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
- Artist: Alto Reed
- Album: Bob Seger – Back in ’72
- Track: Turn the Page
- Instrument: Alto Sax
Enjoy!
@SDartSax