Saxophonist David Sanborn has seemingly played with everyone: David Bowie, Stevie Wonder, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, Elton John, Linda Ronstadt and many, many more.
Sanborn started playing saxophone to strengthen his chest muscles after a childhood bout with polio. His earliest recordings date back to 1967 with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, with whom he performed at a little festival called Woodstock. His profile grew immensely in the 1970s, when he was the go-to guy for laying down a saxophone solo. In that decade, he also started recording his own albums.
One notable milestone in Sanborn's career was the 1986 album with keyboardist Bob James called Double Vision. The album spent 63 weeks on the Billboard charts and won a Grammy for Best Jazz Fusion Performance, Vocal or Instrumental.
Sanborn, James and bassist Marcus Miller, who also played on the Double Vision album, will be at the Granada Theatre on Aug. 11 for Double Vision Revisited. Click here for tickets.
Sanborn talked to Noozhawk about the Double Vision album, Woodstock and some of his notable collaborations.
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Jeff Moehlis: What inspired you to revisit the Double Vision album with Bob James and Marcus Miller?
David Sanborn: We had actually never done this music live before. We were on a jazz cruise a couple years ago — Bob and Marcus and I were all there together doing separate things — and we decided to have a concert one night where we just played all that music live. We had never performed the music live. We did the album and put it out, and then because of our various schedules, we never had a chance to go on the road and play the music live.
So when we did it on the cruise a couple years ago, we realized that, wow, this stuff is pretty good and were lamenting the fact that we had never done any shows. So we said, "Let's try to get it together." It took us about a year and a half to work it out with everybody's schedules, because everybody's working a lot individually. We came together, and now we're going to do it. It's pretty much that simple.
JM: Were you surprised at how successful that album was?
DS: Oh, completely. All of us were completely floored by the fact that it was so successful. We never expected it. In retrospect, it was kind of odd that we never went out to, in a way, capitalize on it or just to honor the fact that we had made this record that had reached so many people. We missed the opportunity to do it while the record was still current. But, better late than never, right?
JM: I have to ask because the 50th anniversary is coming up. You played at Woodstock. What are your memories of that?
DS: Wet. A mess. It wasn't that out of character from a whole lot of other festivals that were going on at the same time. It just happened to be bigger and a little messier, and somehow it captured the zeitgeist of the world. It was a moment in time when everything seemed to come together. I think the fact that there was 30 to 40 percent more people than had ever been at a music festival before, and there was no real violence, and it was relatively peaceful in the face of some difficult circumstances — you know, the rain, the mud and the fact that there was no security. I think it was at that moment.
It was kind of the apex of the '60s. It was 1969, right? It was in so many ways the end of the '60s. I think it became very clear to corporate America that, "Hey, this is something here. It's something we can make a little money with." Not that they weren't aware of it before, in the mid-'60s, but it just became clear that this was more than just a little section of the economy [laughs] as it were. This youth movement thing was something that they could really capitalize on, and in a way it kind of put the nail in the coffin of any kind of idealism.
Then we got into the '70s, and things were a little darker, you know? It was kind of the end of an era in a way. And it was a great moment. All these great musicians were there, all this great music happened. I came up in the '60s, so for me it wasn't this great moment, it was just kind of the evolution of things to that point. I don't know, it's very hard to talk about what that represented, if anything. I mean, I certainly didn't think about it at the time. It just seemed like one more festival, and all of a sudden it's like ca-ching, trademark [laughs]. It was thrilling and depressing, in equal measure.
JM: I want to ask you about a few people that you worked with, one being Stevie Wonder. What was that experience like, touring and recording with him?
DS: I loved playing with Stevie. He was one of the most creative people I'd ever played with. I mean, he would write a song every day. We would go to soundcheck, and he would have a new song for us. It was either a complete song or the beginnings of another song. I remember "Superstition," he was evolving that song. "Tuesday Heartbreak" and "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" and all that, and then "You and I" — those were all ideas that he came up with in his hotel room the night before, and then he kind of workshopped it with us at soundcheck. It was an extraordinarily creative atmosphere to be in. And to be on the stage with somebody who consistently, night after night, killed it ... . That's pretty much all I can say about Stevie.
JM: Another one who I know everyone asks you about is David Bowie, and like a lot of people, I love the work you did on "Young Americans." How did you get that gig with David, and what was it like working with him?
DS: My friend Michael Kamen was asked to be the musical director for Bowie when he did the Diamond Dogs tour in '74. Michael knew me, and he knew that Bowie was looking for a saxophone player, so he called me and I did that tour and Bowie liked the way I played. Then we went to Philly to do the Young Americans album, and he asked me to join in on that, which I did, and then I did a tour with him for that record. And it was great. It was one of the high points of my life, working with him.
Once again, he was an extraordinarily creative person. He's somebody that never stopped working, and I think that's the thing that strikes me about a lot of people I worked with — James Taylor, Rickie Lee Jones. These people are hardworking people. They work at what they do. Of course, they're extraordinarily talented, but they don't rest on their laurels, they don't take it for granted. They're always working. I've been lucky to be around that kind of creative energy in my life. It's been inspirational to me.
— Jeff Moehlis is a Noozhawk contributing writer and a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara.