Sonny Rollins

In the mid-1950s, alongside his close friend and intimate confidant John Coltrane, the revered saxophonist Sonny Rollins completely revolutionized notions about how the tenor saxophone could function within modern jazz. In landmark albums like Freedom Suite, Way Out West and Tenor Madness, Rollins pushed the art of melodic improvisation to transcendent new heights, his charismatic sound, his snaking melodies and his rhythmic liquidity ringing the changes as surely as Louis Armstrong had done thirty years earlier. And like Louis, and later Miles Davis, there came a point where Rollins wrestled free of the jazz aficionado’s gaze to become admired by a more general audience.