David Sanborn, whose fiery alto saxophone prospers earned him six Grammy Awards, eight gold albums and a platinum one, and who established himself as a celeb sideman, lending indelible solos to enduring rock classics like David Bowie’s “Younger People,” died on Sunday. He was 78.
He died after a protracted battle with prostate most cancers, based on an announcement on his social media channels. He had obtained the analysis in 2018 however had maintained his common schedule of live shows till just lately, with extra deliberate for subsequent yr.
The assertion didn’t say the place Mr. Sanborn died.
Drawing from jazz, pop and R&B, Mr. Sanborn was extremely prolific, releasing 25 albums over a six-decade profession. “Hideaway” (1980), his fifth studio album, featured two instrumentals written with the singer Michael McDonald in addition to “The Seduction,” written by Giorgio Moroder, which was the love theme from “American Gigolo,” the ice-cool Paul Schrader movie starring Richard Gere.
“Many releases by studio musicians undergo from weak compositions and overproduction, together with some albums by Sanborn himself,” Tim Griggs wrote in a evaluation of that album on the web site Allmusic. In distinction, he continued, “Hideaway” had a “stripped-down, funky” high quality that confirmed off his “passionate and distinctive saxophone sound.”
Mr. Sanborn’s albums “Rumour” (1994), “Pearls” (1995) and “Time Once more” (2003) all reached No. 2 on the Billboard jazz chart.
Whereas the information he made below his personal identify had been typically pigeonholed as clean jazz, Mr. Sanborn chafed on the description. So did lots of his fellow saxophonists, who discovered his tone and method something however mellow.
“The ‘Sanborn’ sound is extra of an excessive sound tone clever,” the saxophonist and educator Steve Neff wrote on his weblog in 2012. “It is vitally uncooked, vivid, edgy and difficult sounding. It’s proper in your face.”
“What Michael Brecker did for the tenor sound, Sanborn did for the alto sound. It’s not a center of the highway sort of sound,” Mr. Neff added. Mr. Brecker and his trumpeter brother, Randy, typically collaborated with Mr. Sanborn.
Mr. Sanborn had little use for labels. “I’m not so involved in what’s or isn’t jazz,” he mentioned in a 2017 interview with DownBeat, the jazz journal. “The guardians of the gate might be fairly combative, however what are they defending? Jazz has all the time absorbed and remodeled what’s round it.”
“Actual musicians,” he added, “don’t have any time to spend fascinated by restricted classes.”
Whereas rising up in suburban St. Louis, Mr. Sanborn was influenced by the sound of blues in Chicago, and by 14 he was enjoying with Albert King and Little Milton. “I assume if push involves shove, I might describe myself as popping out of the blues-R&B aspect of the spectrum,” he mentioned in a 2008 interview with NPR. “However I imply, if you happen to play the saxophone, you definitely can’t escape the affect of jazz.”
Among the many jazz musicians with whom Mr. Sanborn recorded had been the guitarists George Benson, Mike Stern and John Scofield, the bassist Ron Carter, and the arrangers and bandleaders Gil Evans and Bob James.
And his affect was hardly confined to recording. From 1988 to 1990, he hosted the tv present “Night time Music” (initially referred to as “Sunday Night time”), which introduced an eclectic mixture of music; its lineups featured jazz luminaries like Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins and Pharoah Sanders in addition to the likes of James Taylor, Leonard Cohen and Sonic Youth.
Beginning within the Eighties, he additionally hosted a syndicated radio program, “The Jazz Present With David Sanborn.” He had just lately begun producing the podcast “As We Communicate,” which featured conversations with artists together with Pat Metheny and Mr. Rollins.
A onetime member of the “Saturday Night time Dwell” band, he recorded or toured with a constellation of stars, together with Paul Simon, James Brown, Elton John, Steely Dan, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones.
“Anybody with a file assortment greater than a foot extensive most likely owns a chunk of David Sanborn’s unmistakable sound however doesn’t understand it,” The Phoenix New Instances, an Arizona newspaper, noticed in a 1991 article about Mr. Sanborn.
Mr. Sanborn was heard on landmark albums just like the Eagles’ debut and Stevie Marvel’s “Speaking E-book” in 1972 and Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 smash “Born to Run.”
He had a memorable star activate Mr. Bowie’s “Younger People” (1975), on which his sunny but sultry solo opens the memorable title monitor. “There was no lead guitar, so I performed the position of lead guitar,” he advised DownBeat. “I used to be throughout that file.”
He additionally joined Mr. Bowie’s tour for the album, a part of a crack supporting outfit that additionally included Doug Rauch on bass and Greg Errico on drums. “On the ‘Younger People’ tour,” he recalled, “Bowie would typically let the band play for 20 minutes earlier than he got here on.”
David William Sanborn was born on July 30, 1945, in Tampa, Fla., the place his father was stationed within the Air Drive. He grew up in Kirkwood, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis.
His life took a fateful flip at 3 when he contracted polio, which ravaged his left arm, proper leg and lungs.
He was in an iron lung for a yr, and he took up saxophone at 11 on the recommendation of a health care provider, who thought studying a woodwind instrument would assist him construct respiratory power.
The illness had lasting results, a few of them significantly difficult for a horn participant. As an grownup, Mr. Sanborn nonetheless suffered restricted lung capability, and his left arm was smaller than his proper, with compromised dexterity on that hand.
“I don’t consider myself as a sufferer,” he was quoted as saying in 2005 by the Salt Lake Metropolis tv station KSL. “That is my actuality.”
After finding out music at Northwestern College and with the saxophonist J.R. Monterose on the College of Iowa, he headed to California and joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. He was 24 when the band performed earlier than tons of of hundreds on the Woodstock pageant in August 1969.
Mr. Sanborn went on to tour with Stevie Marvel in 1972 and launched his first solo album, “Taking Off,” in 1975. He earned his first Grammy, for greatest R&B instrumental efficiency, for “All I Want Is You,” a monitor on his 1981 album, “Voyeur.”
His 2008 album, “Right here & Gone,” that includes visitor appearances by Eric Clapton, Derek Vehicles and Joss Stone, was a tribute to Ray Charles and his arranger and saxophonist Hank Crawford, who was a significant affect on Mr. Sanborn’s enjoying.
“That music was all the things to me,” he advised NPR. “It form of mixed jazz, gospel, and rhythm and blues. It wasn’t any a kind of issues, nevertheless it was all of them form of blended collectively. And that, to me, is form of the essence of American music.”
Details about survivors was not instantly out there.
Mr. Sanborn continued to tour into his 70s. With all of the modifications within the music enterprise, he discovered, touring was a greater solution to make a residing than recording.
“You make a fraction of what you used to make,” he mentioned in a 2017 interview with The Tampa Bay Instances. “There’s not a whole lot of choices.”
He discovered life on the highway more and more taxing, however performing stay remained a ardour. Regardless of plans to chop again to about 150 gigs a yr from 200, he however launched into tour in 2017 that included Istanbul and Nairobi.
“I nonetheless wish to play,” he mentioned, “and if you wish to play for an viewers, you’ve bought to go the place the viewers is.”
