Sonny Rollins, Titan of the Tenor Saxophone, Dies at 95

Sonny Rollins, the tenor saxophonist whose restless genius reshaped jazz for more than half a century — and whose wistful solo on the Rolling Stones' "Waiting on a Friend" introduced him to a generation of rock fans — died Monday at his home in Woodstock, New York. He was 95.

Rollins' death was confirmed by spokesperson Terri Hinte, who cited no specific cause but noted he had been largely housebound for the past couple of years due to various physical problems. Pulmonary fibrosis forced him into retirement; he played his final concert in 2012 and set down his saxophone altogether in 2014.

Rollins was one of the last living masters of the bebop era, a peer and contemporary of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk — whose band gave Rollins his first major break as a teenager in Harlem. Born Theodore Walter Rollins on Sept. 7, 1930, he was largely self-taught, learning the tenor saxophone by playing the clubs at night and eventually recording the landmark 1956 album "Saxophone Colossus," still considered one of jazz's foundational texts.

He won Grammy Awards in 2001 for best jazz instrumental album ("This Is What I Do") and in 2006 for best jazz instrumental solo for "Why Was I Born?" — a track from "Without a Song: The 9/11 Concert," recorded in Boston four days after the Sept. 11 attacks, after Rollins had been evacuated from his apartment blocks from Ground Zero.

His career was defined as much by deliberate silence as by sound. At the peak of his nineteen-fifties popularity, he retreated for two years to practice alone on a walkway of the Williamsburg Bridge. "Do what my inner self told me to do," he told the Associated Press in 2007 in describing the choice.

He never stopped reaching. "I don't consider myself a musician that has learned as much as I want to learn," he said that same year.

Rollins is survived by his nephew, Clifton Anderson, and nieces Vallyn Anderson and Gabrielle DeGroat. He left behind a substantial archive of unreleased recordings — and no instructions for what to do with them.

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