Adolphe Sax Google Doodle: five unforgettable saxophone songs

It’s the 201st anniversary of Adolphe Sax’s birth today, commemorated by aGoogle Doodle. It’s not a conventional choice of birthday, but let’s take the opportunity to celebrate the instrument he invented, the piano. Sorry, the saxophone.



But let’s ignore the usual lists of greatest sax breaks ever, or greatest soloists. This will be a list free of both Jungleland and Charlie Parker. Instead, we’re going to consider pieces of music that would be completely different without the saxophone – the songs, in short, that make you think of the saxophone. That doesn’t mean they’ll be good – for some people, the sax is the musical equivalent of fingers running down a blackboard, and at least one song here will feel that way to all right-minded people – more that they’re unthinkable in any other way, even if they don’t showcase the greatest sax playing ever.
1. Madness – One Step Beyond

It was originally a Prince Buster B-side but there’s an entire generation of Britons for whom Lee Thompson’s rendition of that central riff was their introduction to the power of the sax. There is nothing flashy about it: his solo barely takes any flights of fancy, just a brief interlude before we return to the riff. Madness might have been the greatest British sax group of all time – Thompson plays a crucial role in pretty much all their biggest hits, and while Chris Foreman’s rhythm guitar and Mark Bedford’s bass might have been the bedrock of their sound, the sax was the seasoning. Also, he always got the memorable bits in the videos.
2. James Chance and the Contortions – Contort Yourself

In which James Chance demonstrated that the sax had its place in the confrontational music of the early New York post-punk era. The Saints had incorporated horns into punk – Know Your Product confronted the era’s orthodoxies with its Memphis-style horns – and those who’d formed an identity before punk, like Ian Dury and the Blockheads, used saxes in music that felt part of the new wave era. But Chance looked backwards, to free jazz, to incorporate the saxophone into a music that was skronky, jittery and harsh (Ted Milton did something similar with Blurt in the UK), part Beefheart, part Ornette Coleman. Despite 35 years of copyists, it still sounds like nothing else.

3. Boots Randolph – Yakety Sax

There are people I know who can’t hear the word “saxophone” without seeing a panicking, tubby, middle-aged man, filmed in high speed, being chased (often by what should be referred to as “a bevy of beauties”. This piece of music, first recorded by Boots Randolph in 1958, then a hit for him in 1963, is the reason. My colleague Dorian Lynskey is still inclined to dismiss some songs featuring sax solos with two words: “Yakety Sax”. Thanks for that, Benny Hill.
4. James Brown – I Got You (I Feel Good)

The sax needn’t be a blunt instrument. It can be sinuous, slinky, insinuating. It can make you want to dance. That’s what Maceo Parker did with it on James Brown’s biggest hit. For the most part, he’s one part of a nine-piece horn section, but feel the force of five saxes – four tenors, plus Parker’s alto – as it drives the song along. The JBs may have relied on bass and drums to drive the groove, but the Famous Flames – Brown’s group at this point – piled on the horns. And when they drop out, leaving Parker to play the most concise sax solo imaginable, it’s bliss.
5. Little Richard – Keep a Knockin’

Equally, sometimes the sax can be a very blunt instrument indeed. Here the sax does the heavy lifting that would be taken by the guitar as rock’n’roll evolved into rock – the riff at one end of the scale, then the wild solo at the other. This is the saxophone at its most primal. Forget subtlety, forget restraint – just throw in the kitchen sink.