Your Top 5 Sax Players?

Sweet Lou Donaldson
Cannonball Adderley
Ike Quebec
John Klemmer
Hank Mobley

Frogman,
It's obvious that you like some great stuff and i'd be hard pressed to disagree wit ya most of the time, but this thread is about looking back not forward, (it's also about whose playing you like most, not who was most influential). If you listen to the records and check out the dates on em' the fact that Sanborn was not almost singlehandedly responsible for the prevalence of the saxaphone in pop music beginning in the early 70's is pretty irrefutable. I'm not really a big fan of Paul Desmond but he was a guy who steered the instrument toward a whitebread sensibility that's at the core of the dreaded smooth jazz saxaphone. Hey at least we both spelled hordes wrong.

I'm glad that Kenny G is excepted from everyone's lists.

Yeah Kenny G, that begs the question if an artist finds a niche and crosses over to the mainstream selling audience ala Chuck Mangione,John Klemmer,George Benson is it still jazz. I dug John Klemmer and included him on my list because he put out some pretty trippy stuff in the late 70's but it wasn't traditional jazz. Hey I dig Paul Desmond and play his Mosiac box set every now and then and say what you will about the guy but he could rip with the best of them.Nuff said.

Desmond and Klemmer blow me away. Klemmer's "Eruptions" record (1970) is an amazing brain scorcher w/ tons of depraved guitar work, "Constant Throb" and "Intensity" are also excellent.