The O'Zone | The Bridge (a Jazz Legend starring Sonny Rollins)

Reality and mythology…and a magic dream world between the two is the location of this week’s O’Zone. Sonny Rollins, saxophone, Colossus out of Sugar Hill in Harlem. You know the name, the music, and the legend of the bridge…no? Let me tell you, then… 

I knew the name Sonny Rollins from my Dad, who called him “Newk”. He spoke in reverent tones about the sax giant who stood 6’ 2” and was a commanding presence: a Colossus. But my Dad wasn’t a talker or a storyteller, so I was left with curiosity in a pre-smartphone world.

But I learned about Walter Theodore Rollins from my dear friend Ricky Diamond (a pretty good tenor player in his own right).

Ricky was a tenor player. He was my friend Marty’s older brother, but I found Ricky to be more interesting. Marty was a handsome young African American, and girls chased after him. I found myself being a wing man mostly, but wound up in a Soul Revue band with Ricky when he discovered I was a pretty good bassist who could sight read.

“So, this cat was famous,” Ricky shared, “but he wasn’t satisfied. Dig, he had contemporaries like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, and he felt the need to shrug off his fame for a deeper existence.” 

He continued, “He was dressing up corny songs with his heroic bluster and his burly tenor sound. It left him restless and troubled. He couldn’t woodshed in his apartment without the neighbors playing percussion on the wall next door, so he left into the Lower East Side night to find a place to sweat.”  

Meanwhile…picture the animated cartoon poem:

A big man of super-heroic proportions slipped out of his brownstone walk-up with a saxophone strapped across his back like a samurai sword,           brass glinted in the moonlight as the late-night roar of the city sang a distant dark song made of traffic and river sounds.

He started to climb the steel girders of the Brooklyn Bridge hand over hand like an inner-city mountaineer, his strength pulling him up into the Gotham darkness…

“WAIT A MINUTE WAIT WAIT!” Ricky exclaimed, “That’s not real, it wasn’t like that at all. First, it’s the Williamsburg Bridge, not the Brooklyn Bridge! That makes him sound like Batman. And, he took the stairs. This is legendary enough without making it a cartoon…”

Crestfallen, I listened to Ricky Diamond elaborate. “Sonny was at the peak of his career. Before that, he had done a stretch at Riker’s Island for armed robbery in 1950, got out on parole, then violated his parole by using heroin. Later, he was one of the first cats to kick using methadone. 

After that, he’s recording with Miles and the Modern Jazz Quartet, Monk and Bird, and the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet, just to name a few. Sonny was the MAN! But, dig…he had ears, and he heard what was going on and felt the need to be an impeccable jazz warrior.” 

Any great musician eventually either feels frustration or complacency, and Sonny was just the towering individual to take a self-imposed sabbatical. A three-year walkabout away from fame, recording, and performing.

I never forgot Ricky’s words, “impeccable jazz warrior.” They resonated with me in just such a way that I began practicing six hours a day. Ricky put on a record: “Airegin”, a jazz anthem with Miles, Horace Silver, Klook (Kenny Clarke), Big P (Percy Heath), rolling on Sonny’s anadrome for Nigeria. JUST EPIC! 

Afterwards, Ricky continued. “He wrote that! He was so in demand and a first call tenor along with Trane. He carried the grief of the passing of his friend and bandmate Brownie (Clifford Brown), and his thoughts grew troubled and introspective. A retreat was called for.”

His retreat was from the public eye and ear, but not from his Selmer Saxophone. He would make his way to the Williamsburg Bridge walkway and spend up to sixteen hours a day woodshedding. Rain or snow or wind or sun or clouds or heat or cool, every single day for thirty-six months. Undisturbed and at peace with his tenor, yet fighting a war with quotidian convention.

Rollins developed a more voice-like, descriptive quality. He became a saxophone narrator. His musical ideas were more expansive, his already thematic approach gained depth beyond his already prodigious abilities. Sonny refined his technique and inventiveness without time constraints or audience approval to live up to, and, just as importantly, playing without accompaniment developed his flow of harmonic choices. Shedding on the bridge allowed Sonny crucial self-reflection and musical exploration that would prove invaluable to his emergence as a far more formidable player. As Ricky Diamond summed up, “No matter how good you are, you can ALWAYS get better." 

This period is represented in Rollins’ discography by a nearly three-year absence of recorded output before his album The Bridge (1962), which is a quartet date.

Jim Hall was a wonderful foil and musical contrast to Rollins’ cerebral approach, working with Sonny’s loquacious tenor. Don’t get me wrong, Sonny is as cerebral as Jim, and Jim is as visceral as Sonny, but their styles are wonderful together. Bob Cranshaw on bass and Ben Riley at the drums are the best engine room to power this incredible quartet. Although some were expecting something akin to Ornette and Trane’s adventurous records, it’s a landmark hard bop album and in my top ten of all jazz recordings. Truly legendary.

One last thing…There is a movement afoot to rename the Williamsburg Bridge to the Sonny Rollins Bridge. Use your search engine and look up “Sonny Rollins Bridge Project” to find out more.

The man deserves his flowers now while he is still with us.