Sonny Rollins and the Search for Something Real

When 95-year-old jazz legend Sonny Rollins died on May 25, I found myself thinking not first about the stage, but about synagogue.

My first memory takes place there. I remember my dad and grandpa taking me to Saturday services when I was very young, and what I remember first is the light. It came through the stained-glass windows and seemed to transform everything it touched into something holy — the prayer books, the faces, the air itself. It landed on the men who were praying, on their beards and tallises, as they swayed, eyes closed, completely absorbed in something I couldn’t understand.

I only knew what I saw: these men were somewhere else. They were experiencing something powerful, something important, something I could feel.

Around the time of my bar mitzvah, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) took hold of my life. Days became long and exhausting. I sat through school tests counting into the thousands while everyone around me answered questions, and some nights it took four, five, even eight hours to get into bed because my mind insisted I touch, arrange, check, and start over. The mind can know something is irrational and still not be free of it.

Once I finally made it into bed, I’d have a few minutes of peace before sleep.

That’s where I found Sonny Rollins.

After days spent trapped inside my own mind, those few minutes before falling asleep were often the only time I felt free.

Then, one day during that period, my father and I drove to Knoxville, Tenn., to hear Sonny perform. Before the concert, my OCD latched onto something, and I got up three separate times to go to the bathroom, sure something would go wrong if I didn’t.

Then the lights went down. Sonny came onto the stage, lifted the horn to his mouth, and began to play.

And then he began to sway.

Immediately, I recognized something. The motion was exactly like the davening — the swaying prayer — I had seen in synagogue as a child. Eyes closed. Completely absorbed. Reaching for something beyond himself. Even his loose-fitting clothes, moving as he played, reminded me of the tallises I had watched sway around those men years earlier.

The feeling in the room changed. It no longer felt like a concert hall. It had been transformed, the way that morning light had transformed the sanctuary years earlier.

For two hours, I felt exactly what I’d felt as a child: the same gravity, the same presence, the same sense that something invisible but very real was taking place. About a year later, I wrote to Sonny to tell him how much his music had helped me. To my astonishment, he wrote back.

From my perspective, his words were the most rabbinic advice I have ever received — not because Sonny would have described them that way, but because they were wise, direct, and real. He didn’t offer a cure or a cliché. He gave me a way forward:

“Dear Joe, Your comments were appreciated. We all have to use adversity as an opportunity to find a way. So, keep a strong mind throughout this short existence. Your examples give us all hope as all of us here in this life have to struggle.”

I’ve carried those words ever since.

For two hours, I felt exactly what I’d felt as a child: the same gravity, the same presence, the same sense that something invisible but very real was taking place. About a year later, I wrote to Sonny to tell him how much his music had helped me. To my astonishment, he wrote back.

Nearly 20 years later, in October 2025, I had the privilege of interviewing Sonny for my WABE radio show and podcast, “The Upside of Jazz.” I told him about his message to me, about how much it had meant, and asked whether jazz had helped give him that wisdom.

“Jazz brought me the right perspective,” he said.

Then he said something I’ll never forget: “G-d is jazz, and jazz is G-d.”

He didn’t mean that casually. He said jazz was G-d speaking to him, and his playing was his attempt to speak back. “The only thing I try to do is get that feeling,” he told me. “And what is that feeling? That feeling is jazz.”

At 95, he told me he was still practicing — not necessarily on the saxophone, but practicing life.

“It’s so beautiful being alive and getting another opportunity to try to make it,” he said.

After the interview, we spoke a couple more times by phone. We talked about Lester Young, Erroll Garner, Fats Waller, and ballads. When Sonny spoke about musicians he loved, I could hear him light up.

In one of those final conversations, I brought up the song “This Is Always,” one of the ballads that had brought me peace during those long nights. Then Sonny sang a little of the melody and said, “Think of me when you play it.”

That kid lying awake at night wasn’t looking for a spiritual guide. He didn’t know that’s what he needed. He just knew that when Sonny Rollins came through the speakers, something in him could breathe again.

Sometimes the real thing comes through stained glass. Sometimes it comes through a saxophone.

And sometimes, if you’re very lucky, the person who helped you find it is still around long enough to remind you what mattered in the first place: not fame, not success, not even greatness, but the feeling, the search, the gratitude, and the chance to keep trying.

Or, as Sonny put it: “It’s so beautiful being alive and getting another opportunity to try to make it.”