As a young fella just getting into #jazz in the late eighties my first impressions of David Sanborn were that he was corny and overly smooth, in an unhip bag I didn't dig with guys like Metheny and the Breckers. Then he blew my fucking mind with the Night Music show and I've respected him ever since. There was almost no really cool weird music on TV in 1988-90 except that show, and man, Night #Music was legit!!! Nick Cave, Bongwater, Pere Ubu, Miles Davis...
@mrcompletely Sanborn was the wonderful host of the show yet I think Hal Willner was the music coordinator…Willner produced many, many, eclectic collaborations over the years and was an early casualty of COVID….
Sanborn did play pretty slick quite often yet blended well with Bowie and many others…imho…
@tlmoore Willner was cool af...I'm sure the producer(s) deserve a lot of credit but Sanborn had to make it work as the onstage host, which given some of the combinations seems like no joke
@mrcompletely
Very true!
I think Willner’s work, connections, & inspiration brought the really different musicians together but Sanborn had to direct traffic once they were there & that took great skill, knowledge, energy, & patience…
Sanborn, Wilner, & a few other folks like G.E. Smith had very mainstream jobs, like network T.V., and still took part in more obscure, heady projects.
It reminds me of Bill Graham intentionally booking older blues & jazz artist with new & psychedelic rock.
Dizzy Gillespie, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, John Zorn, Marianne Faithfull, Al Green, Billie Holliday (!!!!), Joe Sample, Curtis Mayfield, Branford Marsalis, Willie Dixon, Leonard Cohen, Sonny Rollins, Lou Reed, and that's not even a quarter of the names from the first of 3 seasons!!! absolutely fantastic accomplishment.
And the juxtapositions:
Bob Weir & Rob Wasserman, Artis the Spoonman, John Lurie & Nana Vasconcelos, Bongwater, Modern Jazz Quartet - that's one show!!!
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