David Sanborn

David Sanborn secured multiple Grammy Awards through his work as a saxophonist, composer, and arranger, emerging as one of the most commercially dominant sax players of the 1970s with a body of work that encompassed jazz in all its forms along with rock, soul, and R&B, delivered through a sharp, instantly identifiable tone marked by intensity and total dedication. An innovator in smooth and contemporary jazz, he also maintained an extensive career as a session musician whose horn appeared on recordings by over one hundred artists such as Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Esther Phillips, James Brown, and Ween. His 1977 follow-up Promise Me the Moon reached the jazz charts and launched a thirty-year stretch of consistent chart presence and sales that featured releases like the 1980 breakthrough Hideaway, the 1984 concert recording Straight to the Heart, and the 1985 collaboration Double Vision alongside Bob James. Between 1988 and 1990 he served as host of the wide-ranging Night Music television series, which showcased an extraordinary breadth of musicians performing and reflecting on their art. The 1992 album Upfront claimed the number-one position on the Contemporary Jazz charts, while Closer, issued after his move to Verve in 2004, peaked at number two. Throughout the second decade of the new century Sanborn kept refining his approach and maintaining relevance, reuniting with James for the charting Quartette Humaine, joining vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson on the post-bop project Only Everything in 2014, and returning to the top of the contemporary jazz charts with the widely praised 2015 release Time and the River.

Born in Tampa, Florida, Sanborn grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb. After contracting polio at age three, he battled the illness for eight years; in its wake a physician recommended saxophone study to help strengthen his chest muscles. His practice routines soon turned into extended sessions. Hank Crawford became his earliest major alto influence, admired for the direct emotional quality of his sound. At fourteen, in 1959, the young musician made his professional debut alongside visiting Chicago blues figures Little Milton and Albert King.

Sanborn later journeyed to California, where he encountered Paul Butterfield in 1965. Following a relocation to the Bay Area, he became a member of the Butterfield Blues Band, performing with the group at Woodstock and contributing to their recordings. At the same time he forged a lasting partnership with Gil Evans while continuing session work. Landmark albums from that period featuring his playing include Bobby Charles’ self-titled record, Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book, Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard, A True Star, David Bowie’s Young Americans (with the signature solo on the title track), Tommy Bolin’s Teaser, James Taylor’s You Make It Easy, and Michael Franks’ The Art of Tea. Over the remainder of the decade he issued two additional albums and collaborated both live and in the studio with an extensive roster of artists ranging from Steve Forbert and Ian Hunter to Chaka Khan, the Fania All-Stars, and Bonnie Raitt.

After settling in New York, Sanborn achieved his first substantial success as a bandleader with 1980’s Hideaway, which reached number two on the Jazz Albums chart and number 33 on the R&B Albums chart and initiated an extended creative alliance with bassist and producer Marcus Miller. This marked the arrival of smooth jazz. He followed with Voyeur the next year; its single “All I Need Is You” earned him his initial Grammy for Best R&B Instrumental Performance. The album began a run of four consecutive 1980s releases that topped the jazz charts. In 1983 he recorded As We Speak, Backstreet (featuring guest vocalist Luther Vandross), and Straight to the Heart. Despite the intense schedule of touring and recording required by commercial success, Sanborn sustained his commitment to session appearances on albums by Billy Joel, Rickie Lee Jones, and George Benson, among others, and continued live and studio work with Evans. The 1987 album A Change of Heart climbed to number three on the jazz charts.

Although he had begun scoring films as early as 1975 with Moment to Moment, his work in that arena expanded significantly with Psycho III in 1986 and later encompassed Lethal Weapon 2, 3, and 4 from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s. He became a frequent participant in Paul Shaffer’s band on Late Night with David Letterman and co-hosted Night Music with pianist and sidekick Jools Holland. The eclectic series, which aired in 1988 and 1989, welcomed guests such as Sonny Rollins, Marianne Faithfull, Sonic Youth, John Zorn, Iggy Pop, and Sun Ra, who performed their material, discussed it at length with the host, and joined the house band led by musical directors Marcus Miller and George Duke. After two seasons the program ended, yet it later gained recognition as one of television’s most distinguished music series.

Sanborn transferred to Elektra in 1991 and issued Another Hand, which earned particular esteem among jazz listeners. Produced by Hal Willner, it featured a lineup that included Bill Frisell, Charlie Haden, Jack DeJohnette, and Marc Ribot. He next released Upfront, a hard-grooving, blues-inflected soul-jazz recording that shifted emphasis toward the Hammond B-3 while spotlighting guest contributions from William “Spaceman” Patterson and Eric Clapton. The 1994 album Hearsay connected the contrasting approaches of the prior two projects yet leaned toward a funkier, larger-ensemble format overall. During the decade he concentrated more on his own recordings than session work, though he still contributed to projects by Dave Stewart, Oleta Adams, and Branford Marsalis’ Buckshot LeFonque.

Sanborn explored a fresh direction with 1995’s Hearsay, an album of standards arranged with Johnny Mandel’s orchestra that displayed another facet of his alto playing. Inside, released in 1999, constituted another expansive undertaking and incorporated vocalists such as Cassandra Wilson, Sting, Lalah Hathaway, and Eric Benét; the project brought Sanborn a Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance. He moved to Verve for 2003’s Time Again, a contemporary set of pop, R&B, and jazz standards. He continued in that vein with 2005’s Closer, which centered on jazz standards supported by a restrained electric ensemble. Here & Gone, a 2008 tribute to Ray Charles rendered in gritty, soulful, rocking style, featured guests including Sam Moore, Derek Trucks, Eric Clapton, and Joss Stone, while a sequel appeared as 2010’s Only Everything.

In 2013 Sanborn partnered with Bob James to co-lead Quartette Humaine, a collection blending funky contemporary jazz with more reflective post-bop textures that also included bassist James Genus and drummer Steve Gadd. The following year he participated in the four-piece ensemble that issued Enjoy the View on Blue Note, sharing leadership duties with Bobby Hutcherson, Joey DeFrancesco, and drummer Billy Hart. While maintaining regular appearances on Letterman and performing internationally, the saxophonist launched a crowdfunding effort to finance his twenty-fifth release. He reunited with Miller, serving again as both producer and bassist in their first joint project in fifteen years. The resulting album presented Sanborn within a large-ensemble context that included guest vocal contributions from Randy Crawford and Tower of Power’s Larry Braggs. Issued by Sony/Okeh in spring 2015, the set appeared as Time & the River.

Following additional touring and session activity, Sanborn worked in his New York home studio to launch the Sanborn Sessions in 2019, an online broadcast that extended the musical territory first explored by Night Music nearly two decades earlier, with guests performing their own material and jamming alongside his house band. Early participants included Kandace Springs, Michael McDonald, Terrace Martin, and Bob James. In July 2020, to commemorate Sanborn’s seventy-fifth birthday, the U.K.’s Soul Music label released the three-disc retrospective Anything You Want (The Warner-Reprise-Elektra Years 1975-1999), containing rare mixes, radio edits, overlooked album tracks, and live versions drawn from the seventeen solo albums he recorded across that twenty-five-year span. The collection proved to be the final anthology of his music issued during his lifetime; he died on May 12, 2024, at the age of seventy-eight.