"I want to reach people with music and make them feel something good. As I get older the expression of Soul or feeling through music becomes more important to me, although maybe I always felt this way."

Sax Gordon: Extreme Saxophonist!

No other performer on the scene today brings to life and pushes forward the great tradition of Rockin' American Saxophone like Sax Gordon (aka Gordon Beadle). From an early start in garage bands, church groups, jazz combos and big bands in northern California, Gordon graduated to work and record with Bay-Area Blues giant Johnny Heartsman. After relocating to the East coast, a regular gig with Little Joe Cook & the Thrillers was followed by five years of touring and recording with Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson which established Gordon on the international scene. With Luther's encouragement, Gordon continued to develop his signature style - wild and exciting sax inspired by Blues, Soul, Jazz, and Rock & Roll. Gordon has recorded and toured internationally with Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Junior Watson, and Toni Lynn Washington as well as with the Duke Robillard Band with whom he also backed Blues and Swing greats Jimmy Witherspoon and Jay McShann on tours and recordings. Gordon has also toured internationally with Roomful of Blues, John Hammond, Sherman Robertson, and Soul legend Solomon Burke, while at home he has worked with a who's who of American Blues and Soul music greats including Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, James Cotton, Junior Wells, Little Milton, Ben E. King, Hubert Sumlin, Sam Moore (of Sam & Dave), Johnny Johnson, Howard Tate, Martha Reeves, Mighty Sam McClain, Johnny Copeland, and the Fabulous Thunderbirds among others.                       (Sax Gordon / Photo by Caroline Alden)

Gordon has filled the classic R&B sax role as a featured soloist on albums by legends such as Champion Jack Dupree, Rosco Gordon, Jimmy McGriff, Pinetop Perkins, Billy Boy Arnold, Jimmy "T99" Nelson, and Charles Brown while modern masters have also benefitted from his unique sound - as heard on CDs by Kim Wilson, Bryan Lee, Paul Oscher, Jerry Portnoy, Watermelon Slim, Ron Levy, and David Maxwell. Now Gordon's unmistakable solos can be heard the albums of a new generation of American rockin' roots performers including Nick Moss, Diunna Greenleaf, Doug Deming, Tia Carroll, JP Soars, Lindsay Beaver, and international artists like Igor Prado, Kai Strauss, Jimmy Reiter, Big Dez, Raphael Wressnig, and Luca Giordano. Currently Gordon can be found leading his own groups worldwide as well as appearing as a special guest with groups all over the globe. He conducts clinics at schools and festivals and can still be found working as a sideman, backing both established performers and up-and-coming artists. The latest album from Sax Gordon "EXTREME SAX!" (2022) finds Gordon back in 1950s Rock & Roll and Rhythm & Blues style, when the rocking saxophone was king of the bandstand.

Interview by Michael Limnios

How has the Blues, Jazz and R&B music influenced your views of the world and the journeys you’ve taken?

I’ve been very fortunate that performing Blues, Jazz, Soul and R&B music has given me the opportunity to travel around the world, and one important thing I’ve learned is that even with our differences people are basically the same everywhere. Music truly is a universal language and people all over the world love rockin’ American music! People everywhere want to live and share good things like food, music, and their unique traditions. They are happy to work hard to make things better for their children, for their families and for their communities. People everywhere are proud and generous in welcoming visitors/performers. Of course, not every situation is perfect but overall this is what I feel.

How do you describe your music philosophy? What's the balance in music between technique and soul?

I want to reach people with music and make them feel something good. As I get older the expression of Soul or feeling through music becomes more important to me, although maybe I always felt this way. I’m drawn to certain musicians/ saxophonists like Gene Ammons, Ike Quebec, and Hank Crawford in Jazz and Soul Jazz for example, because of their soulful expressive style, sometimes seemingly closer to singing than the more technical/ mathematical scale-based approach and focus on advanced harmony and complexity that seems to be the standard obsession of saxophonists these days. It often seems to me that every trend or development in the “advancement” of music involves making the music more complex and difficult. Maybe simplicity is already represented, in Blues for example by artists like Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker, but in these supposedly “simple” recordings we hear clearly their unique personal styles, with subtleties and depth that are exactly what makes the music special and the same things that can be lost when musicians focus too much on technical achievement.

"I certainly don’t know the meaning of life (although I’m sure it has something to do with peace, love, not hurting anyone else, and helping to make the earth a better place) and I’m not sure that I would say that my unique little approach to playing rocking American music is “the spiritual expression of what I am…” " (Sax Gordon / Photo by Caroline Alden)

Which meetings have been the most important experiences? What was the best advice anyone ever gave you?

Now that I look back on my life, I value the long associations I had with real Blues & Soul performers. I didn’t know how lucky I was (but maybe I actually did) to join the great Johnny Heartsman’s group when I was still very young in California. After I got to the East Coast, I was playing night after night at the Cantab Lounge in Cambridge MA with Little Joe Cook & the Thrillers before I started traveling for weeks or months at a time with Blues greats like Luther “Guitar Junior” Johnson and Matt “Guitar” Murphy. Each situation brought new lessons in both life and music. Now that all seems like a dream. We were sometimes months on the road, spending all day everyday in the van, telling stories, eating, talking, and just sharing the ride of life, while on-stage us side-musicians learned on the job, supporting the music and vision of our leader, developing confidence knowing we’d been chosen to be a part of the music. I don’t consider myself a “Bluesman” but I’m proud that I was chosen by Soul and Blues people like Luther, Matt, Sherman Robertson, Solomon Burke, and others to help bring their music to life in live performances and sometimes on recordings.

Another important experience for me has been performing at the Porretta Soul Festival in Italy over many years. I’ve worked there in many capacities, often presenting special projects or joining the house-band horn-section (if they needed a baritone sax player for example) to work with great Soul and R&B artists like Bobby Rush, Sugar DeSanto, Lattimore, Spencer & Percy Wiggins, Wee Willie Walker, Bernard Purdie, and many more. From this experience I learned a lot about how to put together a show, how to work with a great variety of performers and how to rehearse and prepare shows quickly.

Are there any specific memories or highlights of your career that you would like to tell us about?!

It was very special to me to record with Soul-Jazz organist Jimmy McGriff at the famous Rudy Van Gelder Studio where so many classic Blue Note and Prestige records were recorded. To be asked to be there by the very important producer Bob Porter to record alongside Soul-Jazz heroes like drummer Bernard Purdie, guitarist Melvin Sparks, bassist Wilbur Bascomb Jr, and baritone sax player Ronnie Cuber was a dream.

But there have been many highlights. Single nights or weekends backing performers passing through town like James Cotton, Junior Wells, Hubert Sumlin, Ben E. King, Martha Reeves, and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown were moments that I’ll never forget. It has also meant a lot to me to be invited to perform my own music and have musicians, especially in Europe and South America, take the time to learn my music and help me bring my own show to life. It’s a great feeling to be appreciated and accepted even in the smallest places.

"Music truly is a universal language and people all over the world love rockin’ American music! People everywhere want to live and share good things like food, music, and their unique traditions. They are happy to work hard to make things better for their children, for their families and for their communities. People everywhere are proud and generous in welcoming visitors/performers. Of course, not every situation is perfect but overall this is what I feel." (Sax Gordon / Photo by Caroline Alden)

What do you miss most nowadays from the music of the past? What are your hopes and fears for the future of?

I miss playing, recording and being on the road with original performers from the classic days of Blues, Soul, and R&B. I’m lucky that I caught the end of that era. For some reason it never occurred to me at the time that it would all come to an end. It was clear when I was performing and/or recording with legends like Rosco Gordon, Jimmy “T99” Nelson, Jimmy Witherspoon, or Jay McShann that they were getting old, but somehow, I didn’t picture how the world would be when they were all gone. Now it makes me sad to see the original music largely overlooked and audiences more interested in what is pushed to them by paid publicists, through social media, by big organizations that claim to represent the music but really don’t, and platforms like SiriusXM radio, Spotify, etc, that can be manipulated by those that know how or those that can pay for publicity. I suppose it’s nothing new, there has always been paid publicity and good music overlooked for the “latest thing...”

It can be very difficult now for musicians that used to spend their time working on music, writing songs, recording and performing to have to spend most of their time trying to promote themselves on all the various platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, etc. It doesn’t always come easily or naturally to someone who didn’t grow up in the internet age and many of those people are exactly the musicians that have experience and direct connections to great Blues, Soul, and Jazz performers that are no longer with us.

But, times change and it’s a performer’s job to reach people. You can’t tell an audience what they should like or criticize them, they are busy with their own lives and it’s not their obligation to be musicologists. Music doesn’t occupy the same space in everybody’s life and I think a lot of people don’t want to think about it too much, they just want to enjoy something. If they like the way a performer looks or they like loud rock guitar, or if they like what a particular song says then that can be good enough for them and that’s OK, but it’s sad for me to see the lack of interest in classic Blues, Jazz and Soul styles which move me much more than most of what I hear promoted today. Honestly I don’t like the popular phrase “Keeping the Blues Alive” because it makes it sound like the music needs extra help.. It doesn’t need any help, it just needs the negative influences in the business to get out of the way - for instance the “Blues” Radio, media, and “Blues Societies” that push mostly loud guitar-oriented rock music and call it “Blues.”

"I certainly don’t know the meaning of life (although I’m sure it has something to do with peace, love, not hurting anyone else, and helping to make the earth a better place) and I’m not sure that I would say that my unique little approach to playing rocking American music is “the spiritual expression of what I am…” " (Sax Gordon / Photo by Caroline Alden)

What are some of the most important lessons you have learned from your experience in the music paths?

You better love what you do because it’s going to be a battle and you probably won’t get rich doing it. And I read somewhere some advice that supposedly came from Bo Diddly: “Eat whenever you can, I mean it!”

What is the impact of music on the socio-cultural implications? How do you want the music to affect people?

It’s different now than when Jazz, Blues, R&B, and Soul were first alive.. It was the music and voice of a culture (African American culture) and speaking back to that culture. Of course, other people heard it and got interested, inspired, and eventually they got involved. This didn’t necessarily help the music. Some original black performers and business people did OK and made a little money but for the most part white people found that money could be made off the music and they did just that - whether it was recording/producing/manufacturing/selling Black Music to eventually having white people covering or imitating Black Music styles (from traditional Jazz and Big Band Music to early Rock & Roll like Bill Haley & the Comets and Elvis).

Like many people around the world, I was “bitten by the bug” as we say. I heard great music and loved it! It’s hard as a wild little kid not to love Little Richard, Fats Domino and Chuck Berry! Then as a young musician it’s natural to try and play the music, and at that time we didn’t think about the socio-cultural implications of white people playing Black Music, we were just trying to have fun and get some gigs.. Of course, this is the same story behind countless white Rock groups and British Invasion groups like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but the big problems come about as all-white “Blues” groups started dominating the bills of Blues festivals and radio-station play-lists (now Spotify and SiriusXM) and the music, still called “Blues” started reflecting Rock influence more than Blues influence. Whose music is it now and who is it speaking to?

I consider myself a Rock & Roll musician but the search for wild and rocking sax music of course led me to Black Jazz, Blues, and R&B. Learning from those recordings and sometimes directly from legendary sax rockers like Lee Allen, Big Jay McNeely, Illinois Jaquet, Joe Houston and Junior Walker shaped my sound and that seemed to be recognized by the real Blues people that liked what they heard and hired me. But, my experience in the world is still different from theirs and I learned second-hand, like learning a second language. I’m proud to have been involved in the music the way I have but I consider myself and Rock & Roll musician that has supported Blues performers.

"I miss playing, recording and being on the road with original performers from the classic days of Blues, Soul, and R&B. I’m lucky that I caught the end of that era. For some reason it never occurred to me at the time that it would all come to an end. It was clear when I was performing and/or recording with legends like Rosco Gordon, Jimmy “T99” Nelson, Jimmy Witherspoon, or Jay McShann that they were getting old, but somehow, I didn’t picture how the world would be when they were all gone." ( Rockin' American Saxophonist Sax Gordon / Photo by Paula Morin)

John Coltrane said "My music is the spiritual expression of what I am...". How do you understand the spirit, music, and the meaning of life?

I believe it’s possible that we can reach a point in our musical expression where our true selves come through. Listening back over the careers of performers sometimes it’s possible to hear glimmers of their style in their first recordings. Some performers seem to come on the scene fully developed (like Swing/ Jump/ Jazz saxist Illinois Jaquet) while others change a lot over time (Blues singer/guitarist BB King), and others never stop evolving (modern jazz sax hero John Coltrane). Originality can manifest itself in different ways - a unique tone (like Gospel saxist Dr. Vernard Johnson, Jazz saxist Dexter Gordon, or Blues saxist J.T. Brown), an individual approach to harmony (like Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis), unique phrasing (like Blues saxist Eddie Shaw) or a personal approach to rhythm (like Jazz/R&B saxist Al Sears).

Starting with copying and learning from our influences (despite the socio-cultural concerns!) to developing our own style based on our learning, our experiences, and that which is intrinsic to ourselves, many performers do reach a point of unique individual expression. For myself, I feel that the first album that began to display my own individual sound was my “SHOWTIME!” CD (2012, first released on CRS/Rounder Europe and now on my own Gotta Have Records label). All the influences are there but I’m not copying, and I feel there are a lot of unique elements to my sound and approach. I didn’t think about it at the time, I realized it later. I’m probably the only one that ever noticed this but it’s how I feel!

I certainly don’t know the meaning of life (although I’m sure it has something to do with peace, love, not hurting anyone else, and helping to make the earth a better place) and I’m not sure that I would say that my unique little approach to playing rocking American music is “the spiritual expression of what I am…” I think I would just say that I’m a very fortunate guy, an experienced professional Rock & Roll sax player who found his own style and still feels like a kid having fun playing music!

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(Sax Gordon / Photo by Caroline Alden)