I prefer solos, but I can’t find very many good ones. I don’t really know where to look. Normally I don’t like the brassy sound of many horns but I’m finding a liking for the sax. I’ll take artists, composers, anything. Youtube links are highly appreciated. I’m cool with famous or popular songs redone with the sax, too, just to get myself familiarized with it.
(What do you call a saxophone player? A saxist? Ha! I slay me.)
Stan Getz is da man.
John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter for me. I find Stan Getz a little heavy-handed stylistically ( yeah, I know - like “hard bop” isn’t heavy-handed 
), but I still like him and a lot of the Bossa Nova scene generally.
Sonny Rollins is also worth giving a try.
Wayne Shorter, master of restraint, always classy, and can be heard with a variety of bands and artists. A composer of note.
Charlie Parker wrote many chapters of the book, but if you haven’t dipped into bebop, “Parker’s Mood” is a sweet whimsical 12 bar blues that shows one tormented human teaching angels how to PLAY the damn horn.
( I’ve heard they prefer Sex-oftenists )
A song played on a solo saxophone
“Last Night of the World” from Miss Saigon. Evita has “I’ll Be Surprisingly Good For You.”
Eric Dolphy and Rahsaan Roland Kirk are two late great (may they RIP) masters that come to mind. Dolphy’s work with Mingus is incredibly high level, totally sublime. For appreciation of Rahsaan, you have to have a tolerance for wildness but the man was a stone genius.
These are great. Thanks for the thread link! Any more? Keep them coming!
Ben Webster - King of the Tenors (date music Old School - very romantic)
Gerry Mulligan Encounters** Ben Webster**
Sonny Rollins - Saxophone Colossus, Bluenote’s Best Of and so many others…
Dexter Gordon - Go
Cannonball Adderly - Something Else
Art Pepper - Meets the Rhythm Section
John Coltrane - start with Blue Trane for accessibility, then My Favorite Things - he gets more out from there…
Paul Desmond - start with Dave Brubeck’s Take Five, which features Desmond…
Plenty of Charlie Parker - I have a few best ofs…I have a few Coleman Hawkins and Johnny Hodges (Passion Flower?) but don’t have specific discs to name…
Lots and lots more jazz to discuss but this is a decent set of CDs that sound beautiful and provide a good grounding across a few key jazz sax players…
Foreigner – Urgent. One of the best sax intros in popular music, IMHO, and a good solo or two in the middle, as well.
Here’s a can’t miss help to get you into the beauty of what a saxophone can be.
Rent or buy “Round Midnight” starring Dexter Gordon. It was the only movie he ever did and he was nominated for an Academy Award. If you can’t love good saxophone playing after that, then I don’t know what else will do it. The visuals will help you connect to the artistry. Also it will help your ear distinguish real saxophone from the phony stuff out there where guys with lousy tone just try to rip up the scales.
All that being said, there has been a long history of great saxophone players. Check them all out and then tell us which ones really touched your soul.
When Johnny Hodges died and went to heaven, Aldophe Saxe pushed St. Peter out of the way to shake his hand, saying “That’s the way I wanted my instrument to sound.”
Lotus Blossom Hodges doesn’t play until about 2 minutes in…
or you could just get the album “… and his mother called him Bill”, all of which is outstanding, and the story of which is deeply moving.
The theme from Cowboy Bebop (Tank! by the Seatbelts) features some sax in both a big-damn horn section and in solos. The linked clip shows a live gig with a fantastic solo… pretty much every note of it is just rippin’ good. I hate me some noodling, and I loathe saxophones in general, but the solo and the big blowout riff at the end of the studio version of Tank! basically redeem the entire concept of jazz and saxophone solos for me.
That, and the solo in Take Five.
After 148 customer reviews at Amazon, this recording still ranks five stars. It’s probably my favorite recording ever: Stan Getz/Gilberto/Jobim.
Songs from this album began to come out in the early-mid 1960s. Tom Jobim wrote the best Bossa Novas and Stan Getz played them just right for my ear. He had a very soft and breathy quality to his playing Sometimes what he leaves off is as meaningful as what he plays. Some of these may be familiar to you already.
The soundtrack to Taxi Driver also has some nice sax in it. You might try sampling it to see what you think.
I’m also a fan of Paul Desmond. (Trivia about Desmond: He and Gloria Steinem had a serious relationship. He died young, I believe.) I like him with Brubeck on an album where they play Cole Porter music. Wore that vinyl out in 1967-68.
From the rock perspective it’s hard to got past the late, great Morphine