My copy of Mr Levy's comprehensive tome was delivered to me yesterday. It is the most finely and comprehensively detailed biography I will be enjoying for many a long year. My advice, if the subject matter takes your attention, is to order a copy without delay. However, I have to add a caveat: should you be a person of advanced years, then buy a bookstand. It is 'heavy' man! (blue47er.... in the UK)

I just listened to a 10h French podcast radio show on Sonny Rollins (yes, 10x 1h, covering 1951-2001!!!). A torture, but I'm like that, I dive into an artist and I listen to everything, or almost. To have my own opinion. My opinion of Rollins is that he seems very overrated to me. As a player/improviser First of all as a player/improviser, he does not seem to me better than Johnny Griffin, Sonny Stitt, Roland Kirk, Phil Woods, Lateef, Pharoah Sanders, Hank Mobley... but enjoys a much greater notoriety... and unjustified in my opinion. Ok he plays well, but not better in my opinion than the musicians above. Listen to Eternal Triangle which puts Rollins and Stitt together. Here they are VERY evenly matched technique wise but it is Rollins who is the more famous today. There is a lot of study done on Rollins' solos and they are generally accepted to be examples of strong overall thematic construction and development. This somewhat implies that others just play randomly. I'm not entirely convinced by that argument. If you like it, its a strength, if you think its an excuse for repetition, you'd think not. As a composer At the level of the composition, he did not compose anything, everyone knows that his hit ''St Thomas'' is a Caribbean folklore already recorded by Randy Weston in 1955 under the title ''Fire Down There''. St Thomas is an example of cultural transference. It is infact originally The Lincolnshire Poacher. An old english folk tune. It was taken to the Carribean presumably on the slave ships but possibly even earlier by the pirate ships (appropriate given its title). It gets transmuted into a Carribean Folk tune and then Rollins recalls it from his childhood being sung by his mother and renames it after the Island. I had assumed St Thomas was what his mother called it, but your info would mean that might not be true. Interestingly the Ted Heath Band, a British Big Band of the 1950s had a big(ish) hit with 'The Lincolnshire Poacher' done presumably as a 'ripost' to St Thomas. His ''Tenor Madness'' is a composition by Kenny Clarke published in 1947 under the title ''Rue Chaptal''. His other compositions from the 50s... well, Oleo, Airegin etc... it can in no way be compared to the compositions of Trane, Bird, Monk or Shorter... One thing that always struck me that I've heard no one else mention is that the Alfie theme is merely a reworking of the intro to 'Singing In The Rain!' Sound and artistic vision I find this a curious aspect. Early on, in the 50s his sound was distinct enough but it became more distinctive later. It is an odd sound for tenor but its one I hear more and more players now using. I'm not quite sure how its done or if there is a physiological reason for it. I have found it to be an aquired taste. Moreover, his playing and his sound are terribly degraded after 1966 (36 years). Something happened on that bridge, he lost his mind. He seems to have been traumatized by the arrival of Ornette, Trane, Ayler... In the 60s he tried to be freer than Ayler, more calypso/blues than Ornette, and more mystical than Trane, but without succeeding because so superficial... Then in the 70s/80s he tried his hand at funk, disco... with really ridiculous and corny results... Did he want to be funkier than James Brown himself? More disco than Chic and Nile Rodgers? On ''SAIS'' from the ''Horn Culture'' album, one example among many, just picking up a random piece between 1966 and 2001....It's a shame. He plays out of tune, out of rhythm, with an absolutely disgusting sound. It is a lack of respect towards himself, the other musicians and the listener. No normally constituted musician would have agreed to let this recording be released. The problem with Rollins is that EVERYTHING IS LIKE THIS after 1966. He even said himself that he was high on marijuana when he recorded his solo album ''Soloscope'' at the Museum of Modern Art. from NYC...Also listen to the result, it's ridiculous and disrespectful towards the listeners... Ego and money Also, on the radio show, they say he was paid today's $300,000 for himself to record the Nucleus album (listen to the result!!!!), and that for his concerts, his Financial claims were unrealistic, only big festivals could afford it. He played with the Stones but didn't want to tour with them because, according to Mike Jagger himself, he wanted too much money! I am not making anything up here. In a blindfold test published in downbeat in 2006, he doesn't recognize ANY saxophonist, even taking James Carter for Don Byas! Totally mind-blowing and revealing! Conclusion In conclusion Sonny Rollins is for me the archetype of a narcissistic complacency encouraged by the fans and the milieu which has placed him on a throne since 1956 and his (very average) album ''saxophone colossus''. You have to be quite arrogant to glorify yourself as a ''saxophone colossus'' at 26 years old when BIRD had just died the previous year.

@georgemcfetridge8310

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I know you'll never agree on this, but Rollins's quality of idea in the late 50s recordings is matched also by his humaneness of expression and depth of feeling. All three are heightened, causing those recordings to move a listener today. Not yourself, I realize. No point in arguing. All renowned figures in US groove-based improvised music can't be viewed outside of the great US publicity machine - that enormous 20th century invention, rendering artists as commodities and, sometimes, household names. What this does to actual music is not looked at by any biographers I know of. Rollins was organic in his music. He played for the people. The business machine made him a recording artist, which was a bad fit. Much more needs to be said about this synthetic, public relations-based, consumerist force. My sense is that SR made peace with the business's falsenesses by viewing himself as a popularizer of the music, and proceeding from that.

@georgemcfetridge8310

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A listen to 'Wail March' from SR's second blue note record brings up something maybe significant. On that track, Art Blakey decides to be just as boisterous as Rollins, and the effect on me was that the two cancel each other's voice out! I didn't get that impression from 'Moving Out', also with Blakey together with Rollins, done 3 years earlier, but by 1957, Rollins had come into real prominence. He no longer used the Charlie Parker imprint as to general approach. What this leads me to is Rollins' requirement: to be the lead voice at all times, and thus having his sidepeople as 'background' basically always, to accomodate the SR that is most valued. Now, is this selfishness, egoism on his part, or did it naturally emerge from what SR discovered as he matured as a player? I tend to think that what he came upon was something larger than life, a Spirit quality, and I know his detractors will hoot at such a suggestion because they don't hear that. No problem. You hear it or you don't.