Latest / DISGRACELAND / Sonny Rollins: Armed Robbery, Rikers Island, and the Return of the Saxophone Colossus

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Sonny Rollins: Armed Robbery, Rikers Island, and the Return of the Saxophone Colossus · DISGRACELAND

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. The stories about
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: Sonny Rawlins are insane. At the age of twenty nine,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: when he was recognized as the greatest living tenor saxophone player,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: he disappeared for two whole years. He played no gigs
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: and recorded no music. Instead, he practiced nearly every day
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: alone on the Williamsburg Bridge. He did this after years
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: of heroin abuse. In petty crime, he was a pickpocket.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: He was arrested once for armed robbery and again for
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: doing dope while on parole, and he did time at
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Riker's Island, not once, but twice. He took the cure
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: at a government facility where the CIA conducted secret LSD
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: experiments on unsuspecting patients. And both before and after his
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: now mythical leave of absence, Sonny Rollins, a true saxophone colossus,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: made great music, some of the greatest jazz music of
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: all time. Unlike that music I played for you at
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: was a preset loop from my melotron called Skanks and
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Praises MK one. I played you that clip because I
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: can't afford the rights to the three bells by the Browns,
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: grand old opry cheese? Could I afford it? Because that
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: was the number one song in America on August twenty fifth,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine. And that was the day that Sonny
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Rawlins grabbed a gun hopped in a cab and made
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: a choice that would alter the course of his life forever.
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: On this episode, the Williams Bird Bridge Rikers Island heroin
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: armed robbery and on me Rawlins, I'm Jake Brennan in
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: this this disgrace Land from Grand Street. He cut up
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: Clinton two blocks over to Delancey, his hand tight on
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the handle of the case that held as mark six
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: ten or sacks. The smell of ride drifted from a
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: kosher deli sour Bryan from a pickle vender on the corner.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: Taxi cabs conversed with their horns. Hammers pounded out a
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: rhythm from a construction site, always construction. But he wasn't listening.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Something else had his attention. He stopped by the newspaper
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: stand and gazed at the hulking mass of steel in
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: front of him. The Williamsburg Bridge wasn't the Brooklyn Bridge.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: It wasn't poetic or picturesque, unless graffiti and junkies were
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: your idea of poetry. The Williamsburg Bridge was car wrecks
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: and crime, a diving board for George Bailey types looking
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to make one last goodbye in this cruel world. But
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: he didn't see ugly when he looked at that bridge.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: He saw hope. He saw a sanctuary, a place to
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: disappear for hours at a time, days even, and just
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: blow his horn up on the bridge. He could do
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: the work. He's so desperate and he needed to do
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: and not bother anymore. The work was necessary. He was dissatisfied.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: His sound and his playing needed improvement, and he had
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: to get better. He knew it would take time, so
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: he canceled his upcoming gigs and his studio sessions. He
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: was on bridge time now. He climbed the steps. A
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: subway car rattled overhead the j M maybe the Z trade.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: He didn't notice. He didn't hear the moan of the
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: tug in the East River below either. At the top,
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: he found a cranny to hide inside, took his Mark
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: six out of its case, and began to play. In
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, at twenty nine years old, Sonny Rawlins
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: was the acknowledged colossus of the tenor sacks. Downbeat magazine's
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: prestigious annual poll ranked him number one. His friend Miles
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Davis called him brilliant. But it was guys like Miles
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: who were forging a new path forward in jazz kind
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: of blue. Miles' record was something else, and not just Miles.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: John Coltrane too, Train had giant steps, and Burnette Coleman
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: had the shape of jazz to come sunny. Rawlins peers
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: were leaving him in the dust. Sure, he played the
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: good audiences, and he got good marks, and he got paid.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't about the crowds or the critics or
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: the money. It was about something bigger than all that.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: It was about getting better, being better, and not better
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: than Miles or better than Train. It wasn't a quantifiable thing.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: It was a feeling, an intuition, the personal sense of achievement.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: That feeling was somewhere out there in the sky and
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: in the clouds. On this bridge, he looked out at
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: the East River, and though he couldn't see it, he
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: knew the four hundred acre island was out there around
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: the bend on the other side of Astoria, and he
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: never wanted to set foot on that island again. He
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: could only guess what people were saying about him down
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: on the street this time, Sunny go, Did he retire?
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: Is he back in the pen? Is he dead? Anything
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: was better than what they used to say about him
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: years ago. The best piece of advice echoing around Harlem
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan was, if you saw Sonny Rawlins coming, you
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: walked the other way. Nineteen fifty one, New York City.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: His nerves were shot, his pockets were empty. He stood
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: in the aisle of the city bus, holding out of
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: the step and quickly found his mark, a square, middle
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: aged r on her way home from work, standing next
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: to him, pocketbooks slung around her shoulder. He made eye
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: contact with the guys standing on the woman's other side,
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: and he waited for the bus to make a wide turn.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: As it did, he pretended to lose his balance and
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: stumbled into her. Excuse me, I'm sorry, mamba, you all right?
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: And he grabbed under her arms to steady the both
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: of them, And as he did this, the other guy
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: stuck his hand inside her pocket book and relieved her
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: of her purse. Sonny Rawlins and his fellow Pickpocketer got off.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: At the next stop, they examined their spoils. Ten bucks
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: good enough to cop a bag of dope, which if
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: they split it would maybe last them half the week,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and by then Sonny would be playing another session for
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Prestige Records, which meant more money for more dope. Sonny
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Rawlins was just twenty one years old, still young, still green.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: He had a brand new record deal. Those motherfuckers of
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Prestige barely paid enough for your next fix. And that's
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: why they called Prestige the junkies label, because they always
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: kept you coming back, and Sonny needed to come back,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: just like Sonny needed to steal money from Marks on
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the bus. Because just like Miles and Charlie Parker, just
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: like so many others, Sonny Rawlins was deep into a
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: heroin addiction. At first, the addiction was music. It was
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Louis Jordan playing three sets a night at the Elks
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Rendezvous and Harlem Coleman Hawkins with Body and Soul, a
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: hell of a tune for sure, But Coleman was cool
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: as shit. He wore nice clothes and drove fancy cars,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: and that made an impression on young Sonny rowns. His
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: mom got him a horn, and he practiced in his
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: closet where he wouldn't bother anyone. He taught himself to play,
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: taught himself to be cool as shit, even though he
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: was underage. He had a friend and Felonious Monk more
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: like an older brother thirteen years as senior Monk snuck
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Sonny into the clubs on fifty second Street. That was
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: another lesson. On fifty second Street, you could watch god's
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: play right in front of you. Gods like Charlie Parker.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Bird Bird was a prophet. He played and you listened,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: and everyone did what Bird did. Bird played fast, so
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: you played fast. Bird walked funny, so you walked funny.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Bird shot dope, so you shot dope too. Heroin came
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: to her Carlem in nineteen forty eight, the same year
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: that the Long Playing Album came to the record industry.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Both of those things had a profound effect on jazz.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Longer records meant more space for the music, which had
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: moved beyond jump and swaying into bebop and longer improvisation.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: But dope was the opposite of bebop. Where bebop was fast,
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: dope was slow. But it was also powerful, so powerful
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: that Sonny Rawlins would do anything to get more of it.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Kenny drew put the pistol in Sonny's hand. This wasn't
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: how he usually did it. Sonny was the guy who
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: distracted the mark, not the one who waved the gun
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: and shouted orders. But they were going to need it,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Kenny told him, at least for show. Kenny was one
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: of the best piano players in town. Sonny trusted him
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: in the studio, and he trusted him on this too.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: Lifting verses from women on the bus wasn't cutting it anymore.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Sonny needed bigger scores. Bigger scores meant bigger risks. Sonny, Kenny,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and a mutual friend climbed into a taxi cab and
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: they had the driver stop at fifty ninth in Lexington.
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: The plan was to find a place that was open
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: and empty, maybe Midtown or the ever east Side, robbed
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: the mcgunpoint, split the cash and get a fix. And
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: they barely made it out of the cab when a
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: voice spoke behind them, what do you think you're doing?
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Son Sonny felt the hand on his back and he
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: knew it was a cop. He also knew the cop
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: didn't need a reason. Three black men getting out of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: a cab on a street corner after midnight was all
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: the reason the white cop needed. They didn't fight, it
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: didn't argue about whether or not the needles on the
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: floor of the cab were theirs, because they'd already lost
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: this one, at least Sonny had. The cop pulled the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: gun from Sonny's pocket. What's this shit? He shouldn't have
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: fucked around. No gun down at the detention center. His
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: gut felt rotten. There was pounding in his veins, cold
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: sweat on his face, panic attack maybe, or just to
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Jones for more junk. His body began to tremble, and
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: then it shook violently. One cop called another for backup,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: but they couldn't hold him. That meant subjugation, That meant
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: extreme force, That meant a straight jacket. He was calmer
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: in the courtroom, cool collected. He was no longer strapped up.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: He didn't look crazy, he didn't have a rap sheet,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: and he hadn't actually fired the gun. The judge saw
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: something different. The judge saw an addict with a loaded weapon,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: a menace to society. The judge called it armed robbery.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: So in early nineteen fifty two, Sonny Rawlins didn't get
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: to read all the good press he was finally receiving
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: for his music, nor did he hear that Miles Davis
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: wanted him for a prestigious gig at Birdland. Because Sonny
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: Rawlins was on that four hundred acre penal colony in
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: the middle of the East River, doing one to three
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: years on Rikers Island up on the Williamsburg Bridge. The
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: wind howled, the gloves on his fingers barely provided comfort,
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: and he was cold, and he had a piss. But
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: Sunny Rawins was a monk. Every second of every day
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: spent in prayer. Sonny Rawlins was a samurai hours at
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: a time, repeating the same motif on his horn. He
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: got in the reps, and the reps built strength and stamina.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: Life went on, Miles train monk. They all kept playing
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: and recording and doing their thing. Sonny's wife, Lucille worked
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: a secretarial job to keep the lights on, and god
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: knows they couldn't rely on Sonny's royalty checks alone, because
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: even though this was work up here for six, eight,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: even twelve hours a day every day, it didn't pay.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: The hardest work never does A year had passed since
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Sonny Rawins first climbed the stairs of the Williamsburg Bridge
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: and began to practice. A year without gigs, a year
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: without the money that came from those gigs. I'm talking
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: two grand a week easy. That's equivalent to twenty thousand
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: dollars today per week, no shit. And he gave up
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: that kind of living, in the kind of lifestyle for
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: a whole year in counting, just so that he could
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: pursue artistic excellence. And that's what it was all about,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: getting out of that scene and then getting above it,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: not just musically but literally. Temptations were too much like dope,
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: but dope was in the past. Despite what someone're saying,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: Sonny wasn't up on that bridge to kick heroin. He'd
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: already done that. Sonny was up on that bridge to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: kick another bad habit. Stay away from Charlie Parker and
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: stay away from Sonny Rawlins. In nineteen fifty two, that
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: kind of advice was appreciated, but not surprising because although
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: Sonny Rawlins was out of Rikers, having served only ten
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: months for getting busted with Kenny Drew's gun, he wasn't rehabilitated.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: Rikers was an overcrowded mess of junkies, thieves, murderers, and rapists.
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: The Rikers didn't rehabilitate shit. Rikers reinforced who you already
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: were and the person you were quickly becoming. Sonny Rowins
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: went in a junkie, and Sonny Rawlins came out of
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: a junk He was still a thief, but his code
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: had changed. It wasn't just squares who were marks anymore.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Anyone was fair game. So most cats kept their distance.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: They didn't want to work with Sonny, let alone get
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: within arm's reach. Fellow junkies, however, were a different story.
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Miles Davis didn't pick pockets, but Miles pinned women, and
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Miles played that desperation game. Charlie Parker Bird, he was
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: desperation in Karnate, the legendary player that god, the prophet,
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: now nothing more than a pariah, strung out, nodding off,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: banned from stepping inside Birdland, the jazz club that was
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: named after him. Bird was the reason so many players,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: like Sonny he got turned on to heroin. Bird couldn't
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: help but feel responsible for their addictions, and if he
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: couldn't offer them a cure, the least he could do
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: was offer them a gig. Bird hired Sonny and Miles
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: for a session. Byrd asked Sonny point blank if he
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: had finally kicked the habit. Sonny lied and told him
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: he had. That's good, Bird said, But Sonny saw the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: way Bird looked at him. For the rest of the session,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Bird knew Sonny was full of shit. Bird was disappointed, insulted.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: Even he didn't talk to Sonny after that, not even
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: when Sonny pulled the kind of arrogant bullshit he was
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: known for. When he took his solo quoted the melody
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: from Irving Berlin's anything you can do, I can do better,
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: the student wagging his tongue at the master, just like dope.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: This was what Sonny perceived to be the path to greatness,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: a total lack of humility, total arrogance. The New York
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: City clubs didn't care if Sonny was arrogant or not.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: His cabaret car had been revoked back when he was arrested.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifties, jazz musicians were required to have
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: a cabaret card in order to perform live. If you
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: were convicted of a crime, that card was taken away.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: As punishment, and no one would look the other way
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: and hire you because NYPD enforced the law and club
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: owners didn't want to risk their plays getting shut down
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: for her junkie. The law targeted jazz players because jazz
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: was only performed in quote unquote cabarets and not in
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: the places where the upper crust congregated. Jazz consisting mostly
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: of black players and the upper crust being exclusively white,
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: cabaret cards were bullshit. Sonny Rawlins knew this. It wasn't
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: just about his right to make an honest living. It
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: was about as right as a human being. Even worse,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: if he wanted to get the card back, he had
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to debase himself further, not through official channels, through back doors,
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: under the table, off site. Sonny approached the guy at
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: the agreed upon meeting spot, blocks away from the precinct,
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: flat top, haircut, glasses, white shirt, khakis, total herb. He
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: wasn't wearing a uniform, but he screamed nark. Sonny approached
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: him cautiously, and the alleyway was far enough off the
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: beaten path that anything could happen and no one would
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: be the wiser, Not that anyone would give a fuck
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: about a dead horn player. The plane closed, cop cocked
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: his head slightly. You bring the money, Rollins. Sonny pulled
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the twenty from his pocket and tried to look casual
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: as he slipped it into the CoP's hand. This is it,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Come on, man, that's all I got. Sonny pleaded, that
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: was bullshit. He had more cash, but he also needed
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: another fixed pronto. The cop just shook his head. I'll
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: take this for now, but there's something else you gotta
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: do for me. Some friends of mine at City Hall
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: really want to see this new Broadway show. I need
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: you to buy them some tickets and then go to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: this place on Chambers Street and hand deliver them. Do
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: that for me, and I'll consider letting you get back
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: to work. Bribing cops and city officials was not sustainable.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: Neither was the constant harassment from his parole officer, who
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: bugs on me constantly about getting a nine to five job,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: about living like a regular person, not a junkie. But
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Sonny Rawlins was a junkie. He was deeper into the
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: stuff now than he'd never been before, and if he
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: was busted again that would mean a much longer second bid.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Back at the Rock, There was one option. However, if
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: Sonny turned himself into the police for a parole violation,
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: the mac sentence he could catch was ninety days. He
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: knew it wasn't a matter of if he'd get busted again.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: It was just a matter of when he thought about
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: his idol, Charlie Parker nodding off in the studio, barely
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: coherent one moment, and disgusted with his legacy the next,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: the legacy of doper acolytes like Sonny. Sonny Rawins was
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: determined to avoid the same fate. In March of nineteen
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: fifty four, after seventeen months on the outside, Sonny went
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: to the police and confessed that he had violated his
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: parole by getting high, and he was sent back to
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: Rikers once again. Prison was no different than the street
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: there regards to bribe pushers, to befriend corruption, to navigate
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: It was just ninety days. He could do this. Sunny
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: blocked it all out like it was a kid all
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: over again, inside the closet of his bedroom, blowing his
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: horn in solitude. He made nice with the prison chaplain
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: played Sunday morning hymns at the chapel on a horn
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: donated by the Salvation Army, and he practiced. He wrote
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: while at Rikers. That second time, he composed three songs Ergan,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: Doxy and Olio, all of which would later become jazz standards.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: The incarcerated world spun around him in its violent deprevity,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: and when his ninety days were up, Sonny Ronalds knew
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: he'd be stepping right back into a world of temptation
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: and vice. It was a vicious cycle, a cycle he
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: needed to break, a sickness he needed to cure. Down
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: a long hallway inside a secluded room on a wing
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: of the Public Health Service Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, a
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: patient was given a small cup of water to drink.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: The patient thought the liquid contained medicine as part of
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: a trial to find a cure for schizophrenia. That's what
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: he signed up for, at least, or what the patient
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: didn't know was that the water was dosed with LSD
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: and that he was an unwitting participant in a top
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: secret government experiment. Sonny Rawlins didn't know anything about mk Ultra.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: No one did. No One at the Public Health Service
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Hospital aka and the Narcotic Farm aka Narco, or simply
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: the Farm, knew that the US government was using human
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: beings as guinea pigs to test the long term effects
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: of LSD. Guys like Sonny were at the farm to
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: take the quote unquote cure Dolophinedwen you are junk ten
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: to fourteen days of detox, followed by four months in
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: the general population. The Lexington facility was famous for getting
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: many jazz musicians off dope. Dexter Gordon, check Baker, Elvin Jones,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: Lee Morgan, even Sammy Davis Junior all took the cure
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: at the farm. At one point, Sonny was at the
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: farm when he heard the news Charlie Parker was dead,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: only thirty four years old, but his junkie lifestyle had
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: been so rough the coroner pegged him for sixty. Sonny
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: mourned Bird's death. He still wanted to be like his
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: one time mentor, but now only in the way he played.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Because now Sonny was clean, he was no junkie, and
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: he was determined to stay that way. Things would be different.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: Bird was dead, Sonny was born anew and nothing would
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: ever be the same again. We'll be right back after this.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: We're we're we're. The term shedding as in wood shedding,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: as in you've got to get outside yourself, your routine
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and go out to the proverbial woodshed to work on
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: your craft refers to the time an artist takes to
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: practice to grow to hone new material and with any
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: luck level up. Perhaps you do this at a shed
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: out in the woods, hence the woodshed thing. And you
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: can imagine that said woodshed is where all that chopped
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: wood is kept, hence the other saying great chops, as
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: in that horn player has great chops. Okay, that last
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: part isn't true. I really wanted it to be true.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: For a minute. I was like, great chops, chop wood,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and I thought I was onto something. But the slank
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: chops in actuality refers to a horn player's jaw or mouth.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: But I digress. When Sunny Rawls decided it was timed
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: a woodshed, he sequestered himself not in a shed in
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: the woods, but up on the Williamsburg Bridge overlooking the
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: East River in New York City. He was up there
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: just about every single day for two years, rain or shine,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: hot or cold, hiding in plain sight, hyper focused on
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: one thing to get better. Getting better wasn't just about
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: refining his own sound in the face of his peers
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and innovations, and it wasn't just about distancing himself from
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: a life of drugs and crime. Sonny Rawlins was on
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: that bridge to make a life change because he nearly
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: died on the streets below. The old radio in Sunny Rowlands'
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: apartment crackled breaking news from midtown from Birdland, but not
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: from inside Birdland, from outside Birdland. It was August twenty fifth,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, around midnight. NYPD had just beat the
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: shit out of Miles Davis for the offense of standing outside,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: for smoking on the sidewalk, for refusing to move along
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: at his own gig. Sonny felt sick to his stomach
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: as he listened to the DJ details of Vicious All.
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: Sonny had remained clean after his time at the firm,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: so he and Miles no longer bonded over getting a fix.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: But Myles remained a friend, a champion of Sonny's playing.
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: And an attack on a friend, an attack on a
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: fellow horn player, It was an attack on Sonny, an
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: attack on all of them. Sonny sprang into action. He
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: grabbed a starter pistol from a desk drawer, just a
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: tiny thing loaded with blanks, nothing like the one he'd
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: used with Kenny Drew years ago. It was necessary, necessary
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: to show the cops he was serious, fucking NYPG. They'd
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: put him in a straight jacket, revoked his cabaret card,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: shipped him off to rikers like he was a junkie nobody.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: He ran out the door of his apartment in a flash,
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: hailed a cab and the attacks. He shot off into
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: the night, up FDR Drive in the nocturnal glow of
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: passing headlights, like blood coursing through a vein. Sonny can
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: only imagine how bad the scene would be when he
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: got there, the blood running down Myles's head, ruining his
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: pristine white suit, taking his defiant rap while the cops
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: swung their nightsticks some more police loved it when he
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: mouthed off to them. A crowd would gather, some with
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: horror and disgust on their faces, others with that sanctimonious
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: look in their eyes, and the look that said jazz
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: was deplorable and led to scenes like this one, to
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: bloodshed and fear. The motherfucker brought it on himself. All
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: that shit, Sonny shook with anger. He stuck his hand
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: in his pocket he felt the starter pistol, and he
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: told the Cabby to high tailing. He was time to
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: get his hands sturdy. For nearly four years, Sonny Rawlins
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: had been living with clean life, the life championed by
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: guys like Max Roach and Clifford Brown, jazz musicians who
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: proved you didn't have to shoot up to be a
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: good player. In fact, you were better without dope. Sonny
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: channeled the newfound freedom into one of the most prolific
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: stretches of his career. From nineteen fifty five to nineteen
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: fifty nine, he released a string of classic albums as
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: a leader, Worktime, ten O, Maddening Saxophone, Colossus, Way Out West,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: Freedom Sweet, He played on Monks, Brilliant Corners, and all
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Timer if there ever was one. He was named down
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the magazine's Tenor Player of the Year. He was better
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: than ever. He was the greatest, and he didn't let
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: anyone forget it. While recording the title track for Tenor Madness,
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: which featured Sonny's old friend John Coltrane, Sonny was still
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: pulling the kind of cocky immature Shitty pulled on that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: session with Bird. In Sonny's eyes, he was the man
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and Train was just a kid, a hungry upstart, worshiping
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: at the feet of the master. Sonny laid back while
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: trained blue heart. Sonny barely tried. He could do this
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: with both eyes closed, and the two players traded force,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: and then Sonny fucked with Train, just for show. Train
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: played a lick and Sonny flipped it around and played
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: the lick back and reverse. Train felt the heat. Every
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: tenor player felt the heat coming from Sonny Rawins, possibly
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: the most incisive and influential jazz instrumentalists since Charlie Parker.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And that's a quote from The New Yorker. At the time,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Train knew he had to do something different, played with sheer,
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: passion and force, sheets of sound. Sonny didn't know what
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: the hell he was hearing. When Train started to make
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: that shift. It confused him. That confusion, in turn made
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: him frustrated, and then he Sonny Rawlins was the one
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: feeling the heat. Train was on his way to some
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: interstellar region. But that wasn't the only heat. Sunny Rawlins
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: felt there was more than was emanating from a club
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: in Manhattan. The cab pulled over at sixteen seventy eight Broadway,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Sonny hopped out. He pulled the starter pistol from his pocket.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: He was ready for anything, ready to stand his ground
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: and defend his friend. But the sidewalk outside Birdland was empty.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Miles was gone, and so were the cops. All there
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: was left were dark patches of blood on the pavement.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Sonny stared down at all of Myles's blood, and suddenly
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the sick to his stomach feeling came back. Only this
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: time it wasn't because of what had happened, but because
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: of what didn't happen. What the hell was he thinking
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: rushing down to Birdland with a pistol in his hand.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: The cops wouldn't know it was loaded with blanks. They
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: would have taken one look at Sonny and it would
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: have been over all of it shit. They beat Myles
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: Davis till he bled for standing there for nothing more
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: than the crime of being black and playing jazz. Just
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: imagine what they would have done to Sonny with a
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: fucking piece in his hand. He shuddered at the thought.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: He shuddered at the scene. In a matter of months,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: he left that scene behind as he made his way
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: over to Delancey Street and climbed the steps of the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: Williamsburg Bridge for the first time. Sunny Rawlins began his
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: descent with a flashlight in one hand and his tenor
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: sacks in the other. It was dark and he could
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: barely see. He kept moving. He'd been up here for
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a day and a half, now hyper focused once again,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: practicing scales, melodies, snippets of old standards, anything that passed
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: the time, anything to take his mind off of what
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: was going on around him. Around him was chaos, not
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: the usual chaos. It was smoke and fire, a cloud
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: of toxic dust slowly blanketing New York City. He saw
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: it with his own two eyes, but not from up
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: on the bridge. He was in his apartment on the
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: thirty ninth floor when it happened. No power, no contact,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: no way out, and no way of knowing who alive
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: and who was dead. It was around thirty six hours
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: later when the National Guard evacuated the building. Sonny held
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: the flashlight in front of him as he walked down
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: all thirty nine flights all the way to the ground
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: floor outside on the street, just six blocks from the
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: World Trade Center, or at least the spot where the
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: World Trade Center used to be. Both towers were now
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: just rubble and smoke. Sonny boarded an evacuation bus, the
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: Mark six in his hand. He never went anywhere without
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: his horn. The horn was it. It was practice, discipline,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It was a completion of the circle. The person on
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: stage and off, the person up on the bridge and
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: up in that apartment. They were one and the same.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: When he left the Williamsburg Bridge for the last time,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: exactly four decades earlier in nineteen sixty one, Sonny had
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: been missing from the jazz scene for two years. When
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: he returned, John Coltrane was now the saxophone colossus. That
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: meant the pressure was off. Sogning no longer worried about
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: what other people thought about him anyway, and the only
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: person he wanted to be the best for was himself. Plus,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: demand for Sonny Rawlins was at an all time high.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: He picked up gigs immediately. He signed a ninety thousand
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: dollars six album deal with RCA Records, a huge deal
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: for a jazz musician and the biggest deal RCA had
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: ever given a black artist at the time. More important
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: than a record deal, though, was how he was now playing.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: It wasn't at all like he played before. That's not
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: to say he no longer sounded like Sonny Rawlins because
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: he did. But all that practice, that focus, that time alone,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: all the tapping into something bigger is something up with
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the clouds that you can't see with the human eye,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: but you knew was there. It changed him. He wasn't
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: playing that arrogant shit anymore. Like he pulled on burd
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: and train. He was humble, he was pious. He played
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: not like who he was, but like the person he
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: wanted to be. And over the ensuing years he continued
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: to practice, to play, to get better and became that person.
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Parker laid the groundwork, and Coltrane went interstellar, and Burnett
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: went way out and Dexter Gordon had toned for days.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: All of those guys are giants in their own right. Sonny, however,
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: is the master. He's been called the greatest living improviser.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: A petition has been brought before New York City Council
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: to rename the Williamsburg Bridge in his honor. But in
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, at the age of eighty four, Sonny Rawlins
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: was forced to stop playing altogether due to pulmonary fibrosis,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: a disease that leads long tissue damaged and scarred. Now
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, at ninety two years old, Sonny
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: has outlived Miles, Trained, Monk Byrd and all the other
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: major jazz players that he came up with. His cultural
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: impact is massive. He has left us with great music.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: He is the consummate ambassador of jazz. But he can
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: no longer practice, and in Sonny Rawlins's eyes, practicing was
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: a never ending journey, the journey he was not allowed
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: to finish, and thus he never achieved the level of
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: personal satisfaction that he chased for decades. I dedicated my
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: life to music, he said, and I never got it
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: to where I wanted to be. In that, this is
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan in this this Disgraceland. Disgraceland
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: was created by Yours Truly and is produced in partnership
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: with Double Elvis. Credits for this episod so it can
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: be found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
• 35:04
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• 35:07
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• 35:10
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• 35:12
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• 35:17
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• 35:20
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• 35:30
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