Your Top 5 Sax Players?

What about "Bleeding Gums Murphy" boy can he play a mean saxamaphone.

Eddinanm3, that's the problem with limiting the list to five choices; although by limiting it, we are forced to narrow things down to the truly innovative. As I said in my post, most of the mentioned players have roots in Bechet, Prez, Bird or Trane. Stan Getz, while unquestionably one of the greatest and certainly one of my favorites had a style, in a not so broad sense, clearly steeped in the Lester Young tradition. A softer edged sound, laid back swing feel, and while far more harmonically adventurous than Prez, not nearly as influential in a strict sense as Prez. Who are some players that you feel were heavily influenced by Getz? And how? Was Getz's presence on the jazz scene a turning point in the stylistic evolution of jazz saxophone playing? I really don't think so. A major contribution, but not a turning point. I can't imagine not including Bechet, Prez, Bird, or Trane in the top five. And if you remove Sanborn, who then, is representative of the style of post-Coltrane jazz/rock/pop saxophone playing prevalent over the last thirty years?

Here's 5 who are perhaps underappreciated, compared with the justly celebrated likes of Coltrane and Rollins:

Coleman Hawkins
Hank Mobley
Art Pepper
Stanley Turrentine
Hamiet Bluiett

Pleased to see all mentioned above, save Bluiett. For a sense of him, try the excellent Bluiett, Jackson, and El'Zabar, "The Calling."

jmd

There was no shortage of players around to develop strains of the smooth jazz pathogen, Paul Desmond might be viewed as a source. Tom Scott, John Klemmer, Klaus Doldinger and Jan Garbarek (all great players) probably would have pumped out the same generic swill with or without David Sanborn, (they all put out records that pre date Sanborn's first record). Hoardes of others could have crossed any microscopic artisic chasm that existed prior to the smooth stuff in the early and mid 70's. No one person can legitimately be blamed or credited for the birth of McJazz.

Well, we've pretty well scoured the roster for the 'Five Top Saxists', but no list can be complete without the inclusion of Curtis Ousley, aka King Curtis, Plas Johnson, Red Holloway, Curtis Amy, Paquito D'Rivera or Willis Jackson. (My top five? Parker, Young, Trane, Rollins and Stitt. I agree that Sidney Bechet deserves attention here, as does Coleman Hawkins.) BTW, the discussion of 'smooth' jazz is, with all due respect to Yogi, deja vu all over again. Even before Creed Taylor filled the record bins with his CTI version of smooth jazz, many traditionalists had already blasted various artists - not the least of which was Miles Davis - for abandoning what they felt was hard, traditional jazz: an act of heresy. Jazz simply can't be defined in such narrow terms.