He wanted that different sound.įor anyone not well versed in that style of music, how would you describe the difference? Not many guys were playing soprano so, when he started, that stood out. There are a lot of players around that play really well, but they don’t have their own sound. Oh, it knocked me out! I mean, it sounded really good! What I think happened with Kenny, he kind of developed his own sound-just like Miles had his own sound and Coltrane had his, playing tenor. “Kenny G? Kenny G?” And, then it hit me-that’s Kenny Gorelick!
At that time, I was back into Motown and, on the road, we started hearing about this saxophone player. They were getting the big shows, but they weren’t the big names. I think they had a manager or some type of representation. Around then, you usually traveled around trying for gigs in, say, Seattle or Tacoma or wherever. So, Lorber and Kenny played around Portland for a while?
Everybody used to come from San Francisco, skip us, and go to Seattle.īecause they didn’t think there was any music here! Then, all of a sudden, people started discovering Portland, and it was like, “Hey, man, they have some talent!” It wasn’t a real strong jazz situation around here. The guys kept it going and, you know, bless their hearts, they got something happening and, from that point on, other bands started springing up. Jeff started the Jeff Lorber Fusion project, and Kenny went with him. I was like, “OK, let’s just get some different people.” Jeff was getting ready to go into the fusion sound, and he had a band that could work for less money than I was charging. One night, after paying the guys their money, Thara Memory let me know that Jeff had a few words with the club owner, saying he was starting his own band. Everybody’s ears opened around town, but these guys…they were hustlers, especially Jeff Lorber. What happened was that we started to change. Portland drummer laureate Mel Brown, the Motown vet who kept the beat for a cavalcade of stars (Diana Ross, Tommy Chong, Martha Reeves, the Temptations) before returning home in the ‘70s to reignite the local jazz scene, spoke with WW about hiring a hardworking young horn player to jam with his band decades ago. Still, while Portland cannot claim him as our own, the path that brought the University of Washington accounting student to the attention of major record labels arguably begins in Puddletown. To some extent, the former Kenneth Gorelick could’ve come from anywhere, but the early Starbucks investor’s Seattle origins do seem especially apropos. This even-handed portrait wonders instead just how an awkward noodler spun platinum from a moribund medium, and why so many, many critics took objection. While most biographies of living legends focus on either vicariously reliving the triumph of artistry over family, country and economy, or relishing a salacious peek behind the music, Listening to Kenny G isn’t particularly interested in explaining the ways fortune found a hyper-ambitious man blessed with a perfect elevator pitch. New HBO documentary Listening to Kenny G, which won rave reviews at the Toronto International Film Festival, expects you’re already familiar with the much-maligned sax god and, absent any revelations, asks you to consider the man within the meme. Likely the world’s most famous instrumentalist and certainly its most successful, with some 75 million albums sold, Kenny G effectively birthed smooth jazz as a marketable format and forever earned the loathing of genre purists. Kenny G (HBO) By Jay Horton Novemat 9:00 pm PST