Late Nite in the 1980s
Looking past the headliners
Welcome to our Musical Zodiac, in which we arbitrarily match instruments to personality types and use that as an excuse to discuss our favorite musickers. Aquarius runs from 20 January to 18 February, and the sign is supposed to be “known for being compassionate, independent, and rebellious” - which says “saxophone” to me!
Growing up in suburban Arizona in the 1980s meant seeing the world washed in bright, dusty colors. There was no internet, of course, and we lived far enough out of town that getting to the library once every couple of weeks—where I would check out my 25-book limit and blow through them in less than a week—was probably my most reliable connection to the wider world.
To shield me from the influence of the World1, my mom limited my TV time until my later teenage years, when I was finally allowed to have an old set in my room. No longer limited by an early bedtime, and free from close observation, I found my way to our local NBC channel on weeknights, where an uncomfortable-looking Midwestern weatherman would make weird jokes and introduce edgy bands.
Here’s an early example of the show’s intro, which always featured a camera swooping through empty offices, alleyways, and parking garages in a furtive “behind the scenes” glimpse at New York City:
For a kid raised on The Muppet Show and Hee Haw - oh, there’s a lot to unpack there, friends - the format was familiar. But I quickly associated that slick, laidback groove with a new, gritty view of the world symbolized by New York.
Okay, but where’s the sax, man?
The band would expand over the years to include a horn section, and eventually, band leader Paul Shaffer put out an album that contained what is, for me, the quintessential version of the song. I had no idea what the place was really like, but this is the sound that hooked deep into my thalamus and told teenage me “You are experiencing New York City.”
That saxophone you just heard was wielded by the late David Sanborn - who the world lost last May. Sanborn also appeared occasionally with the Saturday Night Live band - another staple of my teenage late-night television experience. Here’s one of many versions of the SNL theme, featuring Lenny Pickett (perhaps - I had a hard time finding a quality recording with accurate credits).
The point is that this very specific kind of dirty sax became entwined with my sense of cultural exploration and adventure. I didn’t know the first thing about New York but when I hear that alto saxophone wailing deep in a bluesy groove, I get a sense of place from the images in the Letterman opener, and that’s where I think I am.
That sound is also deeply entwined with the DNA of this newsletter, thanks to the motto of the Saturday Night Live band, which you could sometimes see in this sign on the wall as the band would play between sketches (going into and out of commercials):
Variety shows are everywhere, now - that’s more or less what YouTube is for someone like me. One giant, unending variety show.
But for a decade or so, if you wanted to get your chance to play your music in front of a few million American households, Letterman was one of the few venues to do so. And the signal that you were about to hear some new, cool band coming out of the woodwork was a low-down, dirty sax.
Great spotlight on a unique and oft-overlooked source of creative music, Tad! The guest artists' appearances for these shows are well-documented (and, at times, historic), but the house bands are a petri dish of the talented, and often featured quite a few session cats we all have heard....a lot!
I've always been fascinated by the career, say, of G.E. Smith, who (at various times) was the band leader for SNL (he ended up marrying Gilda Radner), as well as a member of Hall & Oates' band! Back in the day, when I'd pick up a new album, and saw that it featured Shaffer's Will Lee and/or Sid McGinnis, and/or Anton Fig (or Shaffer himself), I knew, immediately, it was recorded in, or near NYC!
Which reminds me of my year (1973-74) at N. Texas State U (now U. of N. Texas...every college I attended seemed to feel the need to immediately change their name! I keep wanting to tell them they'll have to do better than that to erase any evidence of my attendance)!
A world-renowned music school, they have a "1-O'Clock Jazz Band," from which Johnny Carson's Tonight Show band, used to pluck a player or two, every once in a while, if/when they needed a quick substitute for a touring or ailing musician! I discovered, while there, that a music student/player would start out in the 12 O'Clock jazz band, and work their way up, "around the clock," to the ultimate 1 O'Clock! That's also when I discovered that percussion students had to learn piano, and take lessons....why? Piano is a percussion instrument! Who knew? I didn't!