Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins by Aidan Levy
In 1966, an interviewer asked Sonny Rollins if he was a perfectionist. You think?
This was the titan of the tenor saxophone, the one who consumed everything Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker had done, then expanded it, with a warm, original tone, with jokes, quotations, and a seemingly endless reserve of oxygen. “If this word means someone with a constant search for perfection, then I am a perfectionist,” he replied. “But I would like to add that everything I do … is far from perfect!”
