1. David William Sanborn was an American alto saxophonist.
38 Facts About David Sanborn
1. 2.
David Sanborn began playing the saxophone at the age of 11 and released his first solo album, Taking Off, in 1975.
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David Sanborn was active as a session musician and played on numerous albums by artists including Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Sting, the Eagles, Rickie Lee Jones, James Brown, George Benson, Carly Simon, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, and The Rolling Stones.
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David Sanborn was one of the most commercially successful American saxophonists to earn prominence since the 1980s.
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David Sanborn was born in 1945 in Tampa, Florida where his father was stationed in the US Air Force.
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David Sanborn grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri, a western suburb of St Louis He contracted polio at the age of three.
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David Sanborn "accepted his fate stoically" and endured a "miserable childhood".
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David Sanborn was confined to an iron lung for a year, and polio left him with impaired respiration and a left arm shorter than the right.
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David Sanborn loved the sound of the saxophone and at the age of eleven was happy to change to saxophone from piano lessons when doctors recommended that he take up a wind instrument to improve his breathing and strengthen his chest muscles.
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David Sanborn attended college at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois directly north of Chicago and studied music.
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David Sanborn transferred to the University of Iowa in Iowa City east of Des Moines where he played and studied with saxophonist JR Monterose.
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David Sanborn performed with blues musicians Albert King and Little Milton at the age of 14.
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David Sanborn made such an impression that he joined the band for five years.
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David Sanborn recorded on four Butterfield albums as a horn section member and a soloist from 1967 to 1971.
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In 1972, David Sanborn played on the track "Tuesday Heartbreak" on the Stevie Wonder album Talking Book.
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David Sanborn found life on the road increasingly difficult but continued to tour.
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David Sanborn performed with Clapton on film soundtracks such as Lethal Weapon and Scrooged.
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In 1991, David Sanborn recorded Another Hand, which the All Music Guide to Jazz described as a "return by David Sanborn to his real, true love: unadorned jazz" that "balanced the scales" against his smooth jazz material.
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In 1994, David Sanborn appeared in A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who, known as Daltrey Sings Townshend, a two-night concert at Carnegie Hall produced by Roger Daltrey of English rock band The Who in celebration of his fiftieth birthday.
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In 1995 David Sanborn performed in The Wizard of Oz in Concert: Dreams Come True, a musical performance at Lincoln Center to benefit the Children's Defense Fund.
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David Sanborn often performed at Japan's Blue Note venues in Nagoya, Osaka, and Tokyo.
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David Sanborn played on the song "Your Party" on Ween's 2007 release La Cucaracha.
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In 2010, David Sanborn toured with a trio featuring jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco and Steve Gadd.
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In 2011, David Sanborn toured with keyboardist George Duke and bassist Marcus Miller as the group DMS.
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In 2013, David Sanborn toured with keyboardist Brian Culbertson on "The Dream Tour" celebrating the 25th anniversary of the song "The Dream".
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David Sanborn was a member of the Saturday Night Live band in 1980.
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David Sanborn appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman a few times in the 1990s.
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From 1988 to 1989, David Sanborn co-hosted Night Music, a late-night music show on television with Jools Holland.
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David Sanborn recorded many shows' theme songs, as well as several other songs for The Late Late Show with Tom Snyder.
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In 2021, as the coronavirus pandemic paused live music performances in public venues, David Sanborn hosted a series of master classes on Zoom and virtual productions of "David Sanborn Sessions" with artists such as Marcus Miller, Christian McBride, Sting, Michael McDonald, which involved live performances and interviews from his home in Westchester, New York.
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David Sanborn can be seen playing a Yamaha saxophone at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1981.
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David Sanborn later played a mouthpiece designed by Aaron Drake.
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David Sanborn was married to his fourth wife, French-born Alice Soyer David Sanborn, a pianist, vocalist, and composer.
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David Sanborn had one son, Jonathan, a bass player and two granddaughters.
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David Sanborn died of complications from prostate cancer in Tarrytown, New York west of White Plains, on May 12,2024, at the age of 78.
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David Sanborn won six Grammy Awards and had eight gold albums and one platinum album.
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David Sanborn won Grammy Awards for Voyeur, Double Vision, and the instrumental album Close Up.
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In 2004, David Sanborn was inducted into the St Louis Walk of Fame.