Sonny Rollins

I’m fortunate that I’m making a living at it now because I’m not equipped to do anything else.

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

What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don’t think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact. …. Europeans really provided many venues over there and hailed the jazz artists, and a lot of musicians went over there and stayed over there for a long time. A lot of them moved over there, lived over there, and died over there.

One very important thing I learned from Monk was his complete dedication to music. That was his reason for being alive. Nothing else mattered except music, really.

Even if you have some brilliant jazz ideas, it’s going to be difficult to get them across unless you have 1-a distinctive sound or 2- a loud sound. These are musts.

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

I grew up with the piano. I learned its language as I learned to speak.

When you are studying Jazz best thing to do is listen to records and live music as much you can and absorb everything.

Is there a meaning to music? Yes. Can you state in so many words what the meaning is? No.

Jazz is the big brother of Revolution. Revolution follows it around.

I don’t believe that a lot of the things I hear on the air today are going to be played for as long a time as Coleman Hawkins records or Brahms concertos.

Those who were seen dancing were thought insane by those who could not hear the music.

Today Jazz music is performed and listened to by people of all ethnicity, backgrounds, ages and creeds.

I find my inspiration in myself.

Being a musician is what I do, but it’s not what I am.

It is better to be felt than to be heard.

Jazz is not just music, it’s a way of life, it’s a way of being, a way of thinking… The new inventive phrases we make up to describe things – all that to me is jazz just as much as the music we play.

The music scene is more competitive in the States.

I am an improviser, I improvise music. Whatever you want to call it, it’s all improvised music. I may capture it and go back and write it down for others, but it was originally improvised.

Only the French, I guess, really use tenor and alto to any great extent in the orchestra.

To keep creating you have to be about change.