Best Sax Jazz

Lots of greats listed so far, here are a few I haven't seen listed:
Michael Blake
Arthur Blythe
Christer Bothen
Ralph Carney
George Cartwright
Thomas Chapin
Jean Derome
Jindra Dolansky (Uz Jsme Doma)
Marty Ehrlich (is this the same guy Frogman?)
Ellery Eskelin
Marty Fogel
Sonny Fortune
Chico Freeman
John Gilmore
Vinny Golia
Steve Grossman
Tom Guralnick
Rich Halley
Buck Hill
Michael Hornstein
David Jackson
Ed Jackson
Philip Johnston
Naruyoshi Kikuchi (Tipographica)
Frank Lowe
Michael Marcus
Steve Marcus
Kurt McGettrick
Randy McKean
Hafez Modirzadeh
Michael Moore
Bill Plake
Odean Pope
Michel Portal
Yannick Rieu
Sam Rivers
Florian Ross
Dave Slusser
John Tchicai
Kazutoki Umezu
Bobby Zankel
John Zorn (If this choice offends, check out Voodoo or some of the Masada discs).

Sorry if any of these are repeats. Alot of the above players (and probably hundreds more) are highly under appreciated, but (lucky for us) are doing great job of keeping an artform alive and growing.
Hey Sd, have you got a favorite Steve Lacy disc?

SDcampbell..are u a music scholar?...you are the man..great response....

The three best, in my opinion, are:

John Coltrane (e.g., with Johnny Hartman or "Bags and Trane")

Eric Dolphy (e.g., "Out to Lunch")

James Carter (e.g., "Chasin' the Gypsy")

I note that there have been some very recent posts to this old thread, so I guess people are still looking through the archives. In response to Phasecorrect: no, I'm not a music scholar, just someone who has loved jazz for more than 40 years. Many years ago, while in high school in Washington, DC, I did get to know the great jazz and classical guitarist, Charlie Byrd, and jazz has been a part of my life since then. During the mid-1980's, I developed a college course in jazz appreciation as part of a continuing credits program for high school teachers in the Seattle, WA, area, and during that time I really got serious about studying jazz as an art form. Some jazz critics refer to jazz as America's classical music, and that's probably a fair statement.

My real concern is that jazz is becoming a "museum" music. During the early decades of jazz, almost all musicians learned their craft by playing (clubs, orchestras, dances, etc.), whereas today most of the young jazz musicians develop their playing skills in classes (high school, college, music academies). For jazz to flourish again, it needs lots of new blood, more listeners (particularly in the African-American community), and wider air play by radio stations. Unfortunately, I think the reverse pattern is true.

One way to spread the jazz "message" is for people who love the music to share their knowledge with younger listeners, and I've tried to do that here on Audiogon. I appreciate the positive feedback I've gotten from other A-gon members.

Coming from Montreal, I am happy to report that the Montreal Jazz Festival is doing better every year. On the other hand the music presented cannot, in very many cases, be even remotely called "jazz". I am not hung up on nomenclature, believe me, but the powers-that-be at the Festival are stretching it every year. Sting has been presented last year as part of the Festival... I know, to use the words of a jazz immortal, there are only two kinds of music: good and bad. However, it's hard to get younger people interested in jazz when it is often so ill defined. The one thing is that when you go back in time, the defining lines are way easier to recognize. One last point, in a very European way, the Festival has always considered that the blues are a part of the greater realm of jazz. Maybe because I like the blues and "roots" music generally, I am very happy that this is the case. I know that when rock was closer to its blues roots, one way for a young person to reach jazz was by way of the blues; the progression being, let's say the Rolling Stones to Muddy Waters, to B. B. King to T-Bone Walker and then to Charlie Christian. I may be dreaming... Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be no handy stepping-stones to jazz nowadays. In my case, if I remember, insofar as records go, inadvertently my older sister introduced me to jazz by getting a copy of "The Sound of Jazz" from the CBS record club and declaring it unlistenable before giving it to me. My other sister did the same with Bob Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" so hand-me-downs are not always bad! Aside from the fact that I have always been curious and loved all kinds of music, never minding whether it was "in" or "out", being rejected by my seniors couldn't hurt. One point is that it is very hard to impose things like a type of music on young people (or any age group for that matter) especially so if it is seen as complicated, elitist, intellectual. In the past jazz was seen as fun and alive. That's the only hope to bring new blood in. Make it fun and alive, without losing its essential qualities.