R.I.P. Sonny Rollins: Titan saxophonist dead at 95

Sonny Rollins, one of bebop’s last living greats, is dead. “It is with deep sorrow and profound love that we announce the passing of Sonny Rollins,” a post on his website reads. “The Saxophone Colossus died May 25, 2026 at his home in Woodstock, NY at the age of 95.” Rollins’ publicist later confirmed the news. No cause of death has been shared, though a quote from Rollins himself was included at the end of the post. “I think when the creative person ends, he continues in the next existence. I’m a person who believes this life isn’t the be-all and end-all of everything. A spiritual person doesn’t feel like that.”

Before his death, Rollins was among the greatest surviving jazz titans. Some of his compositions—“Oleo,” “Doxy,” “Airegin”—are standards of the genre. He was a master hard bop composer who was born in New York City in September 1930 to parents from the Virgin Islands. He had three siblings. While living in central Harlem, Rollins started alto saxophone lessons at age seven after hearing Louis Jordan. When he discovered his idol Coleman Hawkins, Rollins’ instrument of choice became the tenor saxophone. His high school band featured Jackie McLean, Art Taylor, and Kenny Drew. 

Rollins graduated high school in 1948 and found work as a sideman for Babs Gonzales. Once he started playing with trombonist J.J. Johnson, Rollins was taken under the wing of pianist Bud Powell and began to perfect his hard bop impulse. But an armed robbery arrest briefly sidelined his career in 1950 while he served ten months at Rikers. Upon his release, Rollins found himself in bands with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker. He caught a break with “Oleo,” which featured Davis, Horace Silver, Kenny Clarke, and Percy Heath, and landed on the Miles Davis with Sonny Rollins album in 1954.

A year later, Rollins was a member of the Miles Davis Quintet and the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet and cut a record of his own with the latter, Sonny Rollins Plus 4. Brown died in a car accident in 1956, but Rollins kept playing with Roach, recording albums for Prestige, Riverside, Contemporary, and Blue Note labels. That summer, he recorded his biggest album, Saxophone Colossus, with Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins, and Roach. Saxophone Colossus bore one of Rollins’ greatest compositions: “St. Thomas,” a reworking of the traditional Bahamian folk song “Sponger Money” that became the Virgin Islands nursery rhyme “Hold Him Joe,” which Rollins’ mother sang to him. 

More records came, as did appearances with Thelonious Monk, practices with Ornette Coleman, and a marriage to model Dawn Finney. Rollins soon became known as “Newk” because he looked like Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe. In 1957, he debuted at Carnegie Hall and recorded again with J.J. Johnson, Horace Silver, Monk, and Art Blakey. He and Sonny Stitt featured on Dizzy Gillespie’s Sonny Side Up, and Rollins was the last surviving jazz musician pictured in Art Kane’s A Great Day in Harlem photograph. Before 1958 wrapped up, Rollins made one of his greatest records, Freedom Suite.

As the Sixties crept in, Rollins started going on sabbaticals. He practiced yoga and played saxophone on the Williamsburg Bridge for fifteen hours a day so he wouldn’t disturb his neighbor, who was an expectant mother. Rollins came back to the Village jazz scene in 1961 and released his comeback album, The Bridge, the following year. He started experimenting with Latin rhythms, avant-garde, and Great American Songbook melodies. His signing with Impulse! in 1966 led to There Will Never Be Another You, Sonny Rollins on Impulse!, and East Broadway Run Down. By the end of the decade, Rollins was on sabbatical again, this time for two years in Jamaica and India, where he studied yoga and Eastern philosophy. In 1972, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition.

Throughout the Seventies and Eighties, Rollins explored pop and funk music and even performed for President Jimmy Carter on the White House lawn. He got really into unaccompanied sax cadenzas around this time, doing so on “Autumn Nocturne” and, later, The Tonight Show. The Rolling Stones invited Rollins to do improvisations on two of their Tattoo You songs, “Waiting on a Friend” and “Slave.” In 1983, the National Endowment for the Arts honored him as a jazz master. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the 2004 GRAMMYs and awarded a National Medal of Arts six years later. 

In an interview with the New York Times six years ago, Rollins said, “Dying, it’s funny. Everybody is afraid to die because it’s the unknown. But my mother died. My father died. My brother died. My sister died. My uncle died. My grandmother died. They’re all great people. If they can die then why can’t I die? I’m better than they are? It’s ridiculous to feel, Oh, gee, I shouldn’t die. My body is going to turn into dust. But my soul will live forever.” May we meet your soul again down the road, Colossus. 

Listen to Sonny Rollins perform at Great American Music Hall, Philharmonic Hall, and Carnegie Hall below.

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