Joe Paul Nichols born September 13, 1941

Joe Paul Nichols (September 13, 1941 - 27 July, 2011) was a Country and gospel singer. 

Joe Paul Nichols was born in Cundiff, Texas, on September 13, 1941. He was the son of O. W. “Jack” and Myrtle Iva (Riggs) Nichols. When he was nine years old, Nichols learned to play guitar from his father. He listened to country music broadcast from programs such as the Grand Ole Opry, Big D Jamboree, and Louisiana Hayride. At the age of sixteen, he had a successful audition in Fort Worth for a weekly country show called Cowtown Hoedown, and Nichols performed there every other week for three years. He graduated from Jacksboro High School, where he had been active in sports, student council, and agricultural clubs, in 1960.

                                    

In the early 1960s Nichols became a regular performer on Big D Jamboree, broadcast from the Sportatorium in Dallas. He married high school sweetheart Carolyn Martin in Jacksboro on June 28, 1963. They had two children. In 1970 Nichols formed his own band, The Five Pennies, and together they performed country, western swing, and country gospel for more than three decades. Nichols and his Five Pennies toured Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Mexico, and Missouri and performed at rodeos, fairs, clubs, conventions, and school auditoriums. 

The shows included a performance for Lady Bird Johnson in Austin and for Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating at a barbecue. During his career Nichols worked with or shared the stage with a number of famous names in country music, including George Jones, Charley Pride, Johnny Cash, Ernest Tubb, Sonny James, Ferlin Husky, and Hank Thompson.

Nichols’s prolific recording output included some twenty-six albums and more than 300 songs during the course of his career. His song, “Jesus is the Same in California,” hit Number 1 on the country gospel charts in 1999 and won numerous honours, including the Country Gospel Music Guild’s “Golden Harp Award” for Song of the Year in 2000. Another hit song, “Eleven Eighteen Nadine Lane,” won the Song of the Year Award from the Academy of Western Artists in 2006. In addition to his professional musical endeavours, Nichols served as music director at Cundiff Baptist Church for forty-eight years.

Nichols maintained a day job throughout his musical career and worked as a state inspector for the Texas Department of Transportation for thirty-four years until retiring in 1993. He then started, with his wife and business partner Terry Beene, a bus tour business. He was elected a county commissioner in Jack County and served in that office for ten years. He was also active on the board of the Jack County Farm Bureau for twenty-three years.

Throughout his career, Nichols received recognition and honours for his musical contributions. The city of Fort Worth designated June 8, 1984, as “Joe Paul Nichols Day.” He was inducted into the International Country Gospel Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 1991 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from that organization in 2009. He was named Male Entertainer of the Year by the Country Gospel Music Guild in 2000 and inducted into the Texas International Music Association’s Hall of Fame in 2007. That same year Texas Governor Rick Perry paid tribute to Nichols as a “Country-Western Icon.”

In September 2007 Nichols was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He retired from music in 2008 but continued to reach audiences through his recordings. His song, “Take My Hand Precious Lord,” reached Number 1 on the country gospel chart in 2010 and remained in the Top 10 for several months. He died on July 27, 2011, in Jacksboro and was buried in Cundiff Cemetery in Jack County.

(Ref: Texas State Historical Association) 

Bill Jennings born September 12, 1919

Bill Jennings (September 12, 1919 – November 29, 1978) was an American jazz guitarist and composer. An outstanding musician's musician, totally original, exceptionally gifted, and unfortunately under-rated and mostly unknown today. 

Because he was such a prolific sideman in the early years of the electric guitar on jazz, blues, early rock ‘n’ roll, and R&B, Bill Jennings is surely one of the most influential guitarists that only a few have heard of. Called “the architect of soul jazz,” and “one of my biggest influences” by B.B. King, he was left-handed and played the guitar upside down without reversing the strings, giving him a style all his own.

                                   

Jennings was born in Indianapolis. Hanging out on Indiana Avenue, he started playing professionally as a teenager and in 1937, he and his brother Al joined with former Ink Spot member Jerry Daniels to form a group called The Three Spades. After serving in the Navy during World War II, Jennings made his first recordings in 1946, performing with jazz violinist Stuff Smith. In 1949, he joined Louis Jordan and the Tympani Five and appeared on a 1950 recording the band made with Ella Fitzgerald. He also appeared with Louis Armstrong.

Bill with Louis Jordan

Many of Jennings' '50s recordings were made for Cincinnati's King label, often accompanying high-profile R&B players like King Curtis, Leo Parker, Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett  Jennings was unique in his ability to play in many styles, including swing, bop, jump blues, R&B, and pop. He played electric guitar on many early rock ‘n’ roll recordings with various vocalists, sometimes singing himself. His recording of “Fever” with Little Willie John went to Number 24 on the Billboard Hot 100. In 1958, he recorded an album with Etta James.

A left-handed player, Jennings played guitar upside down, with the high strings at the top, which gave him a different approach to phrasing and bending the strings. He was an R&B showman with an earthy sound and urgent attack. Unlike Tiny Grimes, a straight-up blues player, Jennings had more hip soul and wry wit in his inventive lines. As a sideman, he appeared on 10 Prestige albums led by saxophonist Willis “Gator” Jackson from 1959 to 1968. He returned to Indianapolis in the early 1960s and for a while continued to play in night clubs with the Buddy Parker Four which included Erroll Grandy. 

Later in his career, he lost a finger on his fretting hand and began playing bass guitar. Jennings died at Veterans Hospital in Indianapolis on November 29, 1978 and was buried in an unmarked grave. But the story doesn’t end there. In 2023, a national organization dedicated to providing headstones for musicians such as Jennings, the Killer Blues Headstone Project, placed a monument at his grave, with respect to this important musician.

(Edited from Crown Hill Foundation, Wikipedia & All About Jazz)

Robert Hicks a.k.a. Barbecue Bob born September 11, 1902

Robert Hicks (September 11, 1902 – October 21, 1931), known as Barbecue Bob, was an American Piedmont blues musician who played 12 string guitar which was popular in the Atlanta, Georgia, area at the time. A record talent scout gave him his nickname because he worked as a cook in a barbecue restaurant. 

Hicks was born in Walnut Grove, Georgia. His parents, Charlie and Mary Hicks, were sharecroppers. They moved to Newton County where his friend Curley Weaver's mother, Savannah "Dip" Weaver, taught Bob and his brother, Charley Lincoln, how to play the guitar. Hicks began playing the six string guitar but picked up the twelve string guitar after moving to Atlanta, in 1924. He became one of the prominent performers of the newly developing Atlanta blues style which featured the 12 string. In Atlanta, Hicks worked at various jobs, playing music on the side. While working at Tidwells' Barbecue in a north Atlanta suburb, he cooked for and sang to customers and became a local celebrity, coming to the attention of Columbia Records talent scout, Dan Hornsby, who recorded him and dubbed him "Barbecue Bob" using Hicks's job to publicize his records having him pose in chef's whites and hat for publicity photos.

                                   

Between March 1927 and December 1930, Hicks recorded 68 songs for Columbia Records, becoming one of the best-selling artists on their race series, being outsold only by Bessie Smith, Ethel Waters and Blind Willie Johnson. "Barbecue Blues", his first song, was his first hit. The record quickly sold 15,000 copies. At his second recording session, in New York City in June 1927, he recorded "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues", a song inspired by the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and a recording that firmly established him in the race market. This song and his other blues releases were popular and his records sold better than those of other Atlanta blues musicians.

With his brother, Charley Lincoln, (also known as Charlie Lincoln or Laughing Charley), he recorded "It Won't Be Long Now", a duet with cross talk, in Atlanta on November 5, 1927. In April of the following year, Hicks recorded "Mississippi Low Levee Blues", a sequel to "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues" plus two songs with a singer he had known since childhood, Nellie Florence, being "Midnight Weeping Blues" and "Jacksonville Blues". In April 1930, he recorded "We Sure Got Hard Times Now" which contains bleak references to the Great Depression. As was usual with other blues singers, he recorded a few traditional songs and spirituals including "When the Saints Go Marching In", "Poor Boy, Long Ways from Home" and "Jesus' Blood Can Make Me Whole".

Hicks developed a "frailing" style of guitar playing more often associated with the traditional claw hammer banjo (as did his brother, and Curley Weaver). He regularly used a bottleneck on his twelve string guitar, playing in an open Spanish tuning (open G or open A tuning) reminiscent of Charley Patton. He had a strong voice which he embellished with growling and falsetto. Hicks also recorded as a member of the Georgia Cotton Pickers in December 1930, the group consisting of Hicks, guitarist Curley Weaver and bluesman Buddy Moss playing harmonica. They recorded a handful of songs including their adaptation of Blind Blake's "Diddie Wa Diddie" recorded as "Diddle-Da-Diddle" and the Mississippi Sheiks' "Sitting on Top of the World" recorded as "I'm on My Way Down Home". They were his last recordings.

Hicks died in Lithonia, Georgia, on October 21, 1931, at the age of 29 of a combination of tuberculosis and pneumonia brought on by influenza. His recording of "Mississippi Heavy Water Blues" was played at his graveside before he was buried. In 2017 the Killer Blues Headstone Project placed the headstone for Robert Hicks at United Methodist church in Walnut Grove, Georgia.

The fates of the bluesmen in his circle were mostly tragic. Just three weeks after Hicks' burial Eddie Mapp was stabbed to death on an Atlanta steet corner. Buddy Moss was sent up for killing his wife in 1935, and while he was paroled in 1941 his once-promising career never recovered. Fame eluded the unsung Curley Weaver, though he went on to play admirably with Blind Willie McTell for over 20 years before going blind himself. As for Charley Hicks, he faded into obscurity until the 1950s, when he started racking up a record for violent crime. He was convicted of murder in 1955 and died eight years later in a Cairo, Georgia prison.

(Edited from Wikipedia)

Roy Ayers born September 10, 1940

Roy Ayers (September 10, 1940 – March 4, 2025) was an American vibraphonist, record producer and composer, whose soul-driven, electrified approach influenced generations of R&B-adjacent musicians. More than 60 of his songs were sampled by a who’s who of hip-hop and soul artists.

Roy Edward Ayers Jr. was born in Los Angeles, California to Ruby Ayers and Roy Ayers, Sr. Ayers’ mother, a schoolteacher and piano instructor, began teaching him music when he was only a toddler.Growing up near Central Avenue, the heart of the West Coast jazz scene, Ayers was exposed to local luminaries from an early age. At five years old, Ayers was given his first set of vibraphone mallets by bandleader Lionel Hampton. Ayers attended Thomas Jefferson High School that formed a formative part of the Central Avenue jazz scene. During high school, Ayers sang in the church choir and fronted a band named the Latin Lyrics, in which he played steel guitar and piano. His high school, Thomas Jefferson High School, produced various talented musicians, such as Dexter Gordon.

Ayers did not study the vibraphone until meeting vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson at age seventeen. Ayers started recording as a bebop sideman in 1962. In 1963, he released his debut studio album West Coast Vibes featuring a collaboration with the saxophonist Curtis Amy. He went on to record with the Jack Wilson Quartet, Chico Hamilton, and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra in the 1960s, before joining up with jazz flutist Herbie Mann at The Lighthouse club in Hermosa Beach, California in 1966. The experience gave Ayers tremendous exposure and opened his ears to styles of music other than the bebop with which he grew up. Mann produced three of Ayers’ albums for Atlantic Records, and Ayers was a principal soloist on Mann’s hit album Memphis Underground.

In 1970, Ayers moved to Manhattan and formed his own band Roy Ayers Ubiquity, marking his move into jazz fusion. It was a name he chose because ubiquity meant a state of being everywhere at the same time. Ubiquity released a number of records on Polydor Records, including hits like ‘We Live in Brooklyn’ and ‘Everybody Loves the Sunshine.’ Ayers was responsible for the highly regarded soundtrack to Jack Hill's 1973 blaxploitation film Coffy, which starred Pam Grier. He played Elgin in Idaho Transfer the same year. 

                                  

He later moved from a jazz-funk sound to R&B and a subsequent string of albums with greater commercial appeal hovered around and within the Top Ten of the R&B chart. These included Mystic Voyage (1975), which featured the songs "Evolution" and the underground disco hit "Brother Green (The Disco King)", as well as the title track from his studio album Everybody Loves the Sunshine (1976). In 1977, Ayers produced an album by the group RAMP, Come into Knowledge. That fall, he had his biggest hit with "Running Away".

In late 1979, Ayers scored his only top ten single on Billboard's Hot Disco/Dance chart with "Don't Stop the Feeling", which was also the leadoff single from his studio album No Stranger to Love (1980). He began collaborating with Nigerian musician Fela Kuti and formed Uno Melodic Records. Ayers considered In The Dark, released on Columbia Records in 1984, as one of his best recordings. The album produced the 12" single release "Love Is in the Feel" which, along with other tracks on the album, promoted the use of a LinnDrum, an instrument which gained enormous popularity among pop and jazz-funk musicians from 1982 to 1985. At this time Ayers' music was promoted extensively by UK BBC Radio 1 disc jockey (DJ) Robbie Vincent.

He continued releasing yearly albums through the 1990s. At the same time, Ayers’ work was remixed, covered, and sampled by the emerging hip hop generation that included such artists as Mos Def, Puff Daddy, and Mary J. Blige. In 1993, Ayers appeared on Gang Starr rapper Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1, one of the first albums to combine a live jazz band with hip hop production. Singer Erykah Badu has dubbed Ayers the Godfather of Neo-Soul.

During the 2000s and 2010s, Ayers ventured into electronic dance music, collaborating with such stalwarts of the genre as Masters at Work, Pépé Bradock, 4hero and Kerri Chandler. Ayers founded two record labels, Uno Melodic and Gold Mink Records. The first released several studio albums, including Sylvia Striplin's, while the second folded after a few singles. In 2004, Ayers put out a collection of unreleased recordings called Virgin Ubiquity: Unreleased recordings 1976–1981, which allowed fans to hear cuts that did not make it onto the Polydor albums from his more popular years. He also worked in collaborations with soul singer Erykah Badu and other artists on his 2004 album Mahogany Vibes. 

In 2015, he played vibraphone on Tyler, the Creator's fourth studio album Cherry Bomb on the track "Find Your Wings". His final session, Roy Ayers JID002 (2020), saw him team up with Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, one of many rap groups who sampled his work. 

Ayers played his live act for millions of people across the globe, including Japan, Australia, England, and other parts of Europe. He continued to perform live until 2023. He died at a hospital in Manhattan, New York, on March 4, 2025, at the age of 84, after suffering from a long illness. Ayers was a recipient of the Congress of Racial Equality Lifetime Achievement Award.

(Edited from Wikipedia, The History Makers & AllMusic) 

Mae Glover born September 9, 1906

Mae Glover (September 9, 1906 – March 27, 1985) was an American country blues singer. Over a lengthy career she recorded under various pseudonyms and performed regularly in her adopted hometown, earning her the nickname of "the Mother of Beale Street."

Beale Street

She was born Lillie Mary Hardison in Columbia, Tennessee, United States, and relocated with her family to Nashville, Tennessee as a young child. In 1920, at the age of 13, she ran away to join the Tom Simpson Traveling Medicine Show. In 1982, Glover explained in an interview that "I wanted to sing the blues, but my father was a pastor and the blues were looked on in those days, as dirty music. And for me to stay in Nashville would have been a disgrace for my family". Glover undertook travel with various tent and sideshows including, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, the Bronze Mannequins, the Vampin' Baby Show, the Georgia Minstrels, Harlem in Havana, and Nina Benson's Medicine Show, appearing as either a blues singer or comedian. By 1928, she had stopped roaming and settled down in Memphis, Tennessee, married a cook, Willie Glover, and became a regular performer on Beale Street, where she ultimately earned the sobriquet, "the Mother of Beale Street.

                                  

                                 " Here's Pig Meat Mama"

Her first recordings took place in April 1927, when under the name May Armstrong, she waxed six numbers in Memphis, including "Joe Boy Blues" and "Nobody Can Take", for the Gennett label. In August the same year, she recorded six sides billed as Side Wheel Sally Duffie.  

On July 29, 1929, and on this occasion in Richmond, Indiana, she recorded four songs billed as simply Mae Glover. In July 1929, Glover used the pianist John Byrd as accompaniment, and Byrd himself cut two religious titles for Gennett. They were credited to Rev. George Jones and Congregation. It is likely that the 'Sister Jones' appearing on the recording is Mae Glover. A number from that time which was credited to Glover was the innuendo-laden, "Gas Man Blues". 

In addition, Glover moved in to the dirty blues sphere again with "Shake It Daddy", with the lyrics: "He shakes it in the morning, he shakes it at midnight, Keep on shakin' it, daddy, 'til you know you're shakin' it right, Lord, the way you shake it'll make me lose my appetite". On February 24, 1931, Glover employed the pianist Charles O'Neil and trumpet player James Parker, in recording "Forty Four Blues", released on both Supertone and Champion. Another release of that song entitled "Big Gun Blues", was issued on Varsity, using the name of Mae Muff.

Glover also gave live performances across Memphis at various locations including the Peabody Hotel, The Midnight Rambles, Coca-Cola Club, Citizens Club, Hotel Improvement, and the Manhattan Club. Following the death of Glover's idol, Ma Rainey in December 1939, Glover often performed billed as Ma Rainey II (or some variation thereof). She continued to work regularly on stage, but did not record again until 1953, when she used the name "Big Memphis Ma Rainey", in waxing two sides for Sun Records. It is thought that over the years she recorded under several different names, including Lillie Mae Glover, Sister Jones, Big Sister, Jessie Brown, Sally Sad, Mae Muff, Side Wheel Sally Duffie, Bessie Jones, and May Armstrong. 

Blues Alley All Stars

She reappeared in the 1970s, singing both solo and with the traveling Memphis Blues Caravan. She was also involved in the recording of an album, Memories of Beale Street: Prince Gabe and the Millionaires with the Original Memphis Sound. Around this time a local restaurateur hired Glover to sing with the Blues Alley All Stars. She became a favourite at this time, due to her regaling both lusty songs and risqué banter. In 1977, Glover received the Beale Street Music Festival Award, got 'Tennessee's Outstanding Achievement Award' two years later, and was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Music and Entertainment in Chicago in 1981.

She underwent heart surgery but, despite failing health, continued to perform. She required further treatment in hospital and upon leaving those premises in December 1984, she travelled to Iuka, Mississippi, to reside with a friend. Glover died in Tishomingo County Hospital, Iuka, Mississippi, on March 27, 1985, at the age of 78. She left no immediate family. Glover was accorded an obituary in the Los Angeles Times. She was honoured with a procession down Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. The funeral procession, with a horse-drawn carriage carrying the casket, was led by Prince Gabe and the Famous Millionaires, a Memphis blues band. About 1,000 spectators were drawn to the funeral. She was interred in at Elmwood Cemetery, Memphis, Tennessee. The inscription on her headstone reads: "I don't care what Mr. Crump don’t allow, I’m gonna barrelhouse anyhow".

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)

Deena Webster born September 8, 1949

 

Deena Webster (born September 8, 1949) is an English folk pop singer.

Deena Webster was born in in Canterbury, Kent, England, UK., Her father served in the RAF during the Second World War and met his wife, who worked with the Red Cross. He stayed in service in peacetime and was posted to Hong Kong, where Webster spent part of her youth, and it was there that she first performed. Hong Kong had a strong American influence, musically, and Deena who was still in her teens played in folk clubs, then the City Hall, which was one of the main auditoriums in Hong Kong.

 Inspired by artists like Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Carolyn Hester, Tom Paxton, Joan Baez and Tim Hardin, Webster learned to play the acoustic guitar by ear, folk-style, with a thumb-pick. Due to the nature of her father’s employment, Webster was used to shuttling between the Far East and the UK, and she precociously set her mind on being a professional singer. It was in 1968 during one of her early appearances that Webster was spotted by the Noel Gay agency. After a few auditions she was signed. Her father had to help with her contract, as she was still under the legal age of 18.

Noel Gay was one of the biggest showbiz agencies in the UK and it boasted a vibrant publishing arm. Webster slotted into their folk roster alongside artists like Strawbs, The Pentangle, Jake Thackray, Eranga & Prianga, and Lyn & Graham McCarthy. With her management contract signed, things began to happen. Noel Gay not only secured Webster bookings as a professional musician, but also arranged a contract with Parlophone. With the success of Janis Ian in the US (only 16 when her debut LP was released), Noel Gay saw Webster as a potential UK counterpart. Cash was invested in recording Webster’s first single at Abbey Road, and the result was an up-tempo pop version of Janis Ian’s You’re Losing, backed by Wish You Were Here. Released in May 1968, the single was strongly promoted with adverts in the music press and got some radio play. You’re Losing was a strong debut and, though it failed to chart, it served as a springboard to launch Webster’s career.

                                    

Sessions for Deena Webster Is Tuesday’s Child took place around the same time that You’re Losing was produced by Tony Palmer in Abbey Road. The sessions were made up of cover versions, some of which were suggested by Palmer, such as Lionel Bart’s Who Will Buy, and Bobbie Gentry’s Hurry, Tuesday Child, which were both lushly orchestrated. The other material on the album was chosen by Deena. Thus, traditional tunes Geordie and The House Of The Rising Sun, part of her live repertoire, were performed by Webster alone. As well as Hair Of Spun Gold and Then Tangles Of My Mind, culled from Janis Ian’s debut LP, there was The Bee Gees’ New York Mining Disaster, Bob Dylan’s Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues, Tom Paxton’s The Last Thing On My Mind and two tunes by Donovan. 

Noel Gay’s contacts secured a number of TV appearances, and Webster’s small screen debut was on Simon Dee’s Dee Time in June 1968. This appearance was followed by another on David Frost Presents and, in July, she appeared on The Saturday Show. Better still, Webster became resident singer on The Wednesday Show presented by David Jacobs on BBC 1, where she performed one solo song per week. It was an amazing showcase, though Webster cannot recall the tracks that she performed. 

Material from Tuesdays Child was aired at solo concerts around the country including Sheffield, Manchester, Newcastle. And she also sang at the Albert Hall and appeared at the Savoy Hotel for three weeks, which was not her favourite gig. When not on the live treadmill, Webster enjoyed life in London’s Bayswater. “It was wonderful, magical, so much going on: hippies, folk, rock, Carnaby Street and a carnival along the King’s Road in Chelsea, with Afghan hounds on leads and open-top convertibles, Mary Quant miniskirts and wild gypsy clothes. It was a unique time; love, peace and music was everywhere.”

Despite the album failing to sell, Parlophone continued to back Webster. Her next single, in October ’68, was a wonderful version of Scarborough Fair. The track was one of the first arrangements for another artist by Barbara Moore. She was best known for her work as a singer with The Ladybirds and, when she arrived at the studio, many of the musicians thought that she’d come to help with backing vocals. She remembers that when she got onto the rostrum to conduct, the baton fell out of her palm and ended up on the bass drum which relaxed the whole atmosphere. At the end of the session, Moore received a standing ovation from the 60 string and horn players present. Sadly, the single didn’t sell well, though Moore arranged the A-side of Webster’s next 45, released in August 1969, Joey/It’s Alright With Me. Webster’s final single for Parlophone was Things Men Do/The End Of The Day.

Webster remained on the live circuit in the UK and Europe. However, it appears that, at the end of her Parlophone contract, she simply decided to wind her career down. She left London and returned to Hong Kong where she continued to perform and her music appeared in a 1975 film soundtrack of The Man From Hong Kong. She married Peter Greene, who worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and then settled down away from the spotlights. 

Later on, Webster was genuinely surprised that her album and singles are collectors’ items, and that her music is reaching a new audience through YouTube. “I’m quite surprised, but I was confident in my voice and felt a passion for some of the songs and loved singing for people.” As of 2014 Webster still performed but mostly in small private venues and for friends. 

(Edited from Record Collector article, Discogs & IMdB)

Sonny Rollins born September 7, 1930

Sonny Rollins (September 7, 1930 – May 25, 2026) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential of jazz musicians.

He was born Walter Theodore Rollins in New York City, and raised in its Harlem district, earning the nickname Sonny from his grandmother. Inspired by a piano-playing sister and violin-playing brother, as well as jazz heroes such as Louis Jordan and Fats Waller, he started learning the saxophone when he was seven. Such was the vibrancy of his area’s jazz scene that one of his first bands, in high school, featured future stars Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor; just after leaving school he began playing with local talents such as Bud Powell and touring stars such as JJ Johnson, and started composing his own work.

Rollins once described himself as “primitive … I’m going with my feelings more than my brain”, and it was this willingness to break with convention and embrace improvisation that helped chart a new course for jazz alongside Davis, Charlie Parker and others in the bebop scene that soon loosened further into hard bop and post-bop. Davis himself wrote about how Rollins quickly became “a legend, almost a god to a lot of the younger musicians … he was an aggressive, innovative player who always had fresh musical ideas”. For his part, Rollins said when reminiscing about his early life: “Jazz is good. It’s not just lecture music, it’s not shake your booty music. It’s everything. It doesn’t make you feel like fighting. It makes you feel that there is a God.”

He was sidetracked by heroin, though, and in 1950 committed an armed robbery to raise funds to feed his habit, later describing himself as “really a despicable character … I alienated everybody except my mother”. He was jailed for 10 months on Rikers Island in New York, but managed to kick his habit with a rehab programme in 1955. Getting clean helped spur an astonishing burst of creativity: Rollins released his debut album as bandleader in 1953, and recorded 17 more by the end of the decade including landmarks such as Saxophone Colossus (1956), which featured signature tune St Thomas, nodding to calypso and named after his mother’s Caribbean place of birth; the piano-free “strolling” style explored on Way Out West (1957); and Freedom Suite (1958), where his emancipated composition on the 20-minute title track became an elegant argument for freedom in the midst of the growing civil rights movement. Collaborators in this period included Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, Art Blakey and others. 

                             

                         Here's Without A Song from above LP

In 1959, Rollins took a three-year break from recording and on-stage performance, honing his craft by practising for up to 15 hours a day on the pedestrian walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge, partly so as not to disturb his neighbours – it inspired his 1962 comeback album The Bridge. This decade saw him join the avant-garde and fusion directions in the jazz scene, playing Latin American music on What’s New (1962); freer (but still highly melodic) improvisations on Sonny Meets Hawk! (1963) and East Broadway Run Down (1966). Now a major artist of international repute, Rollins toured widely, particularly to Europe and Japan. It was during an extended London season at Ronnie Scott’s, in 1965, that he composed and performed the soundtrack music for the film Alfie, (minus the theme song).Much of it in collaboration with the British composer and pianist Stan Tracey. The score was nominated for a Grammy Award.

In 1969, despite his eminence in the jazz world, Rollins again retired from music, embarking on a three-year spiritual quest which took him to Japan and India. His return in 1972 marked the start of a long and happy recording relationship with the Milestone label, which produced such universally applauded albums as The Cutting Edge (1974), Sunny Days, Starry Nights (1984) and Sonny Rollins + 3 (1995). Not all his Milestone albums were well received, however, the worst failures being attempts to connect with fads such as fusion.

In the 1980s, he continued to fuse his playing with funk and calypso, and added uncredited soloing to the Rolling Stones’ 1981 album Tattoo You. He focused his live performances away from “smoke-filled, cash-register-banging night clubs” and on to larger stages, and campaigned around the growing climate crisis with benefit concerts and his 1998 album Global Warming. “Right now, it’s like we’re on the Titanic, but everybody’s just watching Titanic,” he later said.

Rollins married twice, first (and briefly) to Dawn Finney in 1957. He met his next wife, Lucille Pearson, that year, and they married in 1965, remaining together until her death in 2004. The couple were at home just six blocks from the World Trade Center on September 11 – they evacuated to upstate New York with Rollins carrying only his saxophone. Three days later, he drove to Boston for an acclaimed live set that would be released as Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert, which won him a Grammy for best jazz instrumental solo. Rollins later told the Guardian: “I lost many prized possessions in 9/11 and learned a lesson – possessions are not where it’s at.” 

In August 2010, Rollins was named the Edward MacDowell Medalist, the first jazz composer to be so honored. The Medal has been awarded annually since 1960 to an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to his or her field. Yet another major award was bestowed on Rollins on March 2, 2011, when he received the Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in a White House ceremony. Rollins accepted the award, the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, “on behalf of the gods of our music.”

The real triumphs of his late maturity were his live appearances. Here he would improvise with immense concentration, and often at great length, leaving audiences around the world both exhausted and exhilarated. The sheer expenditure of energy involved meant that, as he grew older, he was forced to limit the number of such concerts, to pace himself and conserve his strength. He earned a lifetime achievement Grammy award in 2004, and after touring and performing throughout his life, retired in 2014 after being diagnosed with the lung disease pulmonary fibrosis. “I went through a period of depression; I was really low,” he said in 2017. “I’d been on this life quest to try and fulfil my potential with music, and not being able to play any more meant I wasn’t going to get a chance to do that. But I eventually came out of my depression when I realised that rather than being depressed I should be grateful. I had an opportunity to live a life as a musician, which I always wanted to do.”

His death was announced on his website. No cause was given but the statement said “the Saxophone Colossus” died at his home in Woodstock, New York, on May 25, 2026. The statement also quoted Rollins reflecting on death: “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.”

With more than 60 albums released from the late-1940s onwards, including collaborations with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and others, Rollins was one of the last living stars of the bebop generation, who took jazz from a predominantly dance or ballad form into startlingly expressive new territory.

(Edited from Guardian & Telegraph obits)