Sonny rollins

The jazz icon, 89, says “I am the most content I’ve ever been.” He recalls thinking of John Coltrane as a “whippersnapper.”

Sonny Rollins

a favorite sonny. at jazz workshop, boston mass. 1963. photo lee tanner

It outlives the contentious political veneer that we cast over everything.

Sonny

In a profession star-crossed by early deaths -- especially the bebop division -- Max Roach was long a shining survivor, one of the last giants from the birth of bebop. He and Kenny Clarke instigated a revolution in jazz drumming that persisted for decades; instead of the swing approach of spelling out the pulse with the bass drum, Roach shifted the emphasis to the ride cymbal. The result was a lighter, far more flexible texture, giving drummers more freedom to explore the possibilities of…