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
But hey, look, I became a musician because I love music.
But I never had any illusions at that time that it was going to be how I was going to make a living. I thought, well, I'll make a solo record, and it'll be fun.
I remember one summer, right after my second album came out, James Taylor was nice enough to allow us to open for him.
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 listen to some things that I've done, and I think they're pretty good, but that's not one of them.
If you're playing with somebody from another idiom, you can't react to them in the same way that you react to somebody that is closer to your idiom. You don't fall into the same habits. You find a new way of communicating.
I didn't try to think what my audience wanted and then make the music accordingly. I made the music and hoped that as many people liked it as possible.
I do this because I love it, and at the end of the day, the fact that I can make a living at all doing this, I'm grateful for.
I don't see any way out of that because I think the audience as a whole is not being served and isn't getting excited about going out an buying CD's, and for that matter, going out and going to concerts.
I basically played the music that I felt all my life, and whatever label people put on it is kind of really none of my business.
I hope this doesn't sound like false humility, because I don't mean it to, but I'm just a member of the band.
I'm moved by a lot of different kinds of music, whether it's pop music or R&B or straight-ahead jazz or free or opera or music from all parts of the world.
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.
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.