Kenny G takes note of jazz history
Earlier this month, Nigerian bandleader Femi Kuti held a saxophone note (A, if you must know) for 46 minutes, 38 seconds — which was big news to Kenny G. According to reports, Kuti’s accomplishment broke the Guinness World Record previously owned by the floppyhaired ’90s star who has sold 75 million albums.
“Oh, yeah, of course it matters to me. I’m very competitive,” said the sax player born Kenneth Gorelick. “If it’s true the record’s broken, just know I’m coming for you, and I’m going to win.”
But footnotes and asterisks may apply to this one-note rivalry. NPR reported that yet another saxophonist, Vann Burchfield of Birmingham, Ala., broke Kenny G’s record 17 years ago, rendering moot any Kenny-Kuti rivalry. And Gorelick questions whether either of them is official, since he set his 1997 record beside Guinness reps with timers.
“If Guinness isn’t there, I’m not sure it counts. When I did my thing, Guinness was very specific about what the volume was. I couldn’t change the notes,” he said of his Eflat held for 45 minutes, 47 seconds. “But my plan is, I’m going to break every record.”
Gorelick, 60, may play some of the most lighthearted smooth jazz ever created, and he’s amiable and funny in a 20-minute phone interview, but he is intense when it comes to his career and achievements. Throughout the conversation, from an Atlanta movie set that he is forbidden from talking about, he casually reels off box-office numbers for tours he did early in his solo career (such as eight sold-out nights in 1990 at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, co-headlining with fellow ’90s over-the-top megastar Michael Bolton). Asked about his latest release, 2015’s “Brazilian Nights,” he is borderline cocky.
The bossa nova album is characteristically inoffensive, dragging Antonio Carlos Jobim’s 1964 classic “Girl from Ipanema” back into elevators. Gorelick made it after listening to “Getz for Lovers,” by Stan Getz, whom he first heard as a student in the University of Washington jazz band. That led to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley.
“I never really thought about doing anything of theirs until recently,” he said. “Part of my motivation was sharing this love of these great saxophonists with people who wouldn’t necessarily reach that far back into the jazz world.”
Gorelick’s popularity peaked in the era of grunge and gangsta rap, and his super sweet sax tone and speedy solos led to ferocious critical reviews despite his super popularity. The vitriol lingered into the 21st century, as the New Yorker’s Evan Osnos traveled to China and heard Kenny G on a transistor radio held by a Great Wall guard who “smiled so graciously that I couldn’t bear to ask him to throw it over the edge.”
“It really never bugged me at all. Not at all,” he said. “Some people are very protective of traditional jazz, and anything that’s not sounding traditional jazz, they just don’t like. They have the right to feel that way. I just didn’t take it personally. I didn’t think they were correct.”