Sonny Rollins, Last of the Tenor Titans

September 7: Sonny Rollins turns 89. Sonny Rollins, last of the big throated, muscular saxophonists who came out of Coleman Hawkins. Born this late summer day in Harlem, but his West Indies heritage has been apparent in such works as the calypso "St. Thomas," his best known composition. Others: "Airegin," "Pent-up House," "Tenor Madness" and "Valse Hot," plus the score for the film "Alfie."

It seems incongruous to call an 89-year-old Sonny, but nobody's going to go back to his straight name, which is Theodore. You can see the young, unbearded Sonny in the famous photograph "A Great Day in Harlem." Of the dozens in the picture, and the many he played with over the decades--Bud Powell, Fats Navarro, Thelonious Monk, Clifford Brown, Max Roach--he is one of the few left standing. Brown's death in a car crash hit him especially hard. Max Roach told writer Chris Grove, "I called Sonny and George [Morrow] down to my room and told them what had happened. Sonny went to his room, and I heard him play the saxophone all night. He just played all night."

That was in 1956. Three years later, Rollins took a break from playing in public, and spent two years  working on his sound--on the catwalk, it was said, over the Williamsburg Bridge.

In the mid-70s, Sonny had a three- or four-night run at Oil Can Harry's in Vancouver, nights of impossibly long runs of improvisation, which may have left some listeners confused. Rollins also has a sense of humor, which turns up in some of his curious choices of material--"I'm An Old Cowhand," "A Chapel in the Moonlight," "If You Were the Only Girl in the World"--and he has had a long list of memorable albums, including "Saxophone Colossus," The Freedom Suite" and "Way Out West," one of the handful of albums to receive a five-star rating from Down Beat magazine.

Sonny Rollins may no longer be playing into the small hours at Manhattan jazz clubs, and he may feel surrounded by ghosts, but he seems content. Today on his birthday he tweeted "Greetings, everybody. Sonny Rollins is alive and well and living in upstate NY. Not only living, but learning. In this world there is a big picture and a little picture. I'm all about the big picture, and it's good all the time. See you later. Sonny."