Music: NYPL’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Acquires Jazz Legend Sonny Rollins’ Personal Archive

From The New York Public Library:

The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at The New York Public Library today announced the acquisition of American tenor saxophonist and jazz legend Sonny Rollins’ personal archive. The robust collection includes more than 150  linear feet of material that document Rollins’ life and career from the 1950s to the present.
This acquisition also marks the Harlem native’s “return” to the neighborhood of his youth. Rollins was profoundly influenced and inspired by the sights and sounds of the Harlem Renaissance and its pioneers, including Duke Ellington and Louis Jordan, who shaped modern music and Rollins’ creative life.
“Well, I’m home again. Home, where I absorbed the rich culture which was all around me. Where, on 137th Street, two blocks from the Schomburg, I was born in 1930,” Sonny Rollins said. “This archive reveals my life in music, how someone principally self-taught became taught. How the spiritual light of jazz protected and fed me, as it does to this day.”
Spanning a 60-year career and more than 80 albums, the Rollins archive is rich with texture, offering an intimate look into the creativity, curiosity and organization that led to the artist’s creative process and practice. Archive items range from audio reels and cassettes of unheard music and practice sessions, personal photographs from Rollins’ travels abroad, sheet music with margin notes, personal writing, practice diaries and handwritten letters between Rollins’ and wife and partner of more than forty-five years, Lucille Pearson Rollins.
The archive also offers insight into the Rollins’ social and professional network of musicians through detailed notes from recorded sessions, letters and snapshots from touring over the decades.
Materials
To be primarily housed within the Schomburg Center’s Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division, the Rollins archive joins a robust collection of jazz-related materials across the institution’s divisions, including the A Great Day in Harlem Documentary collection, the Louis Armstrong Jazz Oral History project, the Don Redman papers, the Billy Taylor collection, the Ron Carter collection and the Duke Ellington Society collection.
This acquisition also adds significant weight to the New York Public Library’s collection of jazz-related items including the George Avakian and Anahid Ajemian papers, which include letters from Rollins to Avakian and several unreleased live and studio recordings from Rollins’ time at RCA; the Ivan Black papers that include promotional and performance photographs of Rollins; along with the Sy Oliver, Phoebe Jacobs and Benny Goodman collections.
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Highlights from the Sonny Rollins Archive include:

• Personal papers, diaries, notes and drawings illuminating Rollins private thoughts and creative process sporadically through the decades
• Recordings of practice sessions as well as recording takes from as early as the 1960’s
• Snapshots and photos from life on the road with his fellow musicians from as early as the 1960’s
• Personal correspondence between Rollins and his wife and manager, Lucille Pearson, over the decades that range the gamut from love notes to unfiltered thoughts related to colleagues, bandmates and business

The Sonny Rollins archive will be processed over the next year at NYPL’s Library Services Center in Long Island City, and will be made available for research at the Schomburg Center.

Read the Complete Announcement
See Also: On March 21, 2017 the Sonny Rollins’ 1956 Recording “Saxophone Colossus” was Added to National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress 
From LC:

“Saxophone Colossus,”  Sonny Rollins  (1956)
To saxophonist Sonny Rollins, the recording of “Saxophone Colossus” didn’t seem that different from any of his previous albums.  To jazz fans, however, it would become, along with “Way Out West,” one of the defining albums of Rollins’ career.  With only five tracks and under 40 minutes, the album may appear slight, but the quality of the music has earned it a place of honor among jazz fans for more than 60 years.  Solidly anchored by a rhythm section of drummer Max Roach, bassist Doug Watkins and pianist Tommy Flanagan, Rollins is able to solo with power, grace and humor.  On the calypso-based “St. Thomas,” inspired by a melody his mother sang to him, Rollins is at first playful, then harder-edged as the tune segues from a calypso rhythm to a standard jazz beat.  “St. Thomas” went on to become not only one of Rollins’ signature tunes but a jazz standard, with dozens of recorded versions.

See Also: Saxophonist Sonny Rollins On His Colossal Archive (via NPR)
 
 
 
 

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