I was at a trivia tournament last weekend and heard the 1978 hit song Baker Street by  Scottish singer Gerry Rafferty. This song hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts if any of you music trivia nerds are curious, lol. Also, as of 2010, it has had 5 million air plays, and its album City to City hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts and went platinum. All-important trivial facts aside, this song always reminds me of my dad.  He would occasionally be able to play Rafferty’s City to City album when my mom allowed him to, lol…They did not always agree about what music was played on the record player, and later, the cassette deck. My dad, the amateur electrician that he was, had speakers set up in the living room, the basement (which had red shag carpet until the early ’80s) and even outside in the back yard. So if he wanted to listen to “his” jams, he could go to the basement if he wanted!  My mom decreed that Gerry Rafferty’s voice was too “nasal” and didn’t want to listen to that record. The song is most notable for its saxophone solo by Raphael Ravenscroft. Seriously…how cool of a name is THAT? This guy belongs in the “Harry Potter” universe!

British saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft, who should’ve taught music at Hogwarts…I mean…LOOK at him! And he wouldn’t even have to change his name!

The day after the tournament, I met my folks for lunch and I told my dad that I had heard Baker Street the day before and said that the song always reminds me of him. “You’re such a sweetheart,” he said, to which I responded “Hey, I try.” Yes, it was a touching father-daughter moment…(I guess you had to be there).

It’s not surprising that Baker Street is around the tops of any “best saxophone solo” lists you might run into on the Internets, even though it was apparently ripped off from a song recorded about 10 years earlier called Half a Heart by Steve Marcus. This blog was originally intended to be one of those “best of” lists, but…let’s say it’s taking another turn!  As a person who played the saxophone in middle and high school, I will have to agree that yes, Baker Street’s saxophone solo is among the best! It’s SO good, in fact, that I never attempted to play this saxophone solo when I played the saxophone. Why? There was no way my playing could measure up to it. There were other saxophone solos I did attempt to play by ear, though, including the one in the 1984 George Michael/Wham hit single (#1 Billboard Hot 100) Careless Whisper.

Another trivial note about this song? It actually spurred saxophone sales! At least that’s what the wikipedia article states. Did it inspire me to play the saxophone? Well, no… but this guy did, though.

Zoot from The Muppet Show (left) with Rowlf the piano-playing dog

Yes, it’s true. A Muppet helped me make my decision about what instrument I would play, beginning in the fifth grade. My dad scored a sweet deal on a floor model from Flint Music, and brought it home. Within about an hour, I was making what closely resembled the “right” sounds on it.

My school district was in a budget crisis at the time, so there wasn’t a real “band” program. Instead, we had a pay-to-play deal where parents would chip in to pay individual instructors to teach their kids how to play their respective instruments after school. Regular band would wind up getting put back in the budget the following year, but until that time, we had an instructor come into a math classroom and teach us kids to play our instruments. Some of the kids needed a bit more “instruction” than others… I had a little bit of a leg up, since I already knew how to read music (about three years of keyboard lessons prior to that). On that first day, only a couple of us were able to make the “right” noises out of our instruments.

The other kid who could make the “right” noises out of his sax from the get-go was George, who would later become one of my fiercest band rivals when we jockeyed for chair positions. I’ll be totally honest…this guy EPITOMIZED saxophone player. He was a chick magnet, had naturally wavy hair, had a great sense of humor, and was a consummate performer and show-off. He even took private lessons.  Some of my female classmates said he kind of looked like Morten Harket, the lead singer of the band A-Ha.

Yes, George did kind of look like this guy…Morten Harket from A-Ha, whom is a Norway native, which means Donald Trump wants him to come to the United States. Interestingly enough A-Ha will be touring the U.S. in 2018, though I doubt Trump will go to the concert, lol.

George  had a killer impression of comedian Bobcat Goldthwaite that was pretty spot-on and never failed to get the laughs! He and I got along all right – and we were always yelled at by our band instructor for talking and goofing off too much during class. And I had to listen to him whine after that slutty colorguard dumped him (she really broke his heart). Still, there was still always the underlying competition between us. When we both played solo pieces at a solo and ensemble festival, he gloated about scoring ONE point higher than me on his piece than I did on mine – though we both got blue medals. And for the record, I did FAR better on the scales than he did (he really phoned those in).  I envied that he was such a natural performer and got so much attention – and all of the solos – and he envied that I could play just about anything on the piano or saxophone by ear (I would play the parts of all of the other instruments just for fun). That was MY little way of getting attention! Yeah, I was a total boy magnet (not)!

Me in my senior year of band. The ’80s called…they said they want their T-shirt back! Wait…this WAS the ’80s! This means it should stay there!

George kind of became flaky during the last half of our senior year and stopped showing up for school – and I’m not even sure if he wound up graduating. I don’t know the whole story about what was going on with him, there was some whispering about drug abuse (I do know he did not handle his folks’ divorce very well). Long story short, George was a no-show, so I was recruited to bail out another saxophone player named Mike, who was supposed to do a duet with George at the district solo and ensemble competition. I said I would step in and play the duet with him, but I only had a few days to learn the piece! I practiced the shit out of it, and we wound up getting a blue medal and advancing to the state competition a couple of months later, We had played a fairly easy piece, so our band instructor said if we were going to play together again at the state solo and ensemble festival, we would have to pick a more difficult piece. We started looking at other pieces to play, but eventually chose not to go to the state competition. I was a senior and had better things to do! Well, not really! Except goofing off with my friends…

Speaking of better things to do, how about wrapping up this blog? This was originally intended to be a “best saxophone solo” list, but it has turned into more of a “memory lane” piece.  If you do want to see a decent compilation of the best saxophone solos in rock/pop (far better than anything I could put together), click here…