man?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Well, I guess they called me that, I don’t know, you know. I don’t know how technical you want to get, but I consider myself sort of a “stream-of-consciousness” player, or what later was to be known as a “free jazz” player. I think I am basically. That’s what I am. I just play stream of consciousness. So I had to sort of learn in a way how to play with the strictures of bebop and all these things. I had to learn that, because I am really just a natural player, you know.</p> <p><strong>Where do you find your inspiration? Where do you get your musical ideas? Where do they come from?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: As a kid, as I said, I listened to my brother playing the violin, études, practicing. I listened to a lot of music around. Fats Waller and all of these James P. Johnson piano rolls. We had a piano roll of his. I just heard a lot of music. Louis Jordan. I used to hear the Amateur Night in Harlem from the Apollo Theater. All the bands would come through for one week. So I just heard a lot of music, you know. I went to a lot of movies, because in the days when I was growing up, that was the television of the day, movies. So I went to a lot of movies, I heard a lot of movie music, and liked a lot of the music, Jerome Kern and all of these people. Jerome Kern is one of my favorites, but I have others, too. So that’s where I guess I get my inspiration from. I just have a lot of music in my mind that I heard as a child, and I guess it comes out when I am playing. I know a lot of songs, words of some of them, but I mean I know a lot of melodies. My head is just filled with music, and when I’m improvising, they come out at different times. It surprises me. Gee, I played something that I didn’t know was in my mind, the recesses of my mind. I guess that’s where you might say I get my ideas from, if you wanted to put it that way.</p> <p><strong>How would you put it?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Those things are in my mind, but I am looking for a deeper level of creation. These sources are sort of on the surface, but I find that I am looking for something deeper. I think there is a deeper level that comes in at some point, but without a doubt, these are my influences that are in my mind, are the movies and jazz bands, and everything, all music. I like all kinds of music, really.</p> <p><strong>This is a question we ask of many people. When you do what you do, what are you trying to achieve?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: I am trying to get a deeper sense of expression musically. I mean people tell me, “Oh gee, Sonny. You still practice. How come?” Well, I am still searching. I still am trying to get to something hopefully more profound than what I’m doing now, and I think it’s possible. I think it’s there, but it’s not always — every now and then I get a little snatch of it.</p> <p><strong>Is it something you can define, or is it something that you will know when you get there?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: When I have a particularly good performance, I know it. But you know, it doesn’t happen more than maybe a few times a year — if I’m lucky — that I really get into something which is really where I would like to be all the time. But it is something, you know, it’s something that… I am not there yet. I hope there is time to get there, because I’m not 15 years old anymore, but there is something else there that I am still striving for.</p> <p><strong>If you are not satisfied with the way you blow your horn, if you are still searching, is dissatisfaction part of the process of achieving something?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: In my case, it is. I am not sure about other people. That’s my thing. I’m dissatisfied and I’m always striving. There’s musicians that I know who are more talented than me, and more gifted than me. They don’t have to do that, they can just… And a lot of guys have learned their craft and they get to a place, and they are satisfied, and the stuff they do is great. So it’s an individual thing. In my case, my thing is constantly looking for something else. I’m not satisfied yet. I know there is more there. I don’t think I have expressed myself yet really, but every now and then, a few times a year, I have a tremendous concert where I really feel that I am beginning to break the barrier and really get into a deeper spiritual place, and it happens. When it happens, then, “Wow! I’m right. There is something else. There is something more than what is here.”</p> <p><strong>How do you measure your own success, your sense of achievement? What does achievement mean to you?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Well, it means the ability to stay in a good hotel, to not worry a lot about financial things. I am not a big movie star. I am not in that category, but I am able to put food on the table. Success enables me to do that. I am not a person that wants a lot of those things. I am not a materialistic person, so it is easy for me to satisfy those things really. Nevertheless, I know there are people who find it difficult economically sometimes. So success probably means that. It doesn’t mean as much because I am still searching for a deeper expression.</p> <p>I don’t feel myself completely satisfied, I mean as a success. In the material way, I am known, some people know me, and life is maybe a little bit easier. Like in the little town I live in, in Upstate New York, I have been getting a lot of publicity and everybody up there knows. I have blown my cover. Everybody is, “Oh gee, Sonny!” People may treat me a little better. “Wow! This guy is somebody!” But you know, I wanted to be a perfect individual.</p> <p>I am a spiritual person to the extent that I understand what life is about, how difficult it is, how difficult it is. How difficult it is for me to kind of be the person I want to be, better habits, better eating habits, better exercise habits, better Golden Rule habits towards other people. All these things, according to my spiritual belief, is important for my development of my soul, so to speak. I mean I don’t want to get too esoteric here, but this is what is important to me. So, that’s what I am trying to do, that’s what I want.</p> <p>That’s the hardest thing, for people to take care of themselves and not overeat, or do these little things. We know the difference between right and wrong. We know that inside, even though we disregard it. This is the struggle of life, to be better people. That’s how I figured out what life is all about. This is what I am trying to do. Life is an opportunity, but the hardest battle is with ourselves. That is what I realize, and that’s what I am doing.</p> <p><strong>As an artist, how do you know when you reach that level of expression that you are searching for?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: There are certain concerts that I play, performances when I do feel that I have reached the higher level. When that happens as a normality rather than rarely, then I will feel that I am there. Then there will probably be something else I need to do, but I do feel that I am getting closer to more of a complete expression. It’s a reachable goal, it is not something which is never going to happen, but that doesn’t mean that will be the end. There will always be something else to do. I think I can get to a better place.</p> <p><strong>When bright young people come to you for advice, what do you say to them?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: I would say that they have to love what they are doing. Never mind the material. A lot of people come to me — a lot of kids — “Gee, Sonny. What should I practice? How can I get to be a successful musician?” You have to love what you are doing, and if you are not hurting anybody or harming anybody else, that’s it. Just stay on that path. If you are looking for money for material success, I don’t know. There is no advice, because I don’t want to think like that, because I don’t believe that’s the meaning of life. I am not a materialist, I don’t believe in consumerism and all this stuff.</p> <p>If a young person that’s a scientist, or wants to be a musician, wants to be a painter, sculptor, and you love it, then, give yourself to it, that’s all. This is the only way to do it, that’s its own reward really. And if you succeed, I don’t know. It’s a matter of what you just said, “What is success?” I don’t know, but giving yourself to something you believe in, that is success. So I would tell people to really get with what you are doing, with abandon, do your thing and really want to do it, and believe in it, and block out the rest of the world, because you are the world. You are the world, not these other people around you. Your project, your love, your art, that’s the world. That’s where you have to be.</p> <p><strong>As we look ahead in the 21st century, what concerns you most about this world we live in?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Well you know, I studied yoga. I went to India back in the ’60s when I was interested in yoga and studying. Did different philosophies and so on. There is a concept there that there are different ages of existence. As we go into the 21st century, we shouldn’t put too much faith in how the century is going to come out, because I am going to revert to what my answer was a moment ago. You, I, individually, that is the war. That’s the battle that we have. It doesn’t matter what happens, in a sense, to the environment, to nations fighting each other, to tribalism, to diseases taking over. That doesn’t really matter. What matters is you winning the battle with yourself.</p> <p>In Indian philosophy, there are different ages of existence. You have one, and then another age, something like what people used to talk about, the Aquarian Age. Things go into different phases, and existence changes. These are things that are beyond my mind. I am a simple human being, but the principle I know is there. I can’t explain everything, but the principle of us taking care of our own problems individually — not nationwide, not how to solve the 21st century — individually, that’s to me the whole ballgame, the ball of wax. So when you say the 21st century, it’s not really important. You could look at it. There are so many problems, but don’t get bogged down in those. The problem is within ourselves. That’s the problem.</p> <p>The real place where I feel comfortable, and I think most people do feel comfortable, is in themselves, and in that sense, we don’t need to worry about the 21st century. Do you understand what I mean? I don’t mean turned off and don’t help an old lady up off the street, I don’t mean that. I just mean put it in perspective and realize that our battle is with us. Once we do that, the whole universe will be better.</p> <p><strong>One last question. How would you like to be remembered?</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: I would like to be remembered as someone who made choices and tried to make myself a better person, and who didn’t listen to the crowd, and went the way that my conscience — if you want to put it that way — I listened to my conscience. I would like to be remembered as a person that did that. Therefore I was able to make certain changes in my personal life, and strengthen myself as a person, individual. My music and all that stuff? I don’t even think about that. My thing is my personhood and trying to be a better person and fighting that fight within myself.</p> <p>That’s how I would like to be remembered, so that other people will say, “Sonny stopped eating pork,” for instance, or he stopped doing some detrimental thing. He made that fight, and he did it, and he’s better for it, so that’s how I would like to be remembered.</p> <p>To be remembered like that, I have got to keep fighting, which I am doing every day really. This is a constant fight, until we leave this planet and go someplace else, but the fight is constant, and it’s great. It’s a great opportunity that life gives us to use it and do something in a positive way.</p> <p><strong>People are also going to remember Sonny Rollins for being a great tenor saxophone player.</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Well if so, that’s great, I would appreciate that. I’ve spent a lot of time practicing and working, and I’ve played with some great people, and they’ve liked me, I’ve liked them. So as far as my profession? Yeah, I’m not ashamed of that. I have done a lot and influenced some people, and I have some young people say, “Oh gee, I really like your playing,” and “You changed my way of life” even. Some people have said that to me. So I am happy about that, but my real joy, if I could be remembered, would be to say, “Sonny was a guy that wanted to improve himself regardless of where society was at.”</p> <p>If I could get to that point, I would say, “Wow. I really made a difference.” Probably would never happen, but you asked the question, so that is what I would like, to be remembered like that.</p> <p><strong>Thank you very much. You have been terrific. You are very generous. Thank you.</strong></p> <p>Sonny Rollins: Okay.</p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Sonny Rollins Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>26 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3080895008606" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny.jpg" data-image-caption="Young Sonny Rollins." data-image-copyright="young-Sonny" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny-291x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/young-Sonny-581x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5049504950495" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_641.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins was joined onstage by the phenomenal young tap dance master Savion Glover for a joint improvisation at the 20th Century Fox Studios during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="wp-06Academy_641" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_641-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_641-505x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_639.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins was joined onstage by the phenomenal young tap dance master Savion Glover for a joint improvisation at the 20th Century Fox Studios during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="wp-06Academy_639" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_639-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_639-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins receives the Gold Medal of the Academy of Achievement at the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. Basketball Hall of Fame great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar spoke of the inspiration he had derived as a young athlete from hearing Sonny Rollins perform. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="wp-06Academy_623" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_623-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606.jpg" data-image-caption="Legendary jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins performed a solo improvisation on American themes at 20th Century Fox Studios during the 2006 International Achievement Summit in Los Angeles. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="wp-06Academy_606" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/wp-06Academy_606-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd.jpg" data-image-caption=""The Bridge" is a studio album by jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins, recorded in 1962. It was Rollins's first release, in 1959, following a three-year hiatus, and was his first recording for Bluebird/RCA Victor. The saxophonist was joined by the musicians with whom he recorded for the next segment of his career: Jim Hall on guitar, Bob Cranshaw on double bass and Ben Riley on drums. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015." data-image-copyright="sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/sonny-rollins-the-bridge-2cd-760x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.98552631578947" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David.jpg" data-image-caption="President Barack Obama presents the 2010 National Medal of Arts to Sonny Rollins for his contributions to American jazz music, March 2, 2011. (Ruth David)" data-image-copyright="SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David-380x375.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SonnyRollins1-Photo-by-Ruth-David-760x749.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4048059149723" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Sonny-Rollins-2.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Sonny-Rollins-2-270x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Sonny-Rollins-2-541x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.83026315789474" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_rgb8-e1438717321457.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_rgb8-e1438717321457-380x315.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_rgb8-e1438717321457-760x631.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.326352530541" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_rgb7.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_rgb7-286x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_rgb7-573x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins (John Abbott)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins_Sonny_0720-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-AP-070108043095.jpg" data-image-caption="Tenor saxophonist and jazz great Sonny Rollins at his home in Germantown, New York, January 2007. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)" data-image-copyright="Rollins, Sonny AP 070108043095" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-AP-070108043095-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-AP-070108043095-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65789473684211" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10.jpg" data-image-caption="American jazz musician Sonny Rollins playing the tenor saxophone in the mid-1950s. (Photo by Bob Parent/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins Performs" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10-380x250.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-53214076_10-760x500.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66447368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3232168_10.jpg" data-image-caption="American rock and roll musician Chuck Berry performing on stage, circa 1955. (Photo by Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Chuck Berry" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3232168_10-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3232168_10-760x505.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.76973684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins in 1965, back from his sabbatical and taking on all comers. (Photo by Frank Driggs/Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10-380x293.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3228371_10-760x585.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0453920220083" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10.jpg" data-image-caption="Old friends Miles Davis and Sonny Rollins reunited at The Newport Jazz Festival in 1957. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Sonny And Miles" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10-363x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Sonny-Getty-3209339_10-727x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0084033613445" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001239.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins plays the tenor saxophone during the recording session for his "Newk's Time" album, September 1957. (Mosaic Images/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Saxophonist Sonny Rollins" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001239-377x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001239.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0084033613445" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001236.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins as he plays the tenor saxophone during the live recording session for his "A Night at the Village Vanguard" album, November 1957. (Mosaic Images/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Saxophonist Sonny Rollins" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001236-377x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/rollins-sonny-corbis-Q2001236.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.72105263157895" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-U919215ACME.jpg" data-image-caption="Former Vice President Henry Wallace (L) and actor-singer-activist Paul Robeson (R) with U.S. Congressman Vito Marcantonio. First elected as a Republican in 1934, Marcantonio was elected to six more terms in Congress as a member of the American Labor Party. All three men were heroes to the Rollins family of Harlem in the 1940s. They are shown here before a 1949 rally in Madison Square Garden, supporting Marcantonio's unsuccessful campaign for Mayor of New York City. (© Bettman/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Paul Robeson Standing and Talking with Politicians at Labor Party Rally" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-U919215ACME-380x274.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-U919215ACME-760x548.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75131578947368" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-U000233ACME.jpg" data-image-caption="Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd U.S. President, is shown with his Vice President, Henry Agard Wallace. (Bettmann/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Henry Wallace Outside with Crowd of People" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-U000233ACME-380x285.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-U000233ACME-760x571.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.0092961487384" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-Q2001237.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins takes a break during the recording of his 1957 album, "Sonny Rollins, Volume II." This photo by Francis Wolff has become one of the iconic images of jazz in the '50s. (© Mosaic Images/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Saxophonist Sonny Rollins" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-Q2001237-377x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-Q2001237-753x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2925170068027" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181.jpg" data-image-caption="Saxophonist, bandleader, vocalist, songwriter and all-around entertainer, Louis Jordan was a popular star in the 1940s, and a hero to the young Sonny Rollins. Louis Jordan's style of "jump blues" provided a transition from the swing music of the 1940s to the rock and roll of the 1950s. (John Springer/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="Jazz Vocalist Louis Jordan" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181-294x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Rollins-Corbis-JS1567181-588x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.1160058737151" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins, 1956" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins, 1956" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright-340x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Chuck-UPright-681x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins, 2014 (John Abbott)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins, 2014 (John Abbott)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/482_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-2014-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/278_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins, 2014 (John Abbott)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins, 2014 (John Abbott)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/278_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/278_Sonny-Rollins-by-John-Abbott-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott.jpg" data-image-caption="Sonny Rollins, 2014 (John Abbott)" data-image-copyright="Sonny Rollins, 2014 (John Abbott)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/08/128x_Sonny-Rollins_June110-by-JohnAbbott-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on December 19, 2016</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever’s story, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever sports athletic help-mankind " data-year-inducted="1989" data-achiever-name="Abdul-Jabbar"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/abd0-013a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/01/abd0-013a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Basketball Scoring Champion</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1989</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts small-town-rural-upbringing be-a-performer difficulty-with-school racism-discrimination poverty ambitious extroverted resourceful spiritual-religious play-music " data-year-inducted="2004" data-achiever-name="King"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/king-bb-001-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2015/12/king-bb-001-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">B.B. 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Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. 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Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20181029151315/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. 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