Everything You Wanted To Know About Sax But Were Afraid To Ask.pdf

Everything You Wanted To Know About Sax But Were Afraid To Ask Number 25 June 18, 1979 Drum on your drums, batter on your banjoes, /sob on the long cool winding saxophones. /Go to it, O ja.zzmerr. “1 Some people collect stamps or coins. The more affluent collect paintings or antique cars. Me, I collect saxophon- ists. I’m not particularly compulsive about it. I would not travel a thousand miles for just another record by John Coltrane or Gerry Mulligan. I’m really a sampler. But if I hear about a sax player who is not in my record collection, I will go out of my way to add him. I can say “him” with certainty because I have never en- countered a recording by a woman sax player. It is well known, however, that a woman saxophonist, Mrs. Elise Hall, commissioned Debussy’s Saxophone Rapsocfie.2 I became interested in collecting records of sax players after my friend Danny Luciano gave me a tape of “Bat- tle of the Saxes.” Performed by sax players Ray Fern, Joe Fortunato, Stan Ross and Dan, “Battle of the Saxes” was a rare personal taping never commercially recorded. Dan was a popular Philadelphia sax player in the 1960s. He has recorded for Molly Records and Lumar Records. Though he never practices, he still plays a beautiful sax. The saxophone is a very important in- strument in recent musical hktory. It was invented by Antoine Joseph (also known as Adolphe) Sax in 1838, al- though a patent was not granted until 1846.3 (p. 10) Sax was a prominent Belgian-born instrument maker who lived in Paris. His father had also been a famous instrument maker. The saxo- phone he created was a single-reed instrument made of metal with a conical bore or intenor tube. It combined the softness of woodwind with the strength of brass.J (p. 11) The four most common types of sax- ophone are the soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone, However, both higher (smaller) and lower (larger) pitched ver- sions also exist. And back in the twen- ties one of the most popular instruments was the C-Melody sax