The great saxophone players, for me, are Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Bird, ‘Trane, Ornette, Rollins, Dolphy, and Konitz. What is amazing, however, how good the next tier is: Wayne Marsh, Johnny Hodges, Wayne Shorter, Dexter Gordon, Art Pepper, Cannonball Adderly, etc... Even a hypothetical third tier would be comprised of exceptional players like Flip Philips, Paul Desmond, Illinois Jacquet, Sonny Stitt, Harold Land, Lou Donaldson, Ben Webster. It seems ridiculous to even call them third tier players. Of course I’ve left out Bechet, Getz, Dewey Redman (and Joshua), Lovano, Woods, and many others that I would have to place at one of these three levels. (This exercise is entirely arbitrary. This is the kind of thing I think about in the car driving to Kansas and back.) There are people still waiting for Branford Marsalis to come into his own as a major figure, but, judging by this list, I don’t see it happening. He is just one more good tenor player in a generation overshadowed by Coltrane and Rollins.

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Anthony Braxton’s approach to standards (“Seven Standards, 1985, Volume 1”) is strongly intellectual, analytical: he begins each tune by playing the melody fairly straight once through, with some minimal ornamentation and melodic paraphrase. He seems to be studying the tune, taking it apart, finding the places where he will explore it in the subsequent choruses. Tension builds up in these subsequent improvisations, as he plays in an increasingly more “avant-garde” style, faster, higher, and freer and with a somewhat harsher tone. He is still playing melodically, not just blowing over chord changes; he is always relatively restrained, as though keeping himself in check, even at the climax of the solo. He ends by coming down to a lower level of tension, providing the classic resolution. He is brilliant on Clifford Brown’s “Joy Spring.”