**Winner of the American Book Award (2023)**
**Longlisted for
the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award (2023)**
The long-awaited
first full biography of legendary jazz saxophonist and composer Sonny
Rollins
Sonny Rollins has
long been considered an enigma. Known as the "Saxophone
Colossus," he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz
improvisers of all time, winning Grammys, the Austrian Cross of
Honor, Sweden's Polar Music Prize and a National Medal of Arts. A
bridge from bebop to the avant-garde, he is a lasting link to the
golden age of jazz, pictured in the iconic "Great Day in Harlem"
portrait. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the
backstage life of the man once called "the only jazz recluse"
has gone largely untold--until now.
Based on more than
200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and
collaborators, as well as Rollins' extensive personal archive,
Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this
legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and
environmentalist. A child of the Harlem Renaissance, Rollins'
precocious talent landed him on the bandstand and in the recording
studio with Bud Powell, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis
and Dizzy Gillespie, or playing opposite Billie Holiday. An icon in
his own right, he recorded Tenor Madness, featuring John
Coltrane; Way Out West;
Freedom Suite, the first civil rights-themed album of the hard
bop era; A Night at the Village Vanguard; and the 1956 classic
Saxophone Colossus.
Yet his meteoric
rise to fame was not without its challenges. He served two sentences
on Rikers Island and won his battle with heroin addiction. In 1959,
Rollins took a two-year sabbatical from recording and performing,
practicing up to 16 hours a day on the Williamsburg Bridge. In 1968,
he left again to study at an ashram in India. He returned to
performing from 1971 until his retirement in 2012.
The story of Sonny
Rollins--innovative, unpredictable, larger than life--is the story of
jazz itself, and Sonny's own narrative is as timeless and timely as
the art form he represents. Part jazz oral history told in the
musicians' own words, part chronicle of one man's quest for social
justice and spiritual enlightenment, this is the definitive biography
of one of the most enduring and influential artists in jazz and
American history.