Switched on Pop - Let’s Talk About Sax

Episode Date: September 9, 2015

The sax is back. This surprisingly funky reed keeps popping up in pop hits from Derulo to Grande. But where did the sax come from? And where did it go? Tighten your embouchure, because we journey to the center of sax in this week’s episode. Also, songs featured in this episode and other great sax tracks are in our Spotify Playlist. *In this episode we incorrectly identified Mr. Sax’s home country as Germany (face palm). He was a native of Belgium. Our apologies to the Sax family. FEATURING Katie Perry – Last Friday Night John Coltrane – Giant Steps M83 – Midnight City Bill Clinton on Arsenio Hall Ariana Grande – Problem Flo Rida – GDFR WAR – Low Rider Bruce Springsteen – Born To Run Gerry Rafferty – Baker Street George Michael – Careless Whisper George Gershwin – Rhapsody In Blue conducted by Leonard Bernstein Jules Demersseman – Fantasie Sur On Theme Original Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five – Muskrat Rumble Fletcher Henderson – Stampede Duke Ellington – Prélude To A Kiss King Curtis – Sister Sadie Sonny Rollings – St. Thomas Jason Derulo – Talk Dirty The Klezmer Lounge Band – Hava Nag ila Dr. M. Balamuralikrishna – Bhajare Sriramam – Vakulabharanam Sami Shawa – Jordan – Mawam Bayati Selim Sesler & Orchester – Saniye’m Spanish Tapas Bar, Vol. 2 – Malaguena Balkan Beat Box – Hermetico Fifth Harmony – Worth It Too Many Zooz – To The Top The Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Charlie. Hey, Nate. How's it going, man? So good. Good, good. I have been getting all

these emails and requests from Fans of Switched on pop. Oh, cool. Which is really exciting. And one of our fans, Sophie, asks, why is saxophone in every pop song right now? Right. Sophie is right. The sax is back, and it's been gone. It's been on a long hiatus. It's back with a whole new sound. It all got started just a few years back with a cameo from The Saxophone King. Welcome to Switchdown Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Okay. And to kick things on,

off, I want to start with a game. Ooh, a game. A game. What's this game called? I'm going to call this game, name that sax. Okay, I'm going to play you a bunch of clips of famous saxophone players. And Nate, using your adept musical skills, I'd like to see if you can identify each player. Oh, man.

Okay. This is high stakes. My reputation is on the line here. Not just reputation. I was thinking that if our listeners do better than you, then you can get a lot. them your PhD title. Oh, wow. That's really high stakes. I don't have my PhD yet. Oh. Actually. So what would be a better deal? Well, they could finish my dissertation for me and teach my classes. Maybe that would be a good deal. I think that's a I think it's a totally

fair deal. Well, let's get started with Name That Sacks. The first track, hopefully many of our listeners will be familiar with one of the most famous saxophone players of all time. We're going to play from the solo of this famous track. Nate, let's see if you can get it. All right, hit me. This one I can identify even before the saxophone came in because I know this song so well. This is Giant Steps John Coltrane, but his supple, rugged tone, even if I hadn't known this track would be immediately identifiable. This is as this is as good as saxophone gets. I'm going to take you to another era, listen to something a little bit newer. Uh-oh, okay.

Oh, I know this. This is, uh... This is M-83. Yes. Do you know the track? What's the, it's something, something midnight or midnight something? Midnight City, yes. M83 is Midnight City, and it has got this great sax outro.

Whoa, it does. I don't even think of this as a sax song, but it does have that epic sax solo. Yeah, so with the saxophone, on this M83 track is James King from an L.A. Indie band Fits in the Tantrums. Oh, yeah, I know Fits in the Tantrums. That's great. This track, I'll be really impressive if you can pull this off. All right. What do we got? This is a track from one of the most famous saxophone players of all time.

Okay, cool. This is Heartbreak Hotel, is the song. Yeah. And this most famous saxophone player in the world is not very good at saxophone. phone. No, definitely not. So do you know who it is? I might need a hint if it's not the ghost of Elvis. Ooh, that was kind of cool. I'll give you a hint that we're definitely in the early 90s and that this saxophone player has a much more important day job. Wait a minute. Yeah. Is this our former President Bill Clinton on the Arsenio Hall show? Yes, absolutely. It is.

Yes. All right, Mr. Sloan. Thank you, sir. I want to see if I can try to trick you, see if the rest of our listeners can pick up on, I think what is one of the best saxophone tracks of modern times. Let's do it. All right, what are we got here?

Ooh, yeah, we got some screaming sax. Whoa, and it's kind of becoming, like, synthesized. This is that Katie Perry's song. It is indeed. So who's your saxophone player? Oh, man. I don't like, uh,

almost sounds like Lenny Pickett from the Saturday Night Live band or something, you know, at the end of the intro he goes up. I don't know. I don't know who that sax player is. That sax player is, uh, is actually a trick question because in the video, it is Kenny G. I should have known.

We're listening to last Friday night. Um, and both Kenny G. And the band Hansen of Umbop, make a cameo. Who is the real player on that, do you remember? No. Oh my God.

Dude, you know who it is? Who? You won't believe it. Kenny G. No, you were right. Lenny Pickett? It's Lenny Pickett. What?

So, Nate, you are correct. It is Lenny Pickett, who is the saxophone player from Saturday Night Live. It has brought us back into the modern era. The saxophone is back. But I'm not hearing that like that traditional Lenny Pickett, S&L, Kenny G kind of sound. Right. I think we're hearing something really different. Those songs have sacks at the very end of the song, a song like Ariana Grande problem.

You get sacks from the minute you press play. Uh-huh. Sticky eggs. They got one more problem with you, girl. Hey. Such a good song. Such a good song. It really is a good too. Yeah. Yeah, this is a fierce sax line and it's just unbelievable in a way that a song that was number one on the charts in 2014 is going to start with that instrument of all the sounds you'd hear as the first moment of that track. It's just crazy. Because let's be frank, what this is really about is the saxophone really isn't cool. Is it? No. No. I mean, the fact that Katie Perry, you,

It loses it with all these dorky 80s and 90s references points to the fact that it is not cool. Or if it is, it's only an ironic way. Are you saying that it's a Katie Perry parody? Ooh, I am now. A parody? We have to move past that moment. Yeah, I mean, so I agree, though, right? You had this parody of the saxophone, which is really sort of saying it's sort of embracing geekdom, but it's not really embracing the saxophone for.

what it's good at. R and Gronde is doing something totally different, right? Totally. And so, and you can hear the same thing in an even, quote, unquote, harder track like Flowrida's GDFR. GDFR. What does that stand for? Good Daniel freeze roses.

That's very poetic of you. Going down for a race. Ooh. It is a little bit harder. Isn't it? Yeah. Okay. So Wars, lowriter, you know that tune?

Oh, yeah. GDFR sampling war at this very last second of this track where the saxophone player is improvising this beautiful cadenza in 1975. And I want to take us back in a segment I'm going to call trackback. We're going to look at the popular music of another era to see what's happening today. How does it relate to the past? How did we get to where we are? Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it.

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My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. I want to go to another moment in 1975 because we're kind of at the height of rock and roll, right? Yeah.

The saxophone has been this epic, grandiose solo instrument in bands like Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones, but it really, I felt, like, made its greatest mark on Bruce Springsteen's 1975, Born to Run. That is as American as Blue Jeans and Apple Pie, man. Clarence Clemens soloing him born to run. That's it. Yes. Bruce Springsteen is featuring the saxophone here shamelessly, just like GDFR, which to me says, well, the saxophone is pretty cool at that time. Right.

People were into the sacks. When did what changes? What happened? The height of saxophone, I think, is already on its way out in 1978 with Jerry Rafferty's Baker Street. Now, you might say, I don't know that track. Yeah. I promise you as soon as you hear the saxophone, you will not mistake it. Yeah.

Listen to the, listen to that. Those bends. Those bends. I know. Oh. Feeling all sorts of funny things. It is some sultry sacks. And I think that this is the beginning of the end of the saxophone because it starts to become a mockery of itself.

Right. Yeah. I'm going to have to agree with you there. Okay. It doesn't end here, though. It gets worse. Uh-oh. What's next?

The best example of the worst of the saxophone. Well, I want to see if you can actually name the track. Let's just play. Hit me. Whoa. I know this song. Yeah, who are we listening to? But I have no idea who, I have no idea who this is.

Do you know who the lead singer of the duo Wham was? That would be George Michael. George Michael, this is careless whisper. Yes, he would be responsible for that. That is amazing. I've never noticed the glissando that leads up to that first note. That is so dramatic. Tell me about this, this jargony term, your glisanda.

Yes, yes. This is a fancy Italian name for running quickly up a scale on your way to a destination note. So whether it's the beginning of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with that dramatic clarinet glissando leading to the opening note. Or it's George Michael's careless whisper. This is a gesture of sort of exaggerated drama. and pathos. So it makes perfect sense that we'd find it at the beginning of this track. So in 1975, we've seen the height of the saxophone. It is officially a cool instrument. Everybody's playing it. Bruce Springsteen war. So the saxophone was cool. Into the 80s, it fell apart, no longer cool. It seems to wax and wade in its popularity. Where in the world did the saxophone

even come from? Where did it start? Let's step back in time with a segment we'll call classical masters. All right, I'm going. We're going to go back 150 years or so to Germany, 1846, and who do you think is the gentleman who invented this boisterous instrument, the saxophone? Mr. Saxophone? That is, wow, that is shockingly close. This is Adolf Sachs.

Really? I swear to God, I'm not making that up. That's his name. Okay. And he was looking to make an instrument that was at once loud. and very fast. That is very easy to play, very agile. Well, certainly as we hear it used in the 80s,

it is fast and easy at George Michael, so he did succeed. Yeah, I don't know how he would feel about careless whisper, if he'd be spinning in his grave or not. But quickly, this instrument became widely adopted by bands and wind ensembles. But I feel like, okay, so we're now in the 1850s. I don't feel like I heard any saxophone and classical music. No, it didn't really make its way into the symphony orchestra as much. I think it just didn't really jive with the more pure and sweet tones of woodwinds like the oboe or the clarinet or the bassoon.

I mean, there were a few composers, someone like the Jules d'Amers-Semant composed some lovely pieces for saxophone. but for the most part, this, yeah, this was more of a band and wind instrument. Okay, so how did it go from sort of a neglected classical music into mainstream? So fast forward to America in the early 20th century. All right. And the popular music that really begins to take off in the 1920s. Hold on a second. I got to get my bowler hat.

So, yeah. Okay, I got my hat on. It's cool. We're good. Okay, good. I got my pork pie hat on. So we are ready to go. Beautiful.

Jazz, of course, is the music that is sweeping the nation. But it's not the saxophone that people are gravitating towards. It's the trumpet. The trumpet is the horn of choice for America's most prominent jazz men like Lewis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Spider-Bek. These are the guys who are at the vanguard of this music. Got it. But at the same time, saxophone,

players like Coleman Hawkins are beginning to invent new approaches to the tenor sax, these more rhythmic, more robust, more explosive kind of timbers. At the opposite end, an alto saxophone player like Johnny Hodges, who is in Duke Ellington's orchestra, is bringing out these tones of like butter, like so sweet and silky that you can't believe this is a saxophone. So, and then once World War II ends, the saxophone has firmly usurped the trumpet. So instead of young kids imitating Jimmy Hendricks playing the electric guitar, they were playing the tenor saxophone.

Oh, yeah. They were imitating King Curtis, be flat on his back in center stage at the Apollo, belting out R&B on his tenor saxophone in front of hundreds of schools. screaming fans, opening for the Beatles when they played at Shea Stadium in the mid-60s. I had no idea. Yeah, Sax was used. Sonny Rollins and the iconic cover of his prestige album, Saxophone Colossus, in which shaded in blue his silhouette of him and his goatee and his sunglasses and his tenor sax is emblazoned with cool all over it.

I know who your childhood heroes were, right? No doubt. And the 50s movie, some like it hot, this great comedy with Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Marilyn Monroe. You know, in this movie, she, the most beautiful woman in the world, has a weakness. I have this thing about saxophone playing, especially tennis sax. Really? I don't know what it is. They just curdle me.

All they have to do is play eight bars. I come to me, my melancholy baby. And my spine turns to custody. I get goose pimply all over. And I come to him. So basically the sax was the sexiest, coolest instrument in that era. Yes. And then the electric guitar came along and screwed that all up.

Yeah. Okay. So, you know, Nate, I don't know if we had to go in your time machine. I kind of feel like you, I feel like you. I feel like you were just born in the wrong era. I feel that way every morning I wake up. Let's get this right. We went back in time to the 60s70s.

I thought that the saxophone was cool in the rock and roll era. You're telling me, no, actually, it started back in the classical era where it actually started out as not a very cool instrument, and it took a while to find its place. And I feel like the sounds that we're hearing today, that Ariana Grande track, that flow right of track sampling war, they're almost pulling from that earlier era saxophone where it was bigger, bolder, none of that smooth, jazzy sound. Yeah, totally. This is a sax timbre that's a lot more rough around the edges than the smooth sounds of careless whisper.

So every single time that the saxophone comes in and out, it almost is like it's taking on a new style. And I feel like we're hearing that today. Our friend Sophie who reached out to us, she said that she's hearing the saxophone everywhere. We've just talked about Ariana Grande and Flo Rida. Where else are you hearing the saxophone? One of the most prominent examples has got to be my good friend, Jason DeRolo, and his 2013 jam Talk Dirty. Damn. So we actually start not with an alto sax, but more of a baritone.

I actually hadn't caught it before, but the first thing that he says is get jazzy on it. Clearly in reference to the early era of saxophone's height. It's giving you a little tip off there. You talk dirty to me. Oh, there it is. Oh, yeah. Okay, this is my favorite one where they harmonize. Get jazzy on it.

Did you get jazzy on it? I mean, that is one of those moments that is just so bizarre and just such a wild postmodern collision of time and space that it could really only exist in a pop song. Yeah, no kidding. So what is going on here? I mean, that's like, let's just call it what it is. That is Klesmer, baby. That is some Jewish folk music. That is what what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what,

they would call in that world the Ahava-Rabobo scale or the friggish mode. Which is probably most famously heard in a song that everybody has heard at, at least in the movies, if not at weddings. That's, yeah, that's right. So obviously we're referencing Havana Gila. And, okay, so we've got this wild, as you said, we've got this postmodern moment using a scale from another culture. What does this all mean?

So if the song is about how this sexual, this heightened sexual tension he's feeling with is like a universal language that, that booty is something infinitely translatable, then maybe transplanting this sax, this klezmer sax break from an entirely, you know, from a 19th century stettel in Ukraine or whatever. is a testament to our protagonist's ability to communicate with women from anywhere in the world. You are musicologists, aren't you? There's a certain cosmopolitanism to this track. I agree. I think it's most beautifully summarized by the lyric, Ben, Around the World, Don't Speak the Language, but Your Booty Don't Need Explaining. Yeah, I mean, that is just, God, it's like...

Poetry. Shakespearean, I know. And this scale that he's using this, what you call the Friggish scale, also in music theory, I guess they call it the Phrygian dominant, which nobody uses, but that's what they call it. It's such an interesting scale because it gives you this sense of otherworldliness. It's something you don't hear a lot in Western pop music. Yeah, absolutely. But this scale is popular all around the world in different cultures. it's in classical Indian music,

Middle Eastern music, as you were saying, Balkan music and Eastern European music, I've played it for some people who even say it sounds fulmancan. So it's all around the world. And it has a totally different sound. Can you maybe tell us a little bit

why this thing sounds so different than what we're used to? Yeah, it's all about just the relationship between the first and second notes of the scale. That's really what makes it sound so different because both of our major western scales, the major scale and the minor scale, start with a whole step

separating the first note and the second note. But this scale, this friggish, Phrygian dominant scale, starts with a half step separating the first note and the second note. All right, can you sing us a nice little beautiful example of the major scale and the frager scale?

I think I could. So here would be the first three notes of the major scale. Yeah, da da da da da da da. And here's the Frege scale. So we're actually only changing one note in there, that second note, just dropping it down a half step. But, God, it changes the character so drastically, doesn't it? Yeah, it sounds like we're in a different world of musical relationships.

Absolutely. Oh, right. Very cool. So it turns out that this track, I did a little research and found out that Jason DeRolo was actually once again sampling, just like we saw on the flowrider track. He's sampling this really cool band called the Balkan Beatbox. Right. Who takes Balkan music and mixes it with dance music. And it was written by this great saxophone player, Ori Kaplan. So we are hearing O'I Kaplan actually elsewhere on the radio right now. Have you heard Fifth Harmony's worth it? Maybe. I bet you you hear three seconds of it and you're going to be shaking that booty.

Yeah. Is this another Jerry Rafferty Baker Street situation where I know the song, just not the name? Give it to me I'm worth it. Very similar to the Derulo song. So some producer somewhere said, DeRolo, talk dirty, good track. Let's get that Ori Kaplan back on the radio because that Frageish scale, that Middle Eastern sound.

Yeah, they were like, this track needs more Phrygian dominant in it. That's what the record producers think about. Yeah, this, I mean, this is another interesting example of sort of like the worldliness of pop music because we have, it starts with the alto saxophone playing this fragish scale borrowed from, you know, say the Balkans. And then immediately is answered by a string section doing this kind of Bollywood portamento riff. So it's like we're going from the Balkans to South Asia, you know, to Los Angeles or wherever this song was made. It's such a bizarre mashup. So you're saying we're going from the Balkans to Bollywood to Burbank. Precisely. Yeah. It goes all the way around the world.

Yeah. And that's, you know, in many ways, the sign of a true hit pop song. You're going to hear it in a club anywhere in the world. That's exactly right. So Charlie, we're hearing the saxophone in the last five years, maybe more than we've heard it in the preceding 25. Yeah. I mean, why now? Why is, why is Sax back? Partially, I feel like we are seeing a revival of acoustic instruments across the board with the complete saturation of EDM on the radio over the last five years. And so people are looking for more creative, innovative sounds, blending digital electronic music with acoustic music. I think, no, I think that's right. You know, what's remarkable is that there's actually an interesting elision in the kind of sounds you're able to. to produce on a saxophone and the kind of sounds that, say, an EBM producer is creating from a laptop. There's this band that I've heard in the Union Square subway station in New York City called Too Many Zoos, Z-O-O-Z. It's a trumpet player, a drummer, and a baritone sax player.

and this Barry sax player is like a one-man dubstep machine. Listening to him, you realize that the saxophone can just be an acoustic version of a Scrilex drop. So in some ways, the saxophone is matching the most desirable sound of right now. Those modern computer synthesizers, they're a good fit. Just like in that Katie Perry track, the saxophone kind of turns into a synthesizer as it goes on. We're all experiencing the sax attack. It's happening right now. Yeah.

I will caution saxophone players, though, because as we've seen, the saxophone has come in out. It has gone out. Right. And I think that it is a sign enough that fans are writing in and asking, why so much saxophone? So I'm worried perhaps we have. reach sax saturation, and maybe we'll hear something else soon. Sax duration? Sax duration.

I don't know. What do you think we're going to hear? Maybe some oboe? Maybe bassoon? Fugelhorn? Glockenspiel? Glockenspiel? Yeah. It's going to be the Glock and spiel. I promise. So we have just scratched the surface of the modern saxophone resurgence. If there are current pop hits with killer saxophone lines that we need to know about, please tweet us, email us. We're going to make a playlist on Spotify of the best saxophone tracks of our present era.

So definitely go to our website and check that out. Yes, you can find that playlist and past episodes on switchedonpop.com. We want to give big thanks to Linda Holmes and NPR's pop culture happy hour. for giving us a shout out. If you're a new listener that came here because of them, thanks for being here. We're going to have a lot of fun. Yeah, I also want to give a big thanks to Alex Kaplanman of the great music podcast pitch. Pitch is this narrative music podcast about why we listen to music, what it means in our life,

how we hear things, why we hear things the way we do. It's just really excellent. They had an awesome episode last week about product placement in country music. Oh. Yeah. It's really good. So you can check out Pitch at pitchpodcast.org. Tune in two weeks from now,

Charlie and I are going to dig deep into the weekend. Surprise, Summer Smash. I can't feel my face. And while we'll be back in two weeks, if you want to listen to past episodes, you can subscribe on iTunes. And we'd really appreciate it if you'd leave us a review. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. get Jesse on it.