Sonny Rollins, widely regarded as one of the best jazz saxophonists of all time, has died. This was announced on his website on Sunday. The jazz legend died at his home in New York at the age of 95.
Born in New York in 1930, Rollins has released more than sixty albums since the 1940s. He was one of the last living musicians of the so-called bebop generation. Together with Miles Davis and John Coltrane, among others, he gave jazz a more expressive slant compared to its more dance-oriented predecessors.
Rollins became addicted to heroin in the 1950s and was briefly jailed for armed robbery. “I had alienated everyone except my mother,” he later said of that period. Getting rid of his addiction would give him a creative boost. In the 1950s he eventually released eighteen albums, including the legendary Saxophone Colossus (1956).
Later in life he received several oeuvre prizes. For example, in 2011 he was honored by the American Kennedy Center for his “significant contribution to cultural life in the United States and the world.”
