David Sanborn Biography
30 July 1945, Tampa, Florida, USA. Sanborn's virtuosity has now spanned four decades, taking him from being a band member (with the seminal Paul Butterfield) to a leading session player for artists such as David Bowie, James Taylor and Stevie Wonder. His is the alto saxophone solo on Bowie's "Young Americans". He grew up in St. Louis and played with some of the finest Chicago school bluesmen, including Albert King. Nowadays, under his own name, Sanborn records and performs regularly. His blistering alto saxophone style competes somewhere between Junior Walker and Dick Heckstall-Smith. and is all the more remarkable because for many years as a child he suffered from polio and had breathing difficulties. Sanborn does not flirt with his instrument; he blows it hard. His solo debut was in 1975 with Taking Off.
Over the next decade he produced a series of albums that were all successful, and won a Grammy award for Voyeur. In 1987, A Change Of Heart proved to be a big hit in the jazz charts, although much of it was in the rock style, notably the unrelenting and powerful "Tintin" along with the pure funk of "High Roller". Close-Up featured a sensitive (though raucous) reading of the Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye hit "You Are Everything". That was to be his last pop influenced album to date and in 1991 Sanborn made his first ever "pure jazz album" and achieved the esteem of the jazz reviewers. Another Hand and more recently Pearls have lifted Sanborn to the peak of his already lengthy career. The latter album was lodged at the top of the Billboard Jazz chart for many weeks in 1995. He signed a major new contract with Verve Records in December 2000 resulting in the bestselling Timeagain in 2003.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze.
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