Kenny G performs the American national anthem before the start of the East-West Shrine football game in Orlando, Fla., in January.Phelan M. Ebenhack/The Associated Press
Over the years, soprano saxophonist Kenny G's music has drawn a lot of different listeners. He's been played on Top 40 stations and smooth jazz outlets, and classified as everything from easy listening to adult contemporary. Heck, his version of Auld Lang Syne even cracked the U.S. country charts.
But his most enduring audience has been R&B fans. His first hit singles were on the R&B charts, way back in the early eighties, and he has recorded with a host of soul stars, including Aretha Franklin, Smokey Robinson, Whitney Houston and Chaka Khan. His current album, the just-released Heart and Soul, finds him working the R&B vein with Babyface and Canada's Robin Thicke.
How did that happen? By comparison, Michael Bolton, who was one of the sax man's frequent duet partners in the nineties, was roundly derided when he took a stab at soul singing. So what does Kenny G have that Bolton didn't?
Roots, it turns out. "I grew up in a very multi-ethnic neighbourhood, and all the bands I played in were predominantly black bands," says G, who was born Kenneth Gorelick 54 years ago in Seattle. "The music that I grew up listening to and playing was R&B, so it's just natural for me to play the way that I play.
"It's not something that I'm trying to do in order to fit into a certain genre, or because I think it's going to sell records," he adds. "I think that the R&B community can tell when a guy has it in his soul, or doesn't."
Saxophonists have long been welcome in R&B, from the pioneering hits of Louis Jordan through King Curtis in the sixties and Grover Washington in the seventies. But where the traditional role for R&B saxophonists has been generating bluesy excitement (think of the incendiary shrieks of Junior Walker's tenor), Kenny G has always taken a more melodic approach, offering instrumental lines that made their point not through rhythmic intensity but tuneful lyricism.
"I like everything to feel like it means something, that it's not just a bunch of technique," he says. "When you hear us live, there's a lot more fire and power, musician stuff that sax players would listen to and say, 'Wow.'
"But on my CDs, I tend to want the melodies, the solos and the improvisations to all mean something."
To ensure that his sax parts add something meaningful to the track, he goes through a process that's much closer to composition than improvisation, even though he usually starts by winging it. "When I [record] I usually just put in my mind that I have a blank canvas, so anything might go," he says. "So when I'm playing, I just go with lots of different things that wouldn't necessarily make any sense.
"But when I listen back, something will strike me, and lead me to different things, and I go with that. That's why it takes me so long to make a CD, because that takes time. I might think that I'm going to nail a song in an hour or two, but it could take me a week."
The effort pays off, too. There's a lovely moment on the current single, Fall Again, where Robin Thicke is singing, "I can leave, I can breathe, I can die in my sleep/ 'Cause you're always there in my dreams." As the melody descends in a syncopated rhythm, the saxophone shadows the vocal line, then exaggerates it into ascending triplets that effortlessly set up the key change into the next verse.
"All the notes that I play, and the notes that he sings, work out really well," says G. "It's like a perfect puzzle that came together."
Not that the average pop fan notices any of that. For one thing, the whole thing sounds utterly effortless, and as the saxophonist points out, there are few better measures of technique than making something sound easy.
Mainly, though, the music is tuneful and direct, which is precisely what G intends. His playing "needs to follow a melody for me to feel good about it," he says. "That's another reason people like what I do. They like that melodic sense that I just naturally have."
There are, of course, those who don't like what he does, and moan about his alleged sins against jazz, as if G's albums needed to be measured against those of John Coltrane. But there are also those who consider him a certified pop classic. The French Canadian rap group Radio Radio, in fact, so idolize the saxophonist that they include a tribute to him, Kenny G Non-Stop, on their latest album.
"I heard them rapping about me," says G (who has a cottage near Lake Joseph in Ontario). "I thought it was pretty cool. Just to be on the radar of people doing that kind of music makes me feel good."
Kenny G plays the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on July 2 and 3. For details and tickets, visit www.rhythmtix.com.