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's creative life.
"Well, I'm home again," Rollins said. "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. 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's travels
abroad, sheet music with margin notes, personal writing, practice diaries, and
handwritten letters between Rollins and his wife and partner of more than 45
years, Lucille Pearson Rollins.
The archive also offers insight into Rollins's social and
professional network of musicians through detailed notes from recorded
sessions, letters, and snapshots from touring over the decades.
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's 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.
"Rollins had a measure of professional and personal
stability that allowed him to collect the artifacts of his life from original
manuscripts and compositions to his business records, unlike many of his peers.
In this sense, his archive is unique," said Shola Lynch, curator of the
Schomburg's Moving Image and Recorded Sound division."He has also been
aware of keeping the flame. As Rollins said recently of his peers and mentors:
'They're not here now so I feel like I'm sort of representing all of them, all
of the guys. Remember, I'm one of the last guys left, as I'm constantly being
told, so I feel a holy obligation sometimes to evoke these people.' As in life,
Rollins's archive will undoubtedly evoke them and their musical relationships,
and through it, will add granularity to a swath of black history. For the first
time, Rollins has opened the doors to studying his music, life, and work as a
giant of jazz."
"Famous for his reinventions, Sonny Rollins and his
archive reveal the profound nature of jazz, America's classical music. Drafts,
notes on composition, extensive correspondence, the entire spirit and scope of
the Rollins archive show his sophisticated, sustained, and spiritual creative process
up close in a way that may best be called literary," said Kevin Young,
noted author and Director of the Schomburg Center. "Having the archive of
Sonny Rollins come home here, just blocks from where he was born and grew into
one of our finest artists, provides a connection to the geniuses who made
Harlem and whose legacies, like those of James Baldwin and Maya Angelou, also
are housed at the Schomburg."
Highlights from the Sonny Rollins Archive include:
● Personal papers, diaries, notes, and drawings illuminating
Rollins's private thoughts and creative process sporadically through the
decades
● Recordings of practice sessions as well as recording takes
from as early as the 1960s
● Snapshots and photos from life on the road with his fellow
musicians from as early as the 1960s
● 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.
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.
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