I’m the guy you and Sonny spoke about in the interview who has collected almost 400 privately made recordings of Sonny’s live performances from 1948 to the present time. My own secretly made recording from the second row center at Berklee Performance Center on 9/15/01 was ultimately released as “Without a Song:The 9/11 Concert” which led to a Grammy for Sonny. His former label told a white lie in the liner notes when they said I had his permission. In fact, as Sonny said in your interview, his late wife and manager would have wanted to “kill” me if she had known what I was doing. Of course, I never intended to profit from any private recordings of Sonny, all of which are being held for his use in the future.

I’ve spent time with Sonny and can attest to the fact that he is a kind and generous person who lives modestly and devotes his entire life to his music. As a result of this devotion, Sonny is understandably reluctant to take time away from his busy performing schedule to deal with the many wonderful recordings in my collection. As he said in your interview, he hates to look back and finds listening to his own work a painful experience. His focus is always on how to improve his playing and to explore new musical possibilities.

When Sonny does decide that the time has come to release some of the recordings from my collection, much of the jazz world will be surprised at how great Sonny has been in his live performances throughout his career as compared to his studio recordings, as good as many of the studio recordings are. Stanley Crouch has referred to the best of these live performances as “staggering . . . a reevaluation of what we consider musical creativity.” Gary Giddins recently wrote that when he plays some of them for friends “their jaws drop to the floor.”

But for now we can be grateful that the last of the giants of jazz is still with us and still playing great music. For any of his fans who are not aware of his website, I strongly recommend visiting http://www.sonnyrollins.com. I would also like to put in a plug for my own website, http://www.budpowell.com. Bud Powell, who in 1949 invited the 18 year old Sonny Rollins to play on one of Bud’s classic Blue Note recordings, is another of my favorite jazz musicians. It’s nothing less than astounding that the tenor sax player who played so well on this 1949 recording is still going strong in 2007!