http://digitalinterviews.com/digitalinterviews/views/ford.shtml has an interview with him. It includes this:
Digital Interviews: You started out on the saxophone when you were 10 years old?
Robben Ford: Yes. At 10, I started playing the saxophone because I saw someone play it and it just totally inspired me. I had an epiphany. I was just, “That’s it! That’s what I want to do!” That was the first instrument I really fell in love with, and ran with.
Another website on him has this: Along with his love for the blues, Robben began listening to jazz in those early years, and artists that to this day are probably his most important influences, including John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Robben's approach to playing the guitar was greatly influenced by the music of these and other jazz masters. Although he enjoyed the many great jazz guitarists, such as Wes Montgomery, it was really the horns that most moved him, espeaally the saxophone work of John Coltrane. Though Robben no longer plays the saxophone, he did not give it up until the mid 1970s after his work with Jimmy Witherspoon. He felt he needed to give his all to just one instrument. Up until that time he would on some nights play almost as much sax as guitar. According to many, Robben's skills on sax were in fact equal to his skills on guitar. When Robben joined Charlie Musselwhite's band in 1970, Charlie often had Robben playing sax on such instrumentals as Ray Charles' "Hard Times" or Robben's own "Blue Stu".
He has also recorded on sax in the 1970s: albums include "Talk to your Daughter", "Discovering the Blues", "Schizophrenic" and "Sunrise".
Apparently he gave up the sax quite a long time ago, but used to be really good.
Rhys