The release of another Hand was a shock to the system for mainstream radio listeners, but for those paying close attention to late-night television, the warning signs were already there. Sanborn had recently spent two years hosting Night Music, a late-night musical oasis that thrived on radical eclecticism.

Digging back into the archives, an unearthed interview with Sanborn conducted by Kent Zimmerman, published in the August 30, 1991, edition of the radio trade publication The Gavin Report, sheds brilliant light on Sanborn’s mindset during this historic artistic awakening.

Tricking the Corporate Beast

Night Music, co-produced with the legendary Hal Willner, was a masterclass in genre-blurring. By alchemically combining guests of entirely different backgrounds, the show revived the forgotten, free-form spirit of underground radio. Looking back in 1991, Sanborn admitted the show’s booking philosophy came from a beautifully selfish place:

“The television show came about almost selfishly,” Sanborn explained. “Wouldn’t it be great to see Sonny Rollins on television? Wouldn’t it be great to see Sonny Rollins and Leonard Cohen on television or Al Green on television again in a different context. Al and Sun Ra or else David Newman or Hank Crawford or Little Milton Campbell and Fontella Bass. Eric Clapton and Robert Cray. James Taylor and Milton Nascimento.”

The show famously paired avant-garde acts with mainstream icons, creating a surreal musical sandbox.

“Sometimes we’d do a show and I’d ask myself, ‘Did we really get away with that? Did they really let us put the Residents on television?’ I was surprised we got that far. I didn’t think we would last more than six shows. But we actually ended up doing two years.”

Recreating the Late-Night “Trip”

When Night Music went off the air, its DNA migrated directly into another Hand. The record wasn’t just a collection of tracks; it was programmed like a late-1960s free-form radio broadcast, drawing heavily from Sanborn’s own memories of listening to legendary Bay Area stations like KMPX and KSAN.

“I remember getting stoned and listening to the radio late at night with all the lights out. This deejay would come on and play Howling Wolf, John Coltrane, Creedence Clearwater. You went entirely on his trip. There was this thread through the music that was a deejay’s personality, his point of view of the world… If there is any kind of overview to this record, it’s that feeling of laying in bed late at night listening to the radio, hearing these songs coming at you. Personal songs. Interior songs.”

Reclaiming the Woodwind’s Whisper

To pull off this interior atmosphere, Sanborn had to completely alter how he physically approached his instrument. Known for a blistering, bright tone that could pierce through heavy R&B rhythm sections, he deliberately stepped into the quieter, more vulnerable registers of the alto saxophone.

“The problem with playing R&B and funk music is that you tend to operate at a high intensity level. You eliminate some of the more important, subtle nuances of your playing. The part of the saxophone that makes it a woodwind, the piano (as in soft) to mezzopiano range of the instrument gets eliminated… By only playing loud and fast, you eliminate a large part of your vocabulary. Wanting to explore those ranges was also what I had in mind.”

This softer approach is perfectly captured on the album’s opening track, a sweeping rendition of Charlie Haden’s “First Song.” Recording it next to the legendary bassist demanded a strict, classical discipline.

“To play that melody and stay in character, you have to play it very delicately… The way the chords resolve themselves in that song is very classical. Hence you can’t throw in a lot of substitute changes without seriously affecting the personality of the composition. Not with Charlie standing there, anyway,” Sanborn laughed.

Bizarre Alliances: From the Velvet Underground to Monk

With Hal Willner co-producing, another Hand naturally welcomed a cast of characters that defied industry logic. The album featured a haunting cover of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground’s “Jesus,” a medley of vintage 1950s and 60s television themes, and unexpected collaborations with left-of-center geniuses like NRBQ keyboardist Terry Adams.

“What a revelation it was working with Terry Adams!” Sanborn recalled. “Hal knew about the ‘whole other side’ to Terry’s playing. I had only heard him with NRBQ. So we got together and he played me all these tunes he’d written. He struck me as a player who could combine Monk with Jerry Lee Lewis, Cecil Taylor and Allen Toussaint. Weird articulation and smash bang.”

Dodging the “Swing Police”

The album arrived during the height of the early-90s “jazz renaissance,” a period heavily influenced by the traditionalist movement led by Wynton Marsalis. While Sanborn praised Marsalis as a “tireless educator,” he fiercely defended the younger generation’s right to break the rules and experiment with contemporary sounds like rap, hip-hop, and funk—specifically pointing to the M-Base movement spearheaded by Steve Coleman and Greg Osby.

When asked about the rigid boundaries set by traditional jazz purists of the era, Sanborn didn’t hold back his frustration with the gatekeepers.

“There’s bound to be antagonism between the moderns and the purists. That strain has always existed inside the jazz community by people who set themselves up as arbiters of what is and isn’t jazz… We all know who those people are, the ones who write for those tight-assed New York papers. Be-bop police. Not even. Swing police.”

Continuous Evolution

another Hand stands out not as a permanent departure, but as a strong testament to Sanborn’s refusal to be boxed in. And he kept moving. He immediately roared back into heavy groove territory with the James Brown-inspired Upfront, teamed up with composer Michael Kamen for a sweeping symphonic project, cut the lush Pearls, and later paid homage to his roots with a deep tribute to Hank Crawford.

Reading this 1991 interview today, it’s clear Sanborn never saw musical boundaries the way much of the industry did. He was simply following the music and inviting the rest of us along for the trip.

The post David Sanborn’s ‘Another Hand’: 35 Years Later appeared first on ContemporaryJazz.com.

A few months ago, user WD-40Drinker posed this on the r/Jazz subreddit:

“I’m not too far into the jazz world, in my freshman year of college right now, but I keep noticing that people really just despise Kenny G for some reason. I know people say his music “isn’t jazz” or “all his songs sound the same” when HE chose to take a different path in life. I don’t think it makes that much sense to hate on someone just because of the genre they decided to go into. For example, she probably could, but we don’t make fun of Taylor Swift for not singing opera, so why does it magically apply to Kenny G? My assumption is that too many jazz people are jazz snarks that love to gatekeep their music.”

This, of course, drummed up a good discussion. If you want to spark a passionate conversation about jazz, you don’t bring up politics or religion. You bring up Kenny G. On one hand, he is the undisputed juggernaut of instrumental music: over 75 million records sold globally, making him the best-selling instrumentalist of our time. On the other hand, he has spent decades serving as the ultimate lightning rod for critical disdain and elitist fury.

Why the hate? I’m trying to figure this out. I won’t talk about musicianship as I’m not a professional musician so that’s not my lane.

The comments in the thread were wide-ranging and mostly thoughtful. There was a lot of disdain for his poor and ill-advised “duet” with the deceased Louis Armstrong on “What a Wonderful World.” I can understand that. Pat Metheny has a few thoughts on it, famously calling the overdub “musical necrophilia” and accusing Kenny G of violating the integrity of Louis Armstrong’s original performance.

But to actively hate Kenny G? It all has to do with the label “jazz.”

When veteran jazz journalist Ted Panken sat down with him for a candid interview, he asked Kenny G directly if he considers himself a jazz musician. Kenny didn’t shy away from the label; instead, he redefined it on his own terms:

“Well, personally, I do think of myself as a jazz musician. But I grew up with the word “jazz”…to me, it meant instrumental and it meant improvisation. It really doesn’t matter the style. I don’t play the traditional Charlie Parker songs. But I do improvise and I do create with my instrument, and that to me is jazz. But there are people who use the word ‘jazz’ only in a traditional sense, and they would be offended by that, and that’s fine.”

So, to him,  it’s a matter of how you define “jazz.”

The most upvoted comment on the thread dismantled the Taylor Swift example with this analogy: “Imagine if Taylor Swift sang about a ‘spicy meatball’ in an Italian accent and then the world decided it was opera.”

Another user expanded on this, pointing out that Taylor Swift fans don’t claim she’s a great opera singer, and the general public doesn’t look at her as the definition of opera. But with Kenny G, the casual public does look at him as the face of jazz.

“Kenny G” became a gateway that accidentally locked people out. Because record labels and the media stamped “Jazz” all over his smooth instrumental pop, a lot of casual listeners decided, “Well, if Kenny G is jazz, and I find this boring, then I must hate all jazz.” The community resents that his dominance actively turned potential fans away from exploring the broader genre.

But Kenny G isn’t himself to blame for this gateway. As pointed out, it’s the record labels and media who labeled the music. In the 2021 HBO Music Box documentary, Listening to Kenny G, it reveals the term “Smooth Jazz” was birthed out of radio industry focus groups in the late 1980s. Record labels and programmers needed a marketable bucket to package artists like Kenny G, Sade, and George Benson to advertisers.

In the thread, a few voices popped up to say that by all accounts from people who have met him, Kenny G is a genuinely nice guy and an incredible scratch golfer. It’s just the industry branding that turned him into a villain.

The hate doesn’t seem to be directed at the artist himself (except for agreeing to that Louis Armstrong overdub). It’s more toward his music and what many jazz fans feel it came to represent.

Personally, I don’t like his music. I like his playing. I respect that he often writes his own songs. I don’t buy his records. And, to be very honest, I’m more than a little resentful that he got the success when there are many other musicians who play the same “smooth jazz” style that I feel are better at what he does.

That’s not his fault, though. He happened to be in the right place at the right time and had the right promotion with “Songbird.” I can’t begrudge him for that. That breakthrough found him a huge audience and helped launch one of the most successful careers in instrumental music history.

You can dislike his music. Don’t belittle or begrudge those who do. There’s too many people yucking others’ yum as it is.

Branford Marsalis once told Jazziz: “When all these jazz guys get in a tizzy over Kenny G, they need to leave Kenny alone. He’s not stealing jazz. It’s not like some guy says, ‘You know, I used to listen to Miles, Trane and Ornette. And then I heard Kenny G, and I never put on another Miles record.’ It’s a completely different audience.”

Branford is right. The audience that made Kenny G a superstar isn’t necessarily the same audience debating jazz history and tradition. I don’t hate Kenny G. I don’t bash him. I just don’t particularly enjoy his music and when I’m asked about the genre, I point them in a different direction. No harm.

The post Kenny G at 70: Why Is He Still So Controversial? appeared first on ContemporaryJazz.com.

It’s just music they didn’t like. 

Jazz bullying.

There was this belief that jazz was academic. That you had to understand jazz. I have always fought the notion that jazz should be on a pedestal. Jazz should be where everyone can access it. It is such a deterrent when something seems as sweet as music seems inaccessible. I believe this notion is part of the reason jazz continued to  slip in popularity. Why would people want to listen to something that they thought they had to do homework for?

Thankfully, I don’t hear about this anymore. I am encouraged and inspired to see jazz continue to move in a forward direction. Younger generations are making the music their own. I love it. Jazz is alive. It’s not in some dusty prison of time that the jazz police want it, never to break free.

I want to go back and experience the time when jazz was dance music. Even better, I want to go forward in the future and experience this. If everything is cyclical, isn’t this overdue?

Do you need to define jazz in order to enjoy it? Nope. I wish I could have shut off that judgemental noise when I first got into the music. It didn’t stop me from enjoying it but it did affect me, as evidenced that I’m writing about it decades later. 

Don’t deny yourself joy. Listen to the music you want and revel in it. 

The post Beyond Jazz Bullying appeared first on ContemporaryJazz.com.