Heavenly Hornmen: The Top 10 All-Time Saxophonists

“Bird still lives,” said Bill Clinton last July. “Trane still rules, and for all of our jazz enthusiasts, Lester Young will always be the Pres.”

Clinton’s remarks came at a convention of the National Urban League in San Diego. The then-Arkansas governor--an avocational saxophonist--was introduced to the gathering by Bernard G. Watson, the league’s vice chairman, who, like Clinton, also happens to play the saxophone.

By playing last year on Arsenio Hall’s TV show and more recently at the Arkansas Inaugural Ball during inauguration week in Washington, our new President has done more than we could ever have expected in expanding the popularity of the saxophone.

Clinton is no casual neophyte. Let us forgive his plugs for Kenny G; he has spoken warmly of Sonny Rollins, and once wrote a thoughtful note to the widow of Zoot Sims, expressing the wish that Sims, who died in 1985, could have been around to play at the inaugural.

Who have been the true pioneers on this suddenly fashionable horn? To name 10 in order of importance would be impossible, because the sax comes in various forms, and to match an alto player against a soloist on tenor or baritone would be like comparing tangerines, oranges and grapefruit. But it is possible to list 10 giants in the chronological order of their impact.

* Coleman Hawkins (1904-69). So powerfully original were this tenor player’s solos during his 11 years in the Fletcher Henderson band that by 1934, having achieved international renown via recordings, he began a five-year European expatriation. In 1939, soon after his return to New York, he recorded the astonishingly complex “Body and Soul” that became a bestseller and remained the song most identified with him. His warmth of sound, virtuosity and harmonic subtlety influenced not just saxophonists, but jazz in general. “Body and Soul” (RCA/Bluebird) contains the original classic version and a later one as well.

* Harry Carney (1910-74). Carney basically introduced the baritone sax to jazz. The instrument was virtually unknown when Carney made his first records with Duke Ellington in 1926. His rich sound anchored the Ellington sax section for a record-breaking 48 years. Almost any Ellington album finds him well represented, but his solo on Billy Strayhorn’s “Lotus Blossom,” on the album “And His Mother Called Him Bill” (RCA/Bluebird), is exquisitely poignant.

* Johnny Hodges (1907-70). The alto sax of Hodges, who joined Ellington in 1928, became as much a symbol of that horn as Carney’s was of the baritone. Though acclaimed for his sinuous ballad work (“Warm Valley,” “Come Sunday”), Hodges was a master of the blues and a potent swinger on up tempos. Except for a four-year absence (1951-55) he remained with the Ellington band until his death. One of his best small-group albums is “Duke Ellington/Johnny Hodges: Side by Side” (Verve).

* Benny Carter (born 1907). Carter has been called the greatest living all-around musician. While best known as an alto player, Carter--who has recorded with his own bands since 1933--has enjoyed multiple images. He is a personal and lyrical trumpeter, a clarinetist, and a composer-arranger who for many years wrote the scores for movies and TV shows. Still actively gigging and recording, he is represented in many roles on “All of Me” (RCA/Bluebird), which spotlights his classic 1941 big band.

* Lester Young (1909-59). The first tenor player after Coleman Hawkins to make a worldwide impact, Young was admired for his cool, laconic sound and gentle swing, in contrast to Hawkins’ extroversion. Young’s first stint in the Count Basie band is well displayed on several cuts in Basie’s 1937 “One O’Clock Jump” (Decca).

* Charlie Parker (1920-55). Teamed in 1945 with Dizzy Gillespie, the alto of Parker was revolutionary not only in terms of his phenomenal control of the horn, but as the harbinger of a whole new jazz generation and as co-founder of the be-bop movement. “Compact Jazz: Charlie Parker” (Verve) finds the alto giant in various settings, including the most memorable cut from his with-strings session, “Just Friends.”

* Stan Getz (1927-91). In 1948 his solo on “Early Autumn” with Woody Herman established this tenor saxophonist as an artist far more complex than simply the Lester Young clone some had believed him to be. In 1962, he and guitarist Charlie Byrd launched the U.S. bossa nova movement. His superbly melodious sound, lyrical at every tempo, remained undiminished until his final days. Getz is heard in the company of Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Byrd, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chick Corea and others on “The Best of the Verve Years, Vol. I” (Verve).

* Gerry Mulligan (born 1927). The baritone sax remained Harry Carney’s near-exclusive property until Mulligan’s piano-less quartet attracted worldwide attention in 1952. He was already well known as a player and writer by then, having been an integral part of the Miles Davis “Birth of the Cool” dates in 1949-50. His early style, burnished and clean, is well framed in “At Storyville” (Pacific Jazz), a live session in 1956 at a Boston club.

* Sonny Rollins (born 1930). First known for a series of landmark sessions in the mid-1950s (and as composer of such jazz classics as “Airegin,” “Oleo” and “Doxy”), Rollins used his tenor sax to exploit unlikely material, such as the pop song “I’m an Old Cowhand,” and various calypso tunes. For those who cannot afford his seven-CD set, “The Complete Prestige Recordings” (Prestige), a good bet would be “Sonny Rollins on Impulse!” (GRP/Impulse).

* John Coltrane (1926-67). Later prominent on soprano sax, Coltrane played mostly tenor when he rose to fame in the early ‘60s. Some observers saw him as the initiator of the modal movement that took jazz away from the traditional concept of chords. Radical sounds and a lessening interest in tonality marked his later performances as he became the most imitated saxophonist since Charlie Parker. “A Love Supreme,” his spiritually inspired work, is out on GRP/Impulse.