Alto Reed – Turn the Page

Continuing on the Bob Seger theme…this is one of his most famous songs, with an iconic Alto sax intro.

Alto Reed tells the story about how that intro came about here. Here’s a written account from Wikipedia:

Tom Weschler allegedly helped inspire Reed to create the opening melody. During recording, Weschler told Reed: “Alto, think about it like this: You’re in New York City, on the Bowery. It’s 3 a.m. You’re under a streetlamp. There’s a light mist coming down. You’re all by yourself. Show me what that sounds like.” With that, Reed played the opening melody to “Turn the Page”.

There’s no real improvised solo on this song. The parts he came up with are simple and clean. They’re not busy or flashy – very musical, and in service of the melody. Too many players try to draw attention to themselves, and they end up detracting from the song. Not here!

The saxophone is pretty low in the mix in spots, making it hard to hear at times. As I usually do, I transcribed on piano and then played on saxophone. Sometimes when I do that, I’ll make adjustments based on how it sounds when I play it on sax vs. piano. In this case, the concert A at the bottom of the triplet figure sounded like a concert B to me when I was on the piano. But on sax, the A definitely felt better. So that’s what I have here.

Alto Reed - Turn the Page

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax

Alto Reed – Old Time Rock and Roll

I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Seger lately. Although I grew up surrounded by his music in the 70s and 80s, it was always just part of the scenery, and not a big musical influence on me. But he’s one of my wife’s favorite artists, so I got into him more deeply through osmosis later in life. I was fortunate enough to see him on tour 5-10 years ago. Alto Reed (yes, that’s his name!) was playing with him then, just as he has been for decades.

A friend of mine had the good fortune to open for some of their recent dates and was telling me a bit about the tour recently. It made me pull out some of those old records again. So much good stuff! There aren’t a ton of sax solos, but the stuff that’s there is iconic, so I’m going to try to get through some of it here.

The first track I had to tackle was “Old Time Rock and Roll”. It was made famous by the movie “Risky Business” (which I was too young to see when it first came out) – featuring a relatively unknown actor named Tom Cruise, dancing in his underwear.

It’s a hard-driving rock/blues track. The solo is only eight-bars, but it’s a perfectly-crafted rock solo. Five licks in total, with a nice use of space. He stays in the upper register, which makes sense since it cuts through the mix better. The hardest part is the high Ab, but other than that it’s relatively easy to play. You have to get past the fact that it’s in the key of Ab (concert Gb/F#). It’s one of those keys that saxophone players have nightmares about. But if you play in rock bands, it’s all too common. Alto Reed handles it deftly, as easily as if it were A!

Alto Reed - Old Time Rock and Roll

 

Enjoy!

@SDartSax