CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Sonny Rollins’ Reflections

Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and His World of Improvisation reads like a book that was sold before it was written. Eric Nisenson probably had a plan for a biography of Sonny Rollins, and St. Martin’s Press bought into it because of his previous books on Miles Davis and John Coltrane.

Sonny Rollins probably cooperated for the same reasons. Never an easy interview, his Foreword to Open Sky makes it clear he was a “reluctant” participant. Here’s an example of what I mean.

Sonny Rollins’ most famous album is undoubtedly Saxophone Colossus, the title of an in-depth biography of Rollins by Aidan Levy, and a completely separate documentary film about Rollins by Robert Mugge. Nisenson would be mocked if he failed to ask Rollins about this recording date. Rollins’ reply:

“I know a lot of people think it was an especially great album, but it just seemed like another record when I did it. I don’t have any special memories about making it.”

The book is based on a series of conversations between Rollins and Nisenson from 1997-1999. Rollins was 67 when the book started (he is 95 as I write this). He has lived a stunning life that could only be captured by a biography like Aidan Levy’s 715-page one. Even though Nisenson’s Open Sky is not and does not attempt to be a biography, it does contain mostly transcribed interviews, which are priceless.

As beautiful a writer as Nisenson is, his prose is just window dressing for the main act, Sonny Rollins’ reflections and assessments of his oeuvre and his goals. Blue Sky focuses on Rollins’ life and work from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. In 1953, Rollins recorded with Thelonious Monk; in 1954, with Miles Davis; and after a stint in detox in Lexington, Kentucky, he joined the Clifford Brown/Max Roach quartet, a........

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