Remembering Sonny Rollins, a Towering Jazz Saxophonist

The musician, who died May 25 at age 95, honed a deeply individual sound on his horn and penned several jazz standards in a career that spanned more than half a century.

In his teens, rather than follow the crowd and emulate the styles of star tenor saxophonists of the late 1940s, Sonny Rollins, who died on Monday at age 95, played with a sound that was distinctly his own. A towering influence on jazz’s postwar evolution and a prolific composer of songs that became jazz standards, Mr. Rollins was seldom satisfied with h…