“His sound and tone were so big on those sessions he did, and his feeling was right from the heart.
“He turned me on, and it was then that I decided I wanted to play tenor,” Clemons recalled later. He’d switched to baritone sax and played in the Crestwood High School jazz band, but after his uncle gave him a record by celebrated R&B session player King Curtis, Clemons was hooked on tenor, the instrument favored in early rock and R&B bands. And even though his father also arranged for him to take lessons, Clemons recalled that “my dad made me practice in the backroom of the store, while the other kids were out playing baseball, and I hated it.” “I’d never even seen a saxophone before, and didn’t really know why my father gave it to me,” Clemons once told DownBeat magazine.
