FLMag: Are you from a musical family?
DS: Neither my mother or my father were musical. My mother had a great natural voice but it wasn’t anything she pursued. I’m not sure where; you could say I inherited it from her.
FLMag: So who did inspire you?
DS: I suppose you could say I took up the saxophone as therapy, because I had polio when I was 3 years old and I was in the hospital for a couple years. When I got out, I spent a lot of time more or less paralyzed, and I used to listen to the radio late at night. I heard all this great music coming through the air. I was lying in bed in the dark and it offered me escape into another world.
I lived in St. Louis; I grew up at a time where these radio stations were beaming out signals from Memphis, Chicago, Texas, Kentucky, and you could pick these up late at night. I would hear Hank Williams, Charlie Parker, Howlin’ Wolf, all this music and it was like magic to me; these musicians were like magicians.
When I was 10 or 11, the doctors recommended I take up a wind instrument as therapy. I was particularly fond of the saxophone because it sounded to me like the human voice, so I took up the saxophone. (Polio) was kind of the genesis of all this.
I have limited use of my left hand and left arm, so I was never able to play the piano with any great dexterity. I could have picked the trumpet, but I gravitated to the saxophone.
FLMag: Tell me the number one artist you would love to but have not collaborated with, living or deceased.
DS: I missed the opportunity to play with Ray Charles. He and I knew each other, and we crossed paths often. I was very inspired by the saxophone players in one of his bands, a guy named Hank Crawford who was a really fine saxophonist, and David “Fathead” Newman, who was another one. But it just never worked out that Ray and I were able to play together. I think it wasn’t for a lack of trying on my part and certainly an openness on his part. I just think it was missed connections.
FLMag: You’ve played with many bands and music legends – Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, James Taylor etc. How did you decide to go solo in your career?
DS: I had been a sideman for a number of years starting in 1967, just out of my teens. I enjoyed playing in bands. I was given the opportunity to make a solo record in 1975 and did that, but I was still working with other people and I think the combination of wanting to go out and promote my own records and the fact that I wanted to make my own decisions about what kind of music I was playing … it just seemed to be the right direction to go in.
FLMag: If you could change something in the music industry, what would that be?
DS: Oh boy, how much time do you have? There’s so many things. It’s a very different business now than it was when I entered into it. What bothers me now is not necessarily what bothered me back then and for most of my career. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in that I was always given artistic freedom and I could do pretty much whatever I wanted to without much if any interference from the label. I think a lot of my peers had very different experiences so I think I was very lucky in that regard. I think we’re living in an era now that’s uncharted territory in terms of the business. So much of it is online and streaming … it’s much more difficult to make a living. The sequence of events of trying to have your music be a source of income and a way to sustain yourself is becoming less lucrative or less clearly defined than it has been. The chain of events was clearer before – it wasn’t fair, but at least you understood what you were up against. Now it’s like open season, the Wild West.
FLMag: I loved listening to you and Bob James together on your 1986 album Double Vision.
DS: We were able a few years ago to do a tour and play that music live, which surprisingly we’d never done. When we did that album we were all involved in solo projects. So we’d never played that material live until I guess maybe four years ago.
FLMag: So you had many solo albums and you didn’t really have anything planned together?
DS: Yeah. We had a great experience reuniting and playing that music live because Bob and Marcus Miller, one of the other major contributors – we hadn’t really revisited that music for 30 years. It was kind of a revelation: ‘This thing is pretty good.’
WHAT: Jazz Fest 2023
WHEN: January 20 & 21 (David Sanborn headlines January 21)
WHERE: Pompano Beach Great Lawn & Old Town
MORE INFO: pompanobeacharts.org
