Sonny Rollins built a reputation as one of the most harmonically fearless tenor saxophonists of the hard-bop era, turning a Bahamian folk melody into the standard “St. Thomas” and, on 1956's Saxophone Colossus, showing a rigor in improvisation that critics likened to architecture. A close friend and rival of John Coltrane's in the mid-1950s, he later took extended sabbaticals from performing — including one spent practicing on the Williamsburg Bridge — that became almost as legendary as his playing. He continued to record and tour into his nineties, remaining one of the last living links to jazz's midcentury golden age until his death in 2026.

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1956

St. ThomasSonny Rollins