Part I -- June 1999

Digital Interviews: How did you get the opportunity to play with Little Milton?

David Sanborn: When I was 15 years old, a few miles from where I lived, in the summertime, there was a place called Sunset Teen Town. That was like a rec center -- a community recreation center; had an indoor place, and then an outdoor pool area. In the summertime, they would have bands play outside and, if the weather was inclement, they had to move inside into the big rec hall, which was like a small VFW hall. It was kind of the place to go, we could go dancing. We're talking 1960.

DI: This was in the Midwest?

DS: In St. Louis. The pop music of the day was "Twist And Shout," the Isley Brothers and Chuck Berry. It was R&B. That was what early rock 'n' roll was -- Little Richard, Fats Domino, Ray Charles. In St. Louis, there was a very strong blues sensibility. They would have Little Milton, Albert King; a lot of local bands would play there, but those are the big names. I went to hear them play. A friend of mine, who was a drummer that I played with, and I -- I'd been playing since I was eleven -- used to hang out there. He was much more aggressive about meeting people; I was much shyer. He got to know the piano player that was playing with Little Milton. He said, "My friend Dave plays the saxophone, and I play the drums." Little Milton, who's a very gracious man, said, "Why don't you just bring your horn over and come sit in with us?" He knew it would give me a thrill, and figured, "What have I got to lose?" The novelty factor. So I got up on stage. There was a saxophone player, a tenor player. It was a guitar, bass, drums -- there were two guitars maybe. Milton played guitar. I just would play background parts with the saxophone player. I didn't play any solos, or anything like that. That was my first playing experience. I did a couple of gigs with him at Sunset Teen Town. I met Albert King the same way.

There was another experience I had. In St. Louis, there was a place called Gaslight Square, which was the St. Louis version of The Village, except it was only about three blocks long. It was a small scene. There was a club called The Other Side, in back of a club called The Dark Side. It was down an alley. Very small place; looked like a storeroom, seated maybe 50 people. There was a trio in there that played, and we used to go hang out and listen to the group. I said, "Let me sit in." They all just rolled their eyes and sat around. But I had memorized this Sonny Stitt saxophone solo on a song called "Cool Blues." So I sat in, and I actually was pretty good at it. I was 15, but I looked 12; I looked really young.

DI: But you were determined to sit in?

DS: I don't know what possessed me, because it was very unlike me to do that. I sat in with them, and I remember their jaws dropped. I could actually play. I had some degree of sense of time. I wasn't just f---in' around. They kept inviting me back, and I started to develop some real playing experience as a result of sitting in with these guys -- mostly the blues. I would learn tunes and stuff, but it became my regular thing. I didn't get paid for it, but I formed a lot of friendships out of that. I met the bass player -- this guy named David Eldridge -- and I met a drummer named Philip Wilson through him. I met a whole network of people -- Lester Bowie and Julius Hemphill -- through all these people. These are the people that I grew up playing with in St. Louis, as a result of sitting in at that club. That was really how my early musical years were formed -- a result of playing in blues bands, with guys like Lester and Philip Wilson and Hemphill, who would play all kinds of gigs. They'd play R&B gigs, they'd play free jazz gigs at the time. Lester was, at the time, married to Fontella Bass, a very fine blues singer. This was before she recorded "Rescue Me." We used to hang out, smoke reefer and drink a little -- they did, I didn't, because, at this point, I wasn't getting high. But it was part of the scene.

DI: How did you become a part of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band?

DS: The same friend from high school -- the drummer, Teddy Stewart -- was out in San Francisco. I was at the University of Iowa. He called me in the spring of 1967 and said, "Listen, man. I'm out in San Francisco, and there's some really wild s--t happening out here. You've gotta come and check it out." I was married and had a kid at the time. I was 20 years old. But this was right at the beginning of the psychedelic era, so I went out to San Francisco. He was in a band. They lived in a house down in Haight-Ashbury, and my wife and kid and I stayed in the living room. Remember those Indian print sheets, the stuff that people used to drape over lamps? I bought one of those and draped it over the thing. Had a lava lamp -- this was when lava lamps were new. [laughs] Incense -- the whole bit. I was walking down the street one day, and I ran into Phillip Wilson, who was one of my best friends in St. Louis. He had just joined the Butterfield Blues Band. He said, "We're playing the Fillmore tonight. Why don't you come down and see us?" I went down and saw them. I had been to the Fillmore a few times since I'd been in San Francisco. I'd heard Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Jefferson Airplane -- a lot of great people. I heard the band, and it was really great. They were on their way to LA to record an album, and they said, "Why don't you come down and just hang out in the studio with us?" I got on a Greyhound bus from San Francisco to LA, took a bus into Hollywood, slept on the floor of Phillip's hotel room and went to the studio with him. Just had my horn. I think it was because I looked so pathetic, standing there with my horn, Paul Butterfield said, "Why don't you just come and play on a tune?" I sat in and I did okay. And I was with Butterfield for almost five years.

DI: And then you played with Stevie Wonder?

DS: I segued immediately into Stevie Wonder. Butterfield's band broke up, and the next week I got the gig with Stevie Wonder.

DI: Was this still in LA?

DS: No, it was in New York. The Butterfield Band was living in Woodstock. I got the gig with Stevie, we were on the road for a couple of years. Then we opened for The Stones, and I played with The Stones for a minute. I left Stevie and hung out in Woodstock. A guitar player named Buzzy Feiten and I were trying to get a band together. A baritone saxophone and tuba player named Howard Johnson introduced me to Gil Evans. So I would drive down to New York and play with Gil. I separated from my wife, and then I finally moved to New York. I had met a guy named Michael Kamen a couple of years earlier, in '72, when I was on the road with The Stones and Stevie Wonder. He had a band called the New York Rock 'n' Roll Ensemble, and I played on one of their albums. I was living with a girlfriend, and then I was playing with Gil, then I moved over to Gil's house -- I was living at Gil Evan's house for a while. I stayed in touch with Michael Kamen, and Michael got the gig as the musical director for David Bowie. He said, "David's looking for a saxophone player, wants a saxophone player to be in his band." He'd just done an album called Diamond Dogs, and he wanted to have a saxophone as part of that. He had this big theatrical set built. Jules Fisher, this Broadway designer, built this huge...with cranes and this giant hand -- like Spinal Tap. [laughs] A big diamond rolling out on the stage, and it opened up, and a hand came out, and then Bowie would be sitting in the middle of the hand. The s--t would break all the time! I forget what he was singing in there; one of the songs, "Jean Genie" or something like that. I was also working with Gil Evans at the same time, so I was going from Gil to Bowie. The last gig I did with Bowie for the Diamond Dogs tour finished in Madison Square Garden. I got on a red-eye to Rome. I flew from New York to Rome, got on a plane and flew to Florence. Then they picked me up in Florence and drove me to Perugia. I played that night with Gil Evans in Perugia. Then I did a three-week tour with Gil in Europe. I was doing both of those things at the same time. It was really interesting, because I went from one very theatrical, structured situation to a very free, very loose situation with Gil.

DI: When you listen to the Young Americans album, and you hear yourself on the title track, what goes through your mind?

DS: I just hear what I could have done. I'm not uniformly down on everything that I've done. I listen to some things that I've done, and I think they're pretty good, but that's not one of them. I think it's effective, and I think it works in the context of the tune, but I think it's a little repetitive.

DI: How did you graduate from sideman to a solo career?

DS: I was in New York. I had been playing with Bowie. We did the Young Americans album after we got off the road with the Diamond Dogs tour. I kind of didn't want to do it again, but he got a really good band. He got Greg Errico on drums, and a guy named Dougie Rauch playing bass, who used to play with Santana. Greg was the original drummer with Sly. John Court, who had produced the Butterfield Blues Band albums, and I had remained friendly over the years. We'd do these demos together. He'd try to get me deals, and nothing ever panned out. I think there was a point where Mo Ostin, who was the head of Warner Bros. Records, owed John a favor. John said, "I want you to give high priority to this guy, Dave Sanborn, and listen to him. Maybe you'll want to sign him." I think he guilted Mo into signing me. This was at the time when Warner Bros. was signing a lot of instrumental artists, because they thought the fusion thing was happening. Miroslav Vitous, the bass player, signed; Alice Coltrane signed; George Benson signed; Al Jarreau signed; Pat Martino...

DI: They were filling their roster.

DS: Yeah, they were filling their roster with what they thought was a new genre of music. They thought there was a market out there for instrumental music. They were trying to broaden their roster of artists. I got in on that. I think it was 1975. I did it because it was another way; to put it really bluntly, it was another outlet for me, it was another way to make a living. I thought, "This is a really good, creative outlet, something else to do." 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. And then, you know...

DI: You met with some success!

DS: I did the first album, and it did much better than anyone expected. I think it sold 20 or 30 thousand records, which, for what it cost them, and at the time, in the context -- that's when gold records were rare, when half a million records was unusual. It was substantial enough to make them encouraged. So, the next album -- I think I'd been playing with Paul Simon at the time, while I was doing this. I got to meet Phil Ramone. I got Phil to produce my second album. Paul wrote a song - wrote the words for a song on that album. Richard Tee and I did something on that album.

I was playing with James Taylor at the time. James agreed to let me open for him, if I played with him also. So I got to be the opening act and I got a lot of exposure that way. On days off, when James wasn't working, I would do gigs on my own. I started to build an audience around the country. The second record did much better. I was a little uncomfortable with it, but I thought, "This is cool. This is a nice something to balance out my life -- something else for me to do." It kind of ebbed and flowed for a while. Then, at a certain point, I said, "I gotta make a choice here. I'm either going to do my own thing or I'm going to be a sideman, because I cannot do both anymore. I've gotta make a commitment." So I did. I suffered economically for a while, because I wasn't making the same kind of money. But it wasn't that important to me at that point. I realized that this is really what I want to do, and if I want to make this go, if I want to make this work for myself, on a creative level, I have to commit to it. This was the late '70s, and I did an album called Hideaway, where I wrote most of the material on the album. That was a big breakthrough for me. I think that sold 350,000 records -- at the time, a lot of records. From then on, I just built on that.

DI: You produced one of the finest television variety shows, Night Music. How did that come about?

DS: I'd been doing a syndicated radio show. My manager and I had been talking about trying to do a TV show. There was a series of shows back in the '50s, where they'd get a bunch of musicians together and they'd jam. You know, Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Coleman Hawkins -- people would sit around and jam. You could see them sitting around and talking, and people would get up and play. You could see the cameras going around. I loved that informality of that; it was very non-proscenium oriented. We thought, "Wouldn't it be great to update that idea?" We gradually started developing this idea for a show, where people would come on and not do their latest hit; have a lot of collaboration. We had a lot of people from different genres come on and show how music connects up. I'm one of those people that wants to bring a lot of disparate elements together. Then we got Lorne Michaels involved as a producer on the show, and he got us Michelob as a sponsor. That was really how we were able to bring that off for a couple of years.

DI: Which performances from the show stick in your mind?

DS: Sonny Rollins, Was Not Was, and Leonard Cohen was a great one. Oh god, there were so many of them -- having Phil Woods on there; having Hank Crawford on there, who was my idol.

DI: You also showed classic film clips on the program?

DS: We showed old film clips of Louis Jordan, Thelonious Monk stuff, old footage of Mingus, and a lot of stuff from European TV. We'd show these clips of these great old jazz musicians. Then we'd have people on like the Pixies. Sonic Youth's first television appearance was on the show. We had Sun Ra and Al Green together -- that was a trip. We had a group called The Residents -- kind of "German Dada-Expressionist-Cabinet of Doctor Calagari." (laughs) They did "Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear" as a primal scream number. We had them and Conway Twitty. That was a trip. That's the one that blew the sponsors out.

DI: You guys were ahead of your time.

DS: We pushed the envelope.

DI: Didn't you use a performance from the show on your Inside CD?

DS: Yeah, Sting. When Sting was on the show, we did a version of "Ain't No Sunshine" -- the Bill Withers tune. Bill Frisell was on that, and Hank Roberts on cello. What was interesting about that show, was I got a chance to play with people that I had been playing with a lot -- Bill Frisell, Joey Baron and people like that. After I did that show, I decided to make an album that reflected where I was at that moment. I did an album called Another Hand that had Charlie Haden and Bill Frisell and Terry Adams on it. Jack DeJohnette, Syd Straw, people like that. My friends.

DI: Which of your albums are your favorites?

DS: I like Another Hand and Up Front. Those, I think, are my two favorites, because they were the most fun to do. Up Front took five days; we did it really quickly.

DI: Has your overall sound been leaning a bit more freeform lately?

DS: Lately I've been going a lot more left. I tried to kind of reign it in a little bit tonight, but we did start to take it out a little bit more. You've gotta do what you've gotta do.

DI: And even though you're the main draw, you continue to let your band mates freely express themselves.

DS: 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. My name is on the thing, but the reality of it is, when I get up there on stage, I'm part of a band. I'm part of a unit. It's like a basketball team. Maybe I call the shots, but it's not about them and me. It's about me as a part of everything. Maybe that's why it feels that way.

Part II -- August 1999

Digital Interviews: You were a featured player at the recent Eric Clapton benefit.

David Sanborn: I've known Eric for a long time. I'm on the board of directors of The Crossroads Foundation, [which] helps raise money and awareness for a drug rehab facility, located in Antigua, that Eric has been instrumental in putting together. He lives in the area. Over the years he noticed, in the Caribbean, an increase in drug and alcohol abuse. Drugs come up from South America and are being routed through the Caribbean, so naturally a lot of them stay there. There's not a lot of awareness in that part of the world. It's looked on as "kind of a weakness" or not a problem at all. It's certainly not viewed as an illness, or something that's treatable, or should be treatable. It's an alternative for people who want to go someplace else for drug and alcohol therapy, because it's a beautiful place. A certain percentage of the beds are put aside for locals, or people who "pay what you can." As a result of trying to raise money and awareness for The Crossroads Center, Eric and others on the board came up with various fundraisers. One was an auction of a lot of his guitars, which raised over $5 million, about $4 million more than they thought they were going to raise. That was a tremendous thing. Then we did the concert at Madison Square Garden.

DI: Mary J. Blige was also on the bill.

DS: Mary is a great R&B singer who has been around for a few years, and has had a couple of really fine records. She's got a great voice, a throaty and soulful voice, and a great stage presence. She's one of the greatest R&B singers around -- she's got a lot of depth to her voice and to her singing. She writes most of her own stuff. The one tune that was featured on the show was "I Ain't Gonna Cry," which was from a film soundtrack. She's a great singer.

DI: Sheryl Crow also performed.

DS: The great thing about Sheryl is that she's such a great all around musician. She's got a great range as a player and as a musician, and she understands a lot of different music. I think she's a great songwriter, and she's got such a great voice.

DI: [laughs] ...and what can you say about Bob Dylan?

DS: Exactly. "A mystery wrapped in an enigma." [laughs]

DI: There were so many great performances, but you really went free-form during "Little Wing."

DS: Yeah. I went out on a wing. [laughs] Scared myself. [laughs]

DI: Tell us about some of your latest tour stops.

DS: We were in Europe, and what's great about going to Europe, is you get a chance to hear a lot of really great music. There are a few really great festivals, like the North Sea Jazz Festival in The Hague, and the Montreux Jazz Festival. You run into a lot of players. 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. Pat Metheny had a trio with Bill Stewart and Larry Grenadier, and Herbie Hancock had a great group with Ira Coleman playing bass and Eddie Henderson playing trumpet -- just an amazing group, just killer. At the North Sea, it was Pat's group, my group, and then Joe Zawinul. Joe Zawinul was just killer. He had a great, great band. He's such a phenomenal musician.

DI: Do you still find time to sit in with Paul Shaffer?

DS: When I'm around, when I'm in town. I've known Paul since the '70s, when he was associated with Saturday Night Live. Everybody was "on the scene" in New York, running into each other. Hiram Bullock, playing with me tonight, was in the first Letterman band -- Hiram, Will Lee and Steve Jordan. Knowing those guys, and knowing Paul, I just kind of slid in.

DI: Did you consider auditioning for that early band?

DS: No, because I had made a choice much earlier about being a side man or having my own thing. I started out, obviously, as a sideman, and I had some really good gigs as a sideman. Ultimately, it's a little bit of a dead-end. I like to do it now just sometimes. To go out and be a part of Eric's thing -- part of something that's put together.

DI: What's Hiram been up to?

DS: Hiram, to his credit, has been concentrating on his own thing. I think it's good when people do that. I certainly understand that impulse. He was the first guitar player in my band -- that was in '75. He played with me up until, oh '82, '83.

DI: So now it's selected concerts, when your current player is off?

DS: Yeah. Dean was doing other stuff. Dean is going off now and doing his own thing, which I think is great, and Hiram was in between doing stuff for himself. I have mixed feelings about it. I love working with these guys. But I certainly don't begrudge them when they want to go off and do their own stuff.

DI: As long as they don't all go at once?

DS: Exactly. Thank you. [laughs]

DI: You hit the stage, and there's a bunch of empty chairs around. Can you pull off a solo?

DS: My worst nightmare.

DI: What can you tell us about your percussionist, Don Alias?

DS: Don is the heart of the band. He's like an iceberg, you only see about a quarter of what he's really doing. He's really forming a foundation. There's so much subtle stuff that he does, and so much of it. He acts as an anchor, and he also colors things, and adds nuance to it, and a flavor, as well as being the rock that everything else is built on.

DI: Your keyboardist, Ricky Peterson, has quite a resume.

DS: Well, Ricky does a lot of producing. He's got his own studio in Minneapolis, and he's been producing a lot of people. He did some stuff with Chaka Khan. He did a Johnny Lang album. He's done a lot of things. He's doing a lot of things.

DI: What do you have planned for the future?

DS: I really don't have any plans. I'm trying to kind of keep my mind a blank for a while, and just see what filters in, and be non-specific about what I listen to. I have a tendency to listen to music and say, "Oh, I can use that" or "Oh, maybe I can..." or "Maybe I'll do this." There's always this pressure to do the next thing, to move onto the next thing. To me, a record needs to have a focus. It needs to have a core. There has to be some kind of identity. I don't mean to go so far as to call it a concept, necessarily, but there has to be some reason for it to be, and there has to be some kind of identity for the album. It's a very mysterious process of how that comes about.