sonny rollins saxophone colossus...

 Happy 92nd birthday to the saxophone colossus i Sonny Rollins!

I don’t think I was trying to consciously create a new sound. I had been a follower of all of the great players. I was a student of Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Don Byas —all of the people who were prominent at the time. What came out was just Sonny Rollins. You have to realize that it’s very hard to completely copy somebody else. I didn’t try to copy others. I just tried to learn from them. Everybody has their own fingerprint, and that fingerprint is going to emerge eventually, especially if you get to become a recording musician. You’re going to hear your own independent sound. It just so happened I was playing a lot and people got a chance to hear Sonny Rollins and what that independent fingerprint was.