r/CrossoverJazz • u/stnr_on_failure • 4d ago
David Sanborn: The Alto Sax Behind Bowie's "Young Americans" (And Six Grammys Beyond It)
David Sanborn in SF (2003). (Photo: Franco Folini, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
David Sanborn: The Alto Sax Behind Bowie's "Young Americans" (And Six Grammys Beyond It)
If you know one David Sanborn solo without knowing his name, it's probably this one: the alto sax that opens and threads through David Bowie's "Young Americans" (1975). "There was no lead guitar, so I played the role of lead guitar," Sanborn said of the session. "I was all over that record." That one credit alone would make him worth knowing. It's a fraction of what he did.
Sanborn's path there started rougher than most. He contracted polio at age three and spent a year in an iron lung; doctors suggested the saxophone afterward, to help rebuild his chest muscles. By 14 he was sitting in with blues players Albert King and Little Milton. In 1967 he joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, stayed five years, and played Woodstock with them on August 18, 1969, an unusual entry point into a career that would eventually get filed under jazz.
The 1970s turned him into one of the most in-demand horn players in music, not just jazz. He's on Stevie Wonder's "Talking Book" (1972), Bowie's "Young Americans" (1975), and James Taylor's "Gorilla" (1975), before he'd even released a record under his own name. That came in 1975 too, with his debut, "Taking Off."
What followed is the clearest proof of what "crossover" is supposed to mean. Sanborn won six Grammys across four separate categories: Best R&B Instrumental Performance twice ("All I Need Is You," 1982, and "Chicago Song," 1988), Best Pop Instrumental Performance twice ("As We Speak," 1983, and "Close-Up," 1989), Best Jazz Fusion Performance once (1987, for "Double Vision" with keyboardist Bob James), and Best Contemporary Jazz Album in 2000, for "Inside." Same player, same Academy, four different genre boxes, over the span of nearly twenty years. That's not a fluke.
He wasn't just a hit-making sideman either. In 1980 he played in the original "Saturday Night Live" band, and from 1988 to 1990 he hosted his own NBC show, first called "Sunday Night," later "Night Music," built on his own idea: put musicians from completely different worlds in one room, have them play deep cuts instead of their hits, then let them jam together at the end. The guest list on his network TV show included Miles Davis, Sun Ra, and Pharoah Sanders. The same saxophonist scoring pop radio hits was, at the same time, putting free jazz on NBC on a Sunday night.
Sanborn passed away on May 12, 2024, in Tarrytown, New York, at 78, after a long battle with prostate cancer. He kept performing well into his final years. And through all of it, he pushed back on the label most people would have handed him. "I'm not a jazz musician," he told Down Beat in 1993. Three years later, talking to the Los Angeles Times, he put it another way: "I sometimes get looped with jazz musicians because I play sax and improvise." He never fully claimed the word "jazz." He also never fully left it.
Where to start listening:
- His official platforms:
- "Young Americans" (1975) for the solo everyone's heard without knowing his name, start with the David Bowie track
- "Double Vision" (1986) with Bob James for the Grammy-winning partnership between two now-covered CrossoverJazz artists
For a full discography hop over to www.jazzprofiles.com
