He was the brightest light in a neighbourhood group of future jazz stars that also included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor; and before he turned 20 he was working and recording with Babs Gonzalez, J.J Johnson, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis. A 1951 session with the trumpeter led to his own recording contract, and for the next three years, until he withdrew to conquer a too common drug problem with uncommon finality, he became acknowledged as the most brash and creative young tenor on the scene in work with Davis, Monk, and the Modern jazz Quartet. When Rollins re-emerged in Chicago at the end of 1955 as a member of the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet, he was an even more authoritative presence. 

His trademarks became a caustic, often humorous style of melodic invention, a command of everything from the most arcane ballads to calypsos, and an overriding logic in his playing that found him hailed for models of thematic improvisation. He continued to record classic sessions, and to work under his own name beginning in 1957, often in a trio setting without piano that provided still greater freedom to his imagination. Rollins's first examples of the unaccompanied solo playing that would become a specialty also appeared in this period; yet the perpetually dissatisfied saxophonist questioned the acclaim his music was attracting, and between 1959 and late '61 withdrew from public performance.
While the 1962-64 period saw him returning to action and striking productive relationships with Jim Hall, Don Cherry, Paul Bley, and his idol Hawkins, Rollins again grew dissatisfied with the music business and his own output, and disappeared again for a period of travel and study that took him to India and Japan. Since returning to recording and performing in 1972, he has released a steady yet by no means excessive stream of recordings (all on the Milestone label), performed a constant though modest schedule of concerts, and gained worldwide acknowledgement as the greatest living jazz soloist. Such hyperbole is all the more impressive for the fact that Rollins has sustained his reputation at the top of the heap for nearly a quarter-century.