David Sanborn
David Sanborn
David Sanbornis an American alto saxophonist. Though Sanborn has worked in many genres, his solo recordings typically blend jazz with instrumental pop and R&B. He released his first solo album Taking Off in 1975, but has been playing the saxophone since before he was in high school. Sanborn has also worked extensively as a session musician, notably on David Bowie's Young Americans...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSaxophonist
Date of Birth30 July 1945
CityTampa, FL
CountryUnited States of America
I know guys that live in New York, but I never see them play because they're always out on the road. I run into them in Europe.
I didn't go on the road until right after my second album.
I think Norah Jones is a perfect example. Here's somebody who was playing the music she wanted to play and did it with some conviction, and it happened to be at a moment in time when there was a highly receptive audience for that kind of music.
Pop used to actually routinely sell 10 million records. Now if they get there at all it takes them quite awhile.
I think the problem is when a genre or style becomes limiting, when it starts to define what you're going to do, then it becomes a problem.
The music is going to change anyway, whether or not the record companies get behind it or not. The music is there, and it's happening, and it's going on out there.
I'm somebody that pretty much operates by instinct, and I kind of have to follow my instincts.
People who really understood the use of space and the fact that the sound and the silence are of equal weight and that what you're doing is really manipulating space. It's the same as a painting except that you're doing it aurally.
The audience is interested in different stuff, not the same old, same old.
And record companies are always quick to blame piracy and the Internet but I think that's only a small part of it. I think it's the corporate bottom line mentality.
My manager and I had been talking about trying to do a TV show. There was a series of shows back in the '50s, where they'd get a bunch of musicians together and they'd jam.
I was actually in an iron lung for about a year, and then I was paralysed from the neck down for another year after that. So I spent a lotta time just lying down as a kid. And some of my earliest memories from then are of listening to the radio.
And I think that in the case of these last few - the musicians I had - the reasons I used the same people I did on the two albums was I really felt that these guys were not only great players in their own right but really understood the concept of functioning as a band.
No, it's unfair to the musicians and the people that work for the record labels, because they're scrambling to make their numbers every month or three months, or they're out of a job.