Tag Archives | jazz

Rollins tells what it takes to survive

my mind is blank, there’s nothing in my mind at all,” Rollins said at a Thursday panel attended by hundreds of people at the International Association for Jazz Education convention.”It’s sort of like being in a trance, you’re just playing, and often the guys in my band sometimes have to remind me that, hey, it’s time to get off the stage,” said the white-bearded Rollins, wearing a black beret and dark sunglasses.Rollins is up for a Grammy for his solo on the ballad “Why Was I Born?”… Rollins went ahead with the concert at the urging of his wife and manager Lucille, who died in 2004.Rollins credits his wife with helping him overcome his reticence about talking publicly about the scourge of drug addiction that almost derailed his career just as it was taking off in the early 1950s.The Harlem-born Rollins recalled many of his contemporaries whose lives were cut short after getting involved with drugs because they wanted to emulate their idols such as singer Billie Holiday and bebop pioneer Charlie “Bird” Parker.But Rollins credits the alto saxophonist Parker, who never overcame his addictions and died at 34 in 1955, with turning his life around by taking him aside at a 1953 recording session and telling him to quit.”I had actually lied to him and said I’m straight and cool and actually I wasn’t,” said Rollins.

Continue Reading