Saxophone Colossus: The Life and Music of Sonny Rollins, by Aidan Levy, is both a captivating biography of Rollins and an exciting history of the time from the depression until now.

I enjoyed the other Levy book I read, Dirty Blvd, and found this one to be even better. Because of the extensive research and many interviews, much of the story is in the words of those who lived it. Levy does a great job of providing a narrative skeleton which is fleshed out by the first-person accounts. This is done extremely well and keeps the biography itself moving forward without sacrificing many moments of reflection and even nostalgia on the part of Rollins.

While I have always liked his music I was painfully ignorant of what his life was like. I knew snippets here and there, largely the things that become "newsworthy," which usually means sensationalized and also usually misunderstood. I feel like I have a much better grasp of what went on both personally and musically in his life and in the universe he inhabited.

The musical discussions included offers some interesting insight into what he liked and disliked about things (like studio vs live audience) as well as influences he had growing up and well beyond.

I would recommend this to any jazz fan, any Rollins fan, and anyone who simply enjoys reading biographies. In particular biographies where the subject is given plenty of chance to talk. In fact, this likely is somewhere between the standard biography and an autobiography with a cowriter.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. ( )