What Belgium Gave to Jazz

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

The saxophone was invented in 1843 by a somewhat unhinged Belgian inventor named Adolphe Sax, who had the idea of constructing a horn that combined the best features of the woodwind and brass families. Sax was as delusional and paranoid as he was brilliant, and his excesses have haunted the horn he invented – and those who play it – ever since. As Michael Segell shows in his new book, “The Devil’s Horn: The Story of the Saxophone, From Noisy Novelty to King of Cool” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 336 pages, $25), the saxophone’s mystique still makes it the instrument of choice for mavericks and eccentrics of all stripes.


Classical music was slow to embrace the saxophone, but the new kid on the block found a home in the military bands of the 19th century and in the emerging medium of vaudeville. Both formats facilitated its eventual journey across the Atlantic, where it arrived just as America was finding its musical voice. The instrument was popularized by such wizards and tricksters as Rudy Weidoeft and the Six Brown Brothers; the original Dixieland Jazz Band and its brethren added saxophones a short time after they began playing New York nightclubs. From that point on, the saxophone and American music were inextricably linked.


The saxophone played a key role in the development of the modern, jazz influenced dance orchestra. By the mid-1920s, the first great saxophone sections – led by Fletcher Henderson and then Duke Ellington – had emerged, and so had the first great soloist, Coleman Hawkins. During the swing-driven glory years of the 1930s and 1940s, the music scene was rife not just with amazing soloists but with whole sections of reed virtuosos, among them the sax sections of Benny Goodman’s and Count Basie’s bands and the famous Four Brothers of Woody Herman’s second herd.


Surprisingly, Mr. Segell fails to discuss the development of the reed section beyond its initial introduction. He barely mentions the sax colossi of Ellington’s band – Johnny Hodges, Ben Webster, and Harry Carney – even though they made an enormous contribution to the saxophone literature both individually and collectively. He’s much more eager to discuss soloists, and provides mini-profiles of jazz’s saxophone giants – Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and John Coltrane.


A better title for this book might have been “Saxophone People.” This is not a distillation of years of research but an anthology of profiles and interviews in which Mr. Segell places himself at the center of the action. He addresses each topic by conversing with an expert: Collector-scholars like Jim Maher and Vince Giordano discuss the instrument’s entrance into American pop and jazz, and living masters like Lee Konitz and Dave Liebman talk about their approaches to finding a “personal sound.”


For me, the most interesting parts of “The Devil’s Horn” are those in which Mr. Segell discusses the history of the horn outside jazz. He makes a good point about how songwriter-producer Jerry Lieber’s love for the saxophone (he was an amateur player) helped the instrument gain a berth in rock and soul in the 1950s. There had already been a few sax stars in rhythm and blues (Louis Jordan and Illinois Jacquet, for example), but Mr. Lieber and his partner Mike Stoller insisted on using saxophone solos on many of their hit records of the 1950s, thus fostering a love of the instrument among baby boomers and earning the sax a lasting role in pop music.


Mr. Segell also offers plenty of entertaining anecdotes about the political aspects of the horn: how it was condemned by the Nazis, the Communists, and the Catholic Church (probably the one thing that they could all agree on), and how it helped elect an American president. He ends with a touching portrait of Brother Vernard Johnson, the preacher who performs his sermons on tenor sax.


Mr. Segell, an editor for the New York Daily News, also was learning to play the saxophone as he wrote “The Devil’s Horn.” Just as he surely makes plenty of mistakes on the sax, he makes a few in the book, the oddest of which is the claim that Jimmy Heath has written arrangements for David Ostwald’s Dixieland band – which doesn’t even use written arrangements. But he redeems himself with a very readable account of struggling to play the horn at a passable amateur level – something I admit I have yet to achieve.


***


The most surprising book of the year is Doug Ramsey’s “Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond” (Parkside Publications, 372 pages, $44.95). Surprising not only in that a major jazz writer would tackle a once-celebrated, lately neglected musician, but that a publisher would produce an oversize, illustration-heavy coffee-table book – the kind usually devoted to Marilyn Monroe or James Dean – to a jazz figure who is hardly a household name.


Paul Desmond (1924-77) was one of the major stylists of the modern jazz era, a brilliant saxophonist who cultivated a cool but expressive – and immediately recognizable – sound on the alto. He is best remembered for playing alongside Dave Brubeck in one of jazz’s most popular quartets and for composing the jukebox hit “Take Five.” But he also showcased his sunny, lucid tone on a remarkable series of albums with his own quartets and string sections.


Mr. Ramsey, who knew Paul Desmond (real name: Paul Emil Breitenfeld) well, is a tireless researcher who had access to all of the Desmond family papers and all of his surviving relatives and friends. The copious photographs and other illustrations enhance the text without distracting from it, and serve to place Desmond in the context of his own time and place. This is a marvelous book about a marvelous musician.


The New York Sun

© 2025 The New York Sun Company, LLC. All rights reserved.

Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. The material on this site is protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used.

The New York Sun

Sign in or  Create a free account

or
By continuing you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use