David Sanborn

David Sanborn began playing in rhythm and blues bands as a teenager, including time with Albert King and Little Milton; joined Paul Butterfield Blues Band, 1976; worked with numerous other artists, among them Stevie Wonder, 1970-72; established solo career, 1975; scored music for films such as Soul Man; hosted radio program The Jazz Show and the television series Night Music; has appeared regularly on The Late Show with David Letterman.

Two-time Grammy Award winner David Sanborn, a highly visible and often emulated entertainer in America since the mid-1970s, has influenced saxophone players from an array of styles, especially popular music. Arguably possessing the most distinctive alto saxophone sound in the pop spectrum, Sanborn has contributed to the world of music his own passionate technique—complete with crying and squealing high notes. His emotional interpretations of melodies have always uplifted any recording or live performance, regardless of the specific genre. Although most of Sanborn’s own recordings take on rhythm and blues, dance music, pop, and rock and roll, he is also an accomplished jazz player. However, Sanborn has remained quick to contend that “I’m not a jazz musician,” as quoted by Down Beatcontributor Howard Mandel in 1993, and “I sometimes get looped with jazz musicians because I play sax and improvise,” he told Los Angeles Times writer Bill Kohlhaase in 1996.

“Not that I’m offended by the description,” he further explained to Mandel, “but I think the rhythmic orientation of what I do is not really jazz. Where I came from, the kind of musical context I grew up in, the kind of playing I did when I was a young player, and the way my playing formed was in more of a rhythm and blues context. The music that really made me want to become a musician was by Ray Charles. David Newman and Hank Crawford were the guys. They combined the sophistication, some of the harmonic sensibility, certainly the hipness, and the rhythmic undercurrent of jazz with the emotional directness of gospel and the structural elements of R&B.”

Returning to traditional rhythm and blues textures and urban music influences in 1996, Sanborn released Songs from the Night Before, his fourteenth solo outing. “I’m lucky enough to really love what I do,” said Sanborn, as quoted on his website at Elektra Records. “I get to do an album every 12 to 18 months, and it always seems to be a reflection of where I’m at musically at that particular point. I’ve been listening to more R&B pop recently, like D’Angelo for example. It’s interesting how some of it goes back to some of the `70s stuff I grew up around. The production is different, but the vibe is there.”