Jim Sanborn Dunin, Elonka

David Sanborn has been the most influential saxophonist on pop, R&B, and crossover players of the past 20 years. Most of his recordings have been in the dance music/R&B vein, although Sanborn is a capable jazz player. His greatest contributions to music have been his passionate sound (with its crying and squealing high notes) and his emotional interpretations of melodies which generally uplift any record he is on. Unlike his countless number of imitators, Sanborn is immediately recognizable within two notes.

David Sanborn's third album as a leader has him steering away from the N.Y.C. neo-bop, skunk funk, Seventh Avenue style he helped co-found with the Brecker Brothers band. That it is recorded in Miami speaks volumes about the sunny attitude and less jazz-oriented music he is fomenting. Guitarist/vocalist Hiram Bullock and emerging electric bass guitar star Mark Egan have something to do with this, but the extraordinary drummer Victor Lewis is the one who gives this music an R&B heft while also adding Latin flavors, like boogaloo on growth hormones. Keyboardist Rosalinda DeLeon, percussionist Jumma Santos, and four female vocalists help with the sexy Afro-Caribbean underpinning, while Sanborn plays his trusty St. Louis soul vibrato-drenched alto sax, and also experiments with sopranino sax and the lyricon.

Just in time for David Sanborn's 75th birthday, England's Soul Music label delivers the goods with a remastered, three-disc, 46-track overview of the saxophonist's iconic Warner Bros./Elektra period, which netted no less than 17 charting albums – in a row. While the vast majority made the upper rungs of the jazz and/or smooth jazz charts, some attained places in the higher reaches of the Top 200. None of this material is unreleased, but this collection goes far deeper, given its length and scope, than any other Sanborn compilation. Further, it was curated aesthetically rather than chronologically by Los Angeles-based musicologist and set producer and annotator A. Scott Galloway. He carefully and judiciously offers radio edits of singles alongside full versions.

Popular crossover smash session linking two instrumental pop stars for a 1975 album. Beck played in a slick, light style, while Sanborn, although restrained, would occasionally slip in a hot blues lick or a fluid alto solo.