Sonny

There won’t be another WordPress version named “Sonny”, and I’m sorry that the name was used in reference to Sonny Stitt. As a 40 year jazz fan, with an album collection in the thousands spanning 80 years of this music, I certainly do respect Sonny Stitt as a player. I own seven of his albums as leader, and many others where he is a superb soloist and ensemble player, including “Sonny Side Up”. But like a lot of other jazz people, I utterly revere Sonny Rollins, and fear the day when we will lose him. Apart from being a great player, Sonny Stitt was not a good person at all. Mainly disliked and tolerated by other players for his frequent displays of meanness, etc. Sonny Rollins on the other hand is not only a historically FAR more important player, but a man who recovered from a rough period early in his adulthood to become a phenomenally thoughtful and heartfelt man. Unlike Stitt, Rollins is a true original (like WP); Stitt was essentially a Bird-imitator, who, to his credit, took that somewhat common status perhaps further than anyone else. But Sonny Rollins easily carries the whole history of jazz and the saxophone on his shoulders. He has a profound sense of musical humor, and perhaps most apropos for WordPress users, he took previous versions of countless songs (many of them long forgotten) and re-arranged and expressed them into brilliant jazz music. Not only that, he re-invented himself several times in the spirit of finding his true self and achieving maximum live performance improvisational interest. Few players could keep pace with Stitt’s speed and power (though I would submit that Johnny Griffin did) but “true original”? No, he was not. Last of all, Sonny Rollins is alive today; I am certain he would’ve appreciated the unusual nod from a worldwide entity like WP, and I am absolutely certain he would have expressed his gratitude and original brand of thinking and warm philosophy back to the WP community in video, audio or written form. He is that kind of true and spiritual gentleman.