Opportunities Keep Chasin’ Sanborn : Pop music: The influential sax player, who’ll be in Anaheim tonight, may not be as busy as he was a few years ago, but he’s got a new album out and is touring to support it.

There was a time when David Sanborn, was, to use his own description, fairly “ubiquitous” around the music scene.

Beginning with his solo debut in 1976, Sanborn turned out a dozen albums of his own, picked up five Grammy awards and, for a brief time a few years back, filled his spare moments doing a show for National Public Radio and serving as bandleader on television’s “Night Music” program.

“It was an impossible schedule,” Sanborn said last week by phone from his record company’s office in Los Angeles. “It just seemed as though I was going nonstop, never quite seeing the light of day.”

But for Sanborn, who performs with his quintet tonight at the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim, the high-intensity agenda was not unexpected. Shortly after his arrival on the national scene as a member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1967, Sanborn quickly became one of the most visible--and audible--instrumentalists in pop music.

“I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I played alto sax,” Sanborn said. “Prior to that, if anybody used a horn on a pop song, it always seemed to be tenor.”

Once he began to appear on recordings with the likes of Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen, however, alto saxophone became the instrument of choice for a generation of young musicians, some of whom imitated Sanborn right down to his odd sideways playing stance.

“Obviously, I’m flattered when I hear guys trying to play the way I do,” Sanborn said, “but it feels strange to me to see some of them imitating my stance.

“I stand the way I do when I play because a physical deficiency I’ve had since childhood makes it impossible for me to stand any other way. I have some weak muscles in my left arm, so I have to kind of lean to one side so I can get my left hand up to handle the horn. And I put the mouthpiece high up in my mouth as a result of the way I’m leaning. That’s the only way I can get the sound out, and I can’t imagine why anybody would want to stand in such an awkward position if they didn’t have to.”

Sanborn was born 47 years ago in Tampa, Fla., but he grew up in the rhythm-and-blues hotbed of St. Louis. At age 15, he was working with such blues figures as Little Milton and Albert King.

“But I started out trying to sound like Hank Crawford and David Newman,” he said. “And, somehow, through playing with Butterfield and hearing Phil Woods--and loving his sound and Cannonball (Adderley’s) sound--I began to come up with something of my own.”

“Oh yeah, and there’s somebody else,” Sanborn suddenly added: “Charlie Mariano! He’s somebody I always forget to mention, and he was a huge influence on me. I went to the National Stage Band camp when I was 14 or 15 years old and heard him playing with the Stan Kenton band. That combination of earthiness and real raw emotional quality in his sound had a tremendous effect on me.”

“Blues, earthiness and emotion” could, in fact, serve as a subtitle for the current Sanborn tour, which supports his new Elektra album, “Upfront.” In a dramatic change of pace from his previous release, the jazz-tinged “Another Hand,” Sanborn dips back into his rhythm-and-blues past with an ensemble clearly inspired by his affection for James Brown.

“I don’t think the album ended up sounding like James Brown,” Sanborn said, “but it sure was what Marcus Miller--my producer--and I were listening to at the time.”

Typically, Sanborn takes a familiar style in a uniquely personal direction. Including Ornette Coleman’s “Ramblin’ ” for example, on a recording inspired by James Brown is not exactly doing things by the book.

“I know it seems kind of off the wall,” Sanborn said, “but I always thought of ‘Ramblin’ ’ as a kind of country blues tune. And to me that’s what a major aspect of Ornette’s music and his playing was all about. That country blues quality in his playing is an essential ingredient, and that’s what I’ve always related to in his music. So it was out of a love for that kind of music that I wanted to do the tune. And I think it fits in pretty well with that James Brown-Hammond B-3 organ sound.”

Sanborn will feature much of the material from “Upfront” on his tour programs, along with items from his hit-laden past. His touring band consists of Sonny Emery on drums, Don Alias on percussion, Dean Brown on guitar, Ricky Peterson on keyboards and Paul Peterson on bass.

“It really feels good to just be concentrating on music,” Sanborn said. “It was great to be doing all the other stuff I was doing when I had the radio and TV shows. I don’t consider the fact that I had the opportunity to do those things to be a negative.

“But I guess, looking back, that all the distractions did tend to make for a kind of lack of continuity in my career. So I’m glad to be putting music at the top of the agenda again. And I’m really grateful for the chance to make whatever kind of music I’m feeling at any given moment.”

The David Sanborn Group plays tonight at 8 at the Celebrity Theatre, 201 E. Broadway, Anaheim. $25 to $30. (714) 999-9536.