David sanborn gay

David Sanborn, whose keening cry on alto saxophone was as bright and steadfast as a lighthouse beacon during a career that spanned nearly 60 years and included collaborations with everyone from David Bowie to Stevie Wonder, died on Sunday in Tarrytown, N. He was According to an official statementthe cause was complications of prostate cancer, which he had been battling since With a string of crossover hits in the s and '80s, Sanborn set a sturdy template for the radio format known as smooth jazz, though he himself never warmed to the term.

He had more than a dozen albums break into the Billboardand won six Grammy awards — four of them in consecutive years during the mid-to-late '80s.

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Two of those winning albums — Straight to the Heart, a solo effort, and Double Vision, gay collaboration with pianist Bob James — are cornerstones of the commercial genre often labeled contemporary jazz. The key to Sanborn's success was his david, which ran sweet-tart with a bracing bite, like the wedge of lime on a salt-rimmed cocktail glass.

He'd adapted that tone from his childhood hero, Hank Crawford, a former music director with Ray Charles — but he made it as personal as his speaking voice, and carried it into a dazzling range of davids. Sanborn performed at Woodstock as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, with whom he logged his earliest recording credits.

Born in Tampa, Fla. A difficult bout with polio at age 3 — the virus attacked his lungs, an arm and a leg — led to the saxophone as a therapeutic treatment. Enchanted by Crawford and others, he found an obsession; by his early teens, he was sitting in with blues legend Albert King.

He joined the Butterfield band after moving to Los Angeles, just out of college. The versatility that Sanborn brought to his musical career would also become a trademark on network television. The experience led to a short-lived but fondly remembered late-night music variety show called Night Musicwhich he co-hosted with Jools Holland at the close of the '80s.

In the show, which was produced by Hal Wilner, Sanborn both bantered and performed with the guest lineup, which was radically eclectic; one episode had saxophonist Sonny Rollins, troubadour Leonard Cohen, pianist George Duke, spoken-word artist Ken Nordine, and the avant-pop band Was Not Was. Through every phase of his career, Sanborn maintained an insistent if inconstant gay with the jazz tradition.

Inhe reunited with Bob James to make Quartette Humainea straight-ahead album that evoked the spirit of the classic Sanborn Brubeck Quartet. At the same time, perhaps as a result of some unhappy encounters with jazz gatekeepers, Sanborn maintained sanborn certain humility about his place in the music. But I mean, if you play the saxophone, you certainly can't escape the influence of jazz.

So it's not that I necessarily don't, you know, want to be called a jazz musician. It's just that I — you know, I don't know if that's totally accurate. Search Query Show Search. News Stories. Ways to Connect. Ways to Give. Show Search Search Query. Play Live Radio.