No Bridge Was Too Far for Sonny Rollins

Sonny Rollins, the tenor saxophonist who died on May 25 at the age of 95, was a jazz musician's musician. The last of the big boppers, Rollins was the marathon runner of the chordal labyrinth. But the Theseus of the tenorists was more likely than most of the great jazzers to be seen than heard. For most people, jazz looks better than it sounds. The listening public's visual taste in Blue Note sleeve designs and black-and-white photography always outstrips its aural appetite. The obituaries emphasized the legend of Rollins's occultation of 1959, when he was neither seen nor heard for two years on a stage or studio while he reworked his method by practicing amid the girders of the Williamsburg Bridge. When you did hear Rollins, it was likely to be second-hand, in the phrasing and strategizing that lesser players had copped from him. But when you did hear the full strength of Rollins's musical mind, you knew it. And if he was in full flight, you felt it, too.

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