{"id":90,"date":"2026-05-27T16:41:18","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2026-05-27T16:41:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:41:18","slug":"the-last-of-the-jazz-titans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"The Last of the Jazz Titans"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In August 1958, Esquire <\/em>invited 58 jazz musicians to meet on a stoop in Harlem for a photo shoot. The resulting picture, now known as Harlem 1958<\/em>, became legendary for collecting some of the genre\u2019s greatest talents, stretching from the swing era (Count Basie, Gene Krupa) to the peaks of bebop (Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie). The assembled musicians may not have realized that rock and roll was on the verge of taking over pop music, thus sweeping jazz to the margins\u2014but the fact that it was made this photo a historic snapshot.<\/p>\n

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The last living participant of that shoot was the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins, who died on Monday at the age of 95. By the end of his life, no jazz musician of his importance was left\u2014but then again, hardly anyone ever reached Rollins\u2019s colossal stature. Rollins made his first recordings in 1949, when he was 18 years old, and over the next several decades he played with nearly every modern great: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane. Rollins didn\u2019t just make some of the genre\u2019s finest recordings; his muscular sound and intense intellect turned him into an embodiment of jazz itself. \u201cHe may be the greatest virtuoso that jazz has ever produced,\u201d the influential critic Francis Davis once wrote.<\/p>\n

A native New Yorker, Rollins emerged onto the local scene during the \u201940s, which is commonly viewed as the moment when jazz went from mass entertainment to something resembling a finer art. To hear Rollins in a concert hall, as was typical late in his career, could feel torturous, because his music made you want to stand up and move. Unlike many modern jazz compositions, his were hummable earworms\u2014the sleazy strut of \u201cDoxy\u201d; the syncopated, funky \u201cOleo.\u201d His most famous piece, \u201cSt. Thomas,\u201d is a calypso-influenced number that epitomizes jazz\u2019s cosmopolitanism. Named for his mother\u2019s home in the Virgin Islands, the tune comes from a Caribbean lullaby she sang him, which, in turn, was derived from an 18th-century English folk song.<\/p>\n

Whether writing a song or soloing, Rollins always had swing<\/em>, that tough-to-define but essential quality possessed by any good jazz musician\u2014the way they find a rhythmic groove, pulling the music along and getting toes tapping. \u201cHe could play a solo using one pitch that would swing so violently you couldn\u2019t believe it,\u201d the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis said in Ken Burns\u2019s Jazz<\/em>\u2014a statement I assumed he meant hyperbolically until years later, when I heard Rollins\u2019s solo on \u201cSonnymoon for Two,\u201d from 1958\u2019s A Night at the Village Vanguard<\/em>. That record demonstrated that Rollins didn\u2019t even need a full trio backing him to swing: He often played with just a bassist and a drummer, which placed more burden on him to fill the space, but also meant he wasn\u2019t bound to follow someone else\u2019s chords.<\/p>\n

Rollins was a playful improviser, a master of referencing other songs when performing a solo. When he really got going, he could shred as hard as any metal guitarist, playing for 10 or 20 minutes at a time. During a 1986 concert taped for a documentary, Rollins\u2014then in his mid-50s\u2014leapt from a stage during an unaccompanied solo and broke his heel, then lay on his back and resumed playing. He sported a mohawk in the \u201960s, long before the look was fashionable, and guested on the Rolling Stones\u2019s 1981 album Tattoo You<\/em>. As it gets going, his solo on the Stones\u2019s \u201cNeighbours\u201d demonstrates an easy proficiency with honking rock idioms before careening in a weirder direction; Rollins was dismissive of the record but recounted hearing it at a supermarket and being intrigued by the horn work before realizing he was listening to himself.<\/p>\n

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But Rollins wasn\u2019t just a great soloist. He was a serious and introspective musician, which made him able to relate to old-school jazzmen and upstart avant-gardists alike. Rollins was cocky enough to name a record Saxophone Colossus<\/em> when he was just 27 years old but humble enough to leave the scene two years later, feeling that he had fallen behind newer players such as Coltrane on the New York scene. During this self-exile, he practiced for as many as 15 hours a day on the Williamsburg Bridge in all types of weather. (For years, the jazz fan Jeff Caltabiano has pushed to rename the bridge for Rollins. That didn\u2019t happen in his lifetime, but it\u2019s never too late.)<\/p>\n

When Rollins returned to the scene in 1961, musicians were hotly debating new styles, including Ornette Coleman\u2019s \u201cfree jazz,\u201d which discarded the complicated harmonies of bebop. Many of Rollins\u2019s older peers dismissed Coleman\u2019s music as crude, but Rollins embraced it, recruiting\u00a0 members of Coleman\u2019s group to play with him. That commitment to exploration didn\u2019t dim with age. A half century later, at Rollins\u2019s birthday celebration in 2010, he announced that a guest would join him. When Coleman ambled onstage, the audience gasped and broke into applause. The men began a friendly saxophone joust\u2014their first and only performance together\u2014and Rollins demonstrated that even at 80, he could play as far out as anyone.<\/p>\n

He was eventually forced to quit performing altogether in 2014 because of respiratory issues, but he came to a surprisingly zen conclusion about giving up an instrument he\u2019d played for some 70 years. \u201cWhen I had to stop playing it was quite traumatic,\u201d he said in 2020. \u201cBut I realized that instead of lamenting and crying, I should be grateful for the fact that I was able to do music all of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

After his retirement, he continued delivering wisdom\u2014now through his words, rather than his music. A frequent topic in those conversations was reincarnation, of which Rollins was sure. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in reincarnation, I accept reincarnation,\u201d he told the journalist Justin Joffe. \u201cI don\u2019t believe, I know.\u201d When someone so towering dies, we\u2019re accustomed to saying that we won\u2019t see their like again. But who are we to second-guess Sonny Rollins?<\/p>\n

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Sonny Rollins, who died this week, was the embodiment of the genre itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":89,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Last of the Jazz Titans - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=90\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Last of the Jazz Titans - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sonny Rollins, who died this week, was the embodiment of the genre itself.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=90\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-05-27T16:41:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/111e93e537f6b5b35febba563780a97c.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"625\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=90#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=90\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"The Last of the Jazz Titans\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-05-27T16:41:18+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=90\"},\"wordCount\":1038,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=90#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/05\\\/111e93e537f6b5b35febba563780a97c.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Culture\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=90#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=90\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=90\",\"name\":\"The Last of the Jazz Titans - 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