A few years ago my repair tech in Halifax, Layne Francis, showed me a really beautiful hard cover, colour photo book titled: The Sax & Brass Book: saxophones, trumpets and trombones in jazz, rock and pop. The publisher was Balafon Books in the UK. Copyright © 1998. I managed to find a copy of the book at the Fredericton, NB Chapters store in the clearance bin, because the chain had bought up boxes of them as the book went out of print.
Well good news, it seems that since June 2003, Hal Leonard has been publishing this little gem of book, albeit in paperback. Here in Canada it seems to be currently available through Chapters.ca.
The book is a wonderful collection of (mostly) colour photographs that capture the history of the saxophone in popular music from the ’20s through the ’90s. (The trumpets and trombones are mentioned only in the beginning of the book, and in passing later on. The book is really mostly about saxophones.)
The famous players of the decades; the horns; the advertisements for the horns; the styles of music, they’re all explored in this pictorial collection that any horn fanatic would drool over…Especially any vintage horn enthusiast.
I do feel it necessary to point out that there is one glaring error that I noticed. On page 69 Anthony Braxton is pictured holding a contrabass clarinet, which is incorrectly ID’d as a bass saxophone. Other than that, the book is not only a pleasant and interesting read, but also a pretty good resource.
The back portion of the book contains a 20 page sax and brass directory, which lists the major (and not so major) manufacturers, and some of their stencil names. It gives some of the history for each of the companies, and also a serial number listing.
All in all, it is a nice coffee table book, and a nice addition to your hard copy music library.
