There are certain songs best known for specific musical riffs. While these songs definitely stand alone, here are three musical pieces with saxophone parts that most people can probably recognize anywhere.
“Careless Whisper” by George Michael
Released by George Michael of Wham!, “Careless Whisper” was written when the lead singer was just 17 years old. According to him, the song reflected that he hadn’t yet experienced much hardship in life.
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“…I had not really experienced anything that strong in my life, so it was a bit precocious,” Michael explained in an interview. “But basically, I see that song as a bunch of images which I threw together to represent the fact that at the time I was seeing one girl, and then I started seeing another, and it was just the guilt in between those two periods. The ballads I’ve written since have been about things that really hurt me.”
The saxophone riff that first appears in the song’s intro is easily one of the most recognized out there.
“Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty
Inspired (at least in title) by his stays in a friend’s flat on Baker Street in Marylebone, London, Rafferty wrote this song and released it in 1978.
Raphael Ravenscroft was the session musician who played the saxophone riff in this song. However, Ravenscroft and Rafferty have both disputed whose idea the original riff was. According to Ravescroft, he was told to fill in the gaps on “Baker Street” by Rafferty, who has claimed that the melodic line was his idea. Later, an earlier demo of the song, which includes the guitar riff, insinuated that Rafferty was the creator of the melody.
“Just The Two of Us” by Grover Washington Jr. (feat. Bill Withers)
Bill Withers sings on this one, while Grover Washington plays saxophone.
As Withers told SongFacts, he didn’t actually know Washington that well when they recorded “Just The Two of Us”.
“…I actually met Grover when I went over there to sing the song,” Withers shared. “It was with today’s technology and overdubbing and stuff, so I really never got to know Grover that well. My friendship was with Ralph MacDonald(writer and producer). I’d admired Grover because Grover did the first cover version that I knew about of any song I’d written—he did an instrumental version of ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’. I think it was on his first album.”
Photo by: Fin Costello/Redferns
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