Talk:Sonny Simmons

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Biography: Musicians

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Was English horn his first instrument?[edit]

This is something that NPR reported in their obituary, but having read all the interviews with him I don't believe it's correct.

He started out wanting to play the English Horn but because of the cost ended up on tenor sax, which he played throughout high school and continued to play occasionally later in his career.

Let's try to get back to the primary sources for this information.

For instance, this interview includes background biographical information. Presumably the author was in contact with Sonny when he wrote this, unlike the NPR editor who wrote the obit.

https://www.andyhamilton.org/single-post/2007/02/21/Interview-with-Sonny-Simmons

Here is the quote:

Starting on tenor-sax at the age of 16, in 1949 he experienced a bebop epiphany when he saw Charlie Parker with Jazz at the Philharmonic in Oakland: "Bird filled up this whole auditorium [with his sound] – I never heard such beautiful music coming out of a saxophone. It changed my life". He tried to sneak backstage to speak to the master, but Parker, who was doing very well by this time, was whisked away in a long Cadillac limo: "He had on this white suit like in the Charlie Chan movies", Simmons recalls.

According to this article his first instrument was an accordian, which his father (a preacher) gave him when he was six years old.

https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/3044/page/35?term=sONNY+SIMMONS

"The development of Simmons instrumental skills has been unusual, in that he regards cor anglais as his main instrument - as on alto sax he's almost entirely self-taught. Tenor sax was his first instrument, which he worked to buy when he was sixteen - his parents couldn't afford it. "Big Jay McNeely was my main man, and Illinois Jacquet. I was listening to Bird all the time, but these were my guys" he says.