A few weeks ago I wrote about the late Clarence Clemons, and his appearance in Lady Gaga’s video The Edge Of Glory. Now another veteran horn player is lending his talents to one of today’s pop superstars.
Katy Perry’s music video for her current #1 Billboard hit, Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.), features a sax player that everyone—including non-sax players—knows by sight. (Now there’s a big hint for you.)
The sax solo comes near the very end of this mini-movie, so you have to be patient. However, the video is brilliantly done, so just site back, enjoy, and after it’s over, watch the credits and see if you were able to correctly ID the cast of characters. It turns out I wasn’t as good at ID’ing former pop cultural icons as I thought I was. 😳
For an instrument that hasn’t seen much Top 20, or even Top 100, action in last 10 or so years, our lowly saxophone is certainly doing well right now. Let’s hope more pop stars decide to use the sax in their work.
Although it’s much too early to say for certain, maybe we’re on the verge of a saxophone renaissance in modern music. In the next few days and weeks I’ll explore some of the other songs from the past year or 2 that have used a saxophone in their arrangements.
Perry and Gaga are currently at the top of the pop music food chain. If nothing else, we can hope that perhaps our instrument can ride on their coattails for a little while.
Kenny G I spotted when he first appeared most of the others I recognized not so much by name as where i have seen them before Lenny Pickett I didn’t get at all and he is not listed in the video credits and I don’t have a copy of the cd to check. I looked and didn’t find it on her website either (maybe I didn’t look in the right place.) :bang: 🙂
Hi Mark. Good to hear from you again.
Pickett is listed on the liner notes. Wikipedia lists the album personal here, on their Teenage Dream page, as well as here, on their Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.) page.
Hey, guess what? My sunroom is finished!! We’re just waiting for the paint to cure before we move anything in. The only thing left is to put up the small retaining wall to protect the A/C from a mini slide during our rainy season (9 months of the year). 😉
You guys are certainly a quite bunch. I purposely didn’t mention the sax player by name in my post because I wanted to see if anyone was going to say something.
I was wondering did anyone notice a disconnect between the playing style and the performer? Sure, the G Man was obviously not really playing in video, but he also wasn’t playing on the recording.
Did the playing sound familiar to you? If you’re a fan of altissimo, it should, because the sax solo was actually played by none other than Lenny Pickett.