David Sanborn (78) was born in 1945 in Tampa, Florida where his father was stationed in the US Air Force. Â David grew up in Kirkwood, Missouri, a western suburb of St. Louis. He contracted polio at the age of three. He “accepted his fate stoically” and endured a “miserable childhood”. He was confined to an iron lung for a year, and polio left him with impaired respiration and a left arm shorter than the right.
While confined to bed, David Sanborn was inspired by the “raw rock ‘n’ roll energy” of music he heard on the radio, particularly saxophone breaks in songs such as Fats Domino‘s “Ain’t That a Shame” and Little Richard‘s “Tutti Frutti”. He 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. When he was 14, he was competent enough playing saxophone to play with blues musicians in local clubs. Alto saxophonist Hank Crawford, who was a member of Ray Charles‘s band at the time, was an early and lasting influence on Sanborn. Continue reading David Sanborn 5/2024
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