StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Happy birthday, David Sanborn!

Today, we interrupt our look at this year's poll-winning musicians begun last week to celebrate the birthday of a local favorite, saxophonist David Sanborn, who turned 76 years old yesterday.

Although he was born in Florida, Sanborn grew up and went to school in the St. Louis suburb of Kirkwood, and after 50 years in the music business, he ranks with Miles Davis and Clark Terry as one of the best-known and most successful jazz musicians to come from this area.

So today, as a birthday tribute, here's a collection of clips looking back at various phases in his storied career. Each video is a full show featuring Sanborn with a different lineup of musicians, presented in chronological order starting up above with a performance recorded in 1986 in Baden-Baden, Germany for the TV program Ohne Filter. The band includes the saxophonist's longtime associates, the late Hiram Bullock on guitar and Ricky Peterson on keyboards, along with bassist Steve Logan, drummer Tony Smith, and percussionist Steve Scales. (Since the complete performance video seems to have disappeared from YouTube, there's a playlist of individual tracks now in its place.)

After the jump, you can see Sanborn's complete set recorded in August, 1998 at the Newport Jazz Festival. That's followed by a performance recorded in December of '98 for broadcast on ABC in the early hours of New Year's Day 1999, featuring Sanborn and his band along with guest performers including singers Cassandra Wilson and D'Angelo, hip-hop duo Gang Starr, and guitarist and singer Eric Clapton.

The fourth video features Sanborn with organist Joey DeFrancesco, with whom he made a couple of records around this time, and drummer Gene Lake, serving up a bluesy, stripped-down set at the 2010 Jazzwoche Burghausen festival in Germany.

Next, it's a show from Sanborn's 2013 "Quartette Humaine" tour, co-led with pianist Bob James and also featuring drummer Steve Gadd and bassist Scott Colley, that was recorded in November at the Leverkusener Jazztage festival in Germany.

Last but not least, you can see a full show from the 2015 edition of Sanborn's touring band, recorded in April of that year in Budapest, Hungary. Along with Sanborn and Ricky Peterson, the group features guitarist Nicky Moroch, bassist Andre Berry and drummer Chris Coleman, with German saxophonist Jan Prax sitting in on a couple of tunes.

You can see the rest of today's videos after the jump...











(This post appeared previously, with a different headline and slightly different format, in March 2020.)