Happy 90th birthday to Sonny Rollins!

Sonny Rollins, the great tenor saxophonist, turns 90 today.

Wikipedia says:

In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a leader. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas," "Oleo," "Doxy," "Pent-Up House," and "Airegin," have become jazz standards.

 The Guardian wrote:

The phrase "saxophone colossus" regularly comes up when Rollins is discussed – not just because he continues to be one, but because the album of that title was the high point of the astonishing creative breakout he made in 1956. [Click the "St. Thomas" link above for a sample.] Through a succession of improvisational masterpieces that year, his torrential inventiveness began to inspire sax-players everywhere, including John Coltrane. Though he had been the dominant partner in recordings with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk that had begun several years before, it was from early 1956 that Rollins really took off. The saxophonist's personal merging of tenor-founder Coleman Hawkins's big-toned gravitas and harmonic sophistication, Charlie Parker's uptempo intensity, and Lester Young's lyricism opened a new chapter of jazz soloing possibilities on a saxophone. During this period Rollins had joined trumpeter Clifford Brown, pianist Richie Powell, bassist George Morrow and former Charlie Parker drummer Max Roach in a group that, under Roach's and Brown's joint leadership, became one of the standard-bearers of a pungent new jazz style dubbed "hard bop".…

Rollins had immense natural gifts, but he also grew up in Harlem in the 1930s with some of the most famous musicians of the day - including Duke Ellington and Coleman Hawkins - living around the corner, and pianist Thelonious Monk was a childhood friend who opened his ears to unusual melodies and harmony. Rollins led a high school band that included the Charlie Parker-ish alto saxist Jackie McLean, and Miles Davis was a regular playing partner between 1949 and 1954.

Here's Rollins and Monk: 

 

Live in Denmark, 1968: 

 

Rollins elevated the Rolling Stones' 1981 song "Waiting on a Friend" into something sublime.

Mick Jagger said:

"I had a lot of trepidation about working with Sonny Rollins. This guy's a giant of the saxophone. [Charlie Watts] said, 'He's never going to want to play on a Rolling Stones record!' I said, 'Yes he is going to want to.' And he did and he was wonderful. I said, 'Would you like me to stay out there in the studio?' He said, 'Yeah, you tell me where you want me to play and DANCE the part out.' So I did that. And that's very important: communication in hand, dance, whatever. You don't have to do a whole ballet, but sometimes that movement of the shoulder tells the guy to kick in on the beat."

Wikipedia says he hasn't played live since 2012 due to health issues. But Sonny Rollins, saxophone colossus, is still living.

(Photo of Rollins in 2008 from Wikipedia.)