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Who sparked your love of Sax music

My neighbour had a small combo which played local dances ....they weren't very good(Remember "A White Sports Coat and a Pink Carnation" ? :eek: ), and certainly not 'jazzers', but he had a lovely Selmer which he said was worth £125.....a fortune in the late Fifties, so I guess it was a MkVI. I just loved the look and sound of it.
 
Sparking the love of Sax music

Well, I can't put it down to one particular person because when I got switched onto the sax, I was listening to it via Helen Mayhew on JazzFM - the Dinner Jazz show, so I am sure there was a lot of classic sax.

Others: Candy Dulfer on Lily Was Here
Joshua Redman: Freedom in the Groove
 
I know that a lot of us think of the jazz greats when we think of great sax players but what track or player was the initial spark that lit the flame of love for the sax and sax music.

I think it was the sax part in careless whisper played by Steve Gregory that started it all and the the sax solo from "Will you" by Hazel O Conner can't remember who the sax player was but someone will tell me

Who was it for you?

mamos

Without doubt it was hearing Gerry Mulligan Qt. playing 'Walkin Shoes' in about 1965. But then a bit later I heard 'Kind of Blue' and I've been addicted ever since.Decided to learn to play on my 70th!!!:D
 
for me it was candy dulfer lilly was here
also baker st
dont now many that why i posted the top 100
so it looks like i was to later on this topic
 
1957 Jimmy Guiffre Train and the River ... still switches me on! Paul Desmond too with Dave Brubeck. Fifty years on I finally got myself an alto ... way too long a wait!
.

YES!! I too had forgotten that one. The earth definately did move for me whenever that came on. Think I must have bought the LP.I was 19 in 1957 and have just got an Alto as well.
 
When I was a kid on a farm in North Carolina, I used to get up at 5am to tune my am radio to WLS Chicago (900 miles away) where for about an hour I could hear King Curtis, Jr Walker, Lester Young and other great players with Fats Domino, Ray Charles, etc. each morning bouncing off the stratosphere before the signal faded. I was in awe. All around me was top 40 am music but out there somewhere was this great music! So I started playing tenor when I was 12 and I would honk away 4-5 hours a day but had to give it up when I went to college to study chemistry. Finally, after many years I'm sending my daughter off to study chemisty in college and I'm honking away again and loving it.
 
Being born in mid 50s Britain the soundscape was largely big bands with ballad singers until my elder sister started bringing home pop and soul records.
I listened to everything I could get my ears on.

The real saxophone epiphany was when in an amateur drama group in the 1980s we were about to do 'Flying Blind' and I was required (as the muso in the group) to track down Charlie Parker's 'Lover Man' where he's strung out.
I found it at Mole Jazz.

That slayed me.
I devoured the rest of that Dial album, and that led to a whole world of Jazz and opening my ears.
 
Second half of freshman year in high school included music appreciation. My teacher was awesome and I decided to take clarinet. She convinced me to help with the spring concert that year. My lessons were not to start till August. There was a senior who played Harlem Nocturne on tenor in that Spring concert and that was it. The rest was history.

Forgot all about clarinet.
 
My Dad was a sax player, so we always had a stack of LPs next to the record player. I can remember listening to John Coltrane on an live album called Coltraneology - absolutely magical!

So Coltrane has been as massive influence.

I can also remember going to see the Buddy Rich Big Band as an eleven year old kid and spending the whole gig with my mouth agape as Steve Marcus weaved magic into each one of his solos.

But all-in-all, for me it has to be the old man, for playing the sax and for putting one in my hands as a kid.

If every parent put a musical instrument in their kids hands there would definitely be more peace around.

Happy world peace day.
 
I use to love the song ECHO BEACH when i was in my teen's and loved that Tenor solo in it and started liking the old horn sound's then.
 
I use to love the song ECHO BEACH when i was in my teen's and loved that Tenor solo in it and started liking the old horn sound's then.
Loved Echo Beach- especially the fact it was a guy playing flute who jumped onto tenor for the solo... come on, no one else fans of Rat Trap by the Boomtown Rats? Surely we're about the same vinage- thought that one would have been a blast from your youth!
 
Love that Rat's song al;so and what about Tom Robingson's War Baby,wow great tenor and fantastic soprano.Been playing my Thin Lizzy this week the car and love Dancing in the moonlight,great tenor.
 
Love that Rat's song al;so and what about Tom Robingson's War Baby,wow great tenor and fantastic soprano.Been playing my Thin Lizzy this week the car and love Dancing in the moonlight,great tenor.
John "irish" Earle no less...
 
I was a plain pop listener until I heard Branford Marsalis on Sting's Bring On The Night. I immediately knew that I had to learn to play the clarinet... until I realised it was a soprano sax!!!
The same week I sold my Vespa and walked to a dodgy music shop in Rome where I bought myself a (very) used Grassi tenor.
Went home, learnt how to make sounds with it and started exploring music that contained saxophone solos so went to another dodgy shop and pick up a Coltrane bootleg. It literally took me five years to be able to listen to Coltrane but those five years were a wonderful journey towards jazz through the pop sax solos of careless whisper and Sade, Grover Washington Jr and David Sanborn, the mighty Bob Berg/Mike Stern and the many fusion bands of the 90's, and slowly back to the true jazz of the 50's and 60's when the un-listenable Coltrane bootleg finally got the appreciation it deserved.
So I guess I have to thank Mr Sumner for introducing me to the magic of saxophone, sax playing and the most glorious music of my life!
 
For me it was Johnny Paris (Johnny and the Hurricanes), Steve Douglas (Duane Eddy), Bill Haley and Bill Blacks Combo, and all the surf-rockers. I used to buy American instrumental records from the age of 13, finally deciding to take up tenor when I was 18 - buying a rattly, clapped-out Mk VI. Still got it. If you don't blow and just use the keys it sounds like one of those old-fashioned manual typewriters! Got its own built in rhythm section. LoL.
 
Well for me it was also, undoubtedly the sax solo from Will you, written and performed by Wes Magoogan, who as Taz stated in an earlier post, had his sax career taken away from him after an accident with a cicular saw.
Told my teacher this week and he is gonna try and teach it to me:shocked:......may have his work cut out there :)))
 
I bought my wife an alto about 5 years ago as she said she wished to learn. The thing then merely gathered dust in the corner of the bedroom.

I'd always loved Baker Street, Will you etc but the tune that stuck in my mind was Your Latest Trick, having seen it performed live a few times. That was just brilliant.

A few months back work was stressful and Your Latest Trick came on the radio. I remembered my wifes sax and immediately rang up a local music school..... one day I hope to have the skill to play it!
 
All my friends played an instrument and I was the only one who didn't.
My playing of the tenor sax was never out of an influence. It just seemed like the logical instrument to play in the band because it was a solo instrument and no one else played it....I thought it would be cool to learn how to play it...
 
Hi mamos,
For me it was Gene Barge on tenor sax backing Gary U S Bond's on the big hit Quarter to Three. Simple but effective.
Rob.
 

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