David Sanborn died Sunday at age 78 of complications of prostate cancer. He was one of the most influential alto sax players of the last 50 years and played in many genres - rock, funk, blues and smooth jazz. He will be missed, particularly in the sax playing community.
Sad news. David Letterman posted a tribute to him, he sat in with the band on a regular basis.
I always enjoyed his music.
He had a Sunday morning radio show back in the late 1980s we use to listen to. I think it was on NPR and was a nice break from the coma inducing Classical music they always played.
MSN.com: David Sanborn, saxophone star of jazz fusion, dies at 78
"Beginning in 1986, Mr. Sanborn hosted a syndicated radio program, “The Jazz Show,” which introduced classic and modern jazz to audiences raised on rock music."
Critics were not always so appreciative of his work. For years, purists complained that Mr. Sanborn’s style was not worthy of the label “jazz.”
“I don’t have any control over what people call my music,” he told the Christian Science Monitor in 1991. “I don't call it jazz; I never have and I never will. Because I don't come from that tradition of the music that traces from Louis Armstrong up to the present day. I study it, and I can affect certain elements of jazz in my playing, but the rhythmic basis of my music is primarily funk music.”
I'm not a huge smooth jazz fan, but I could appreciate that David Sanborn was willing to provide the perfect sax for a Ween song.
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