i’ll be honest, i’ve never really listened to his recordings and i mostly know him from either appearing pretty regularly on david letterman or from his late 80’s syndicated show. that era of jazz didn’t age particularly well considering many folks who appeared on that show were hoping to bolster sales for their “legend lap” around the track - everything seemed to have that bland sheen, and i associate sanborn with that sheen. i should give a few of those reruns a revisit, i’ll bet there were some pretty good performances that i shrugged off because they weren’t either classic post-bop or acid house-adjacent.
He was a cool dude, on a lot of good and not so good records. He came up in Paul Butterfield’s Blues Band, like on this record which I think is amazing:
I love this performance on so many levels… Bowies dancing, Luther, the sax. Just all of it…
Also here’s a rare tv appearance by Donald Fagen. This channel has loads of this show that Jools Holland did in the states with everyone from Pharoah Sanders to Daniel Lanois, Lou Reed and tons more…
Tony Murray: “We need a producer who says: ‘You’re not doing that; you’re fuckin’ doing this.'”
Dennis: “Did you do exactly what Larry Page said?”
Chorus: “Yep!”
Tony: “That’s how they had hit records.”
Reg: “Because there was just one fuckin’ mind on it – not fuckin’ seven or eight.”
Ronnie: “We didn’t even fuckin’ get a say in it – it was fuckin’, wham, it was in the can regardless. You reckon that was bad? Fuck me! One take, that’s it, finish. You never ‘ad a fuckin’ say – it was out. As weak and fuckin’ insipid we used to think.”
Reg: “We thought With A Girl Like You was fuckin’ terrible and let’s go and do it again. And that was the only fuckin’ time he let us fuckin’ have our way. And could we get anything fuckin’ better?”
Ronnie: “No.”
Reg: “Fuckin’ … the first thing he fuckin’ did was it.”
Ronnie: “All fuckin’ day. We went in there at nine o’ clock and we didn’t come out till, fuck, about three o’clock the next fuckin’ morning, and they had Mick Jagger, you name it, they were fuckin’ in there to try and make it better.”
Speaking of Sanborn, here he is again on Night Music alongside Nick Cave, Mick Harvey, Toots Thielemans & Charlie Haden performing the classic tale of darkness that is Hey Joe
might not be that big of a deal to you if you’re not into basketball or from portland or don’t like the grateful dead or don’t have an affection for unencumbered jocks who espouse the benefits of hallucinogens from the broadcast booth - but i’m all of those things and i did love bill. what a guy.
Agadoo was massive at Warners holiday camp on the Isle of Wight, summer 84. The chief yellowcoats Auntie Shelly and Uncle Kevin never missed an opportunity to get the kids singing and dancing to it.
