Some love for Lenny Pickett

This post is a shout out to my favorite saxophone player on the planet: Lenny Pickett. You might know him best as that shredding sax player who now runs the Saturday Night Live Band. But Lenny Pickett was somewhat of a legend in sax circles long before he landed that gig. At the tender age of 18 Pickett burst on the scene in 1971 as part of the great funk band Tower of Power. We get this from the Tower of Power wiki:

Lenny Pickett (b. Las Cruces, New Mexico, April 10, 1954) is an American saxophonist, flutist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, music director and teacher. He was a member of the Tower of Power Horns from 1972 until 1981, and since 1985 has been the tenor saxophone soloist with the Saturday Night Live band. He has served as the Saturday Night Live band’s musical director since 1995. He is known particularly for his skill in the altissimo register (executed by using a combination of embouchure control, air stream control, and alternate fingerings), which can be heard during the opening credits of each episode of Saturday Night Live.

Pickett grew up in Berkeley, California. He has no formal musical training, did not attend high school beyond the ninth grade and did not attend college. Except for a brief period of study with the jazz saxophonist Bert Wilson (another player known for his facility with the altissimo register) after dropping out of high school in Berkeley, he is completely self-taught in the saxophone.[4] While with the Tower of Power Horns, which he joined when he was 18 years old, he performed with Elton John and many other rhythm and blues and soul groups. He has also worked as a saxophonist and an arranger for artists including David Bowie, Talking Heads, and Laurie Anderson. As a composer, he has written for his group, the Borneo Horns, and has received a number of commissions to write works mixing classical and popular idioms for a variety of musical ensembles, including the New Century Saxophone Quartet, as well as music for theater and collaborations with dancers, poets and filmmakers.

He is a professor of jazz saxophone at New York University.

Here are a couple of Pickett clips for your enjoyment:

This is Tower of Power in a 1973 gig in Santa Monica. The band is busting out a version of the classic “Knock Yourself Out”. Not only is teen Lenny the featured soloist here but check out his killer dance moves as well. (The audio is not great but the clip is still really cool.)

Here is Lenny in 2008 along with alto player Eric Marienthal (who is no slouch himself) playing with some kind of high school all star jazz band from Utah. In this clip Lenny busts our the entire killer repetoire, including making some noises I heretofore had never even heard emit from a sax.

Just in case you were wondering, the SNL band led by Lenny Pickett is normally the best band of the night on SNL. The dude rocks.