Sonny and Nothingness

By DAVID YAFFE

Sonny Rollins and Jean-Paul Sartre got together for a photo op one night. The year was 1966, when Rollins recorded East Broadway Run Down just before entering a six-year recording hiatus that included meditation on an Indian mountaintop. Sartre had turned down the Nobel a couple of years earlier but deemed Rollins worthy company, making a couple...