Who are the really famous saxophone players? It can be hard to make the difference between good saxophone players and the really great ones as it’s also a matter of personal taste and subjectivity. Some, however, become famous on a world wide scale. This article discusses three of them.

John Coltrane

The American saxophonist, jazz band leader and composer John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina, in an extended family led by his grandfather who was a reverend. Coltrane was especially influential in the jazz music scene of the 1960s and 1970s.

Coltrane played the tenor saxophone and is remembered especially for his huge dark tone with body and clear definition. He was a master of the high registers. His difficult piece "Giant Steps", which is seen as having the most difficult and complicated chord progression of all the widely played jazz compositions, stands as a supreme demonstration of his skills.

Coltrane struggled with alcohol and drugs. He was able to beat his addiction and recorded the album "A Love Supreme" to give voice to his victory. Coltrane died early, at the age of 40, from liver cancer.

Charlie Parker

Born in 1920 in Kansas City as the only child of Charles and Addie Parker, he was one of the greatest improvising solo players in jazz and had a major influence on the emerging "bop" scene.

While in public school, Parker took music lessons and at the age of 13 he switched to the alto saxophone. At age 15, he left school and started to play for a living by joining groups in his hometown.

During the 1940s, the music press began to write about him while he was a member of leading bands that toured throughout the United States. In 1945, he started his own band and worked with the famous music artist Dizzy Gillespie.

In spite of his talents and success, Parker had his own demons to combat, which included heroin and alcohol. He struggled with addiction and, especially during his final years, went through financial and personal crises. A year before his death, he tried to kill himself twice. In 1955 he died in New York.

Stan Getz

Born in 1927 in Philadelphia in a family that originated from Russia, his real name was Stanley Gayetzy. He had such a perfect control over his sax that he was nicknamed "The Sound". All in all, he recorded over 300 pieces. As one observer put it, for Getz, the saxophone was a direct expression of his heart. He had had a superb technical skill and could get any music from his saxophone that he wanted.

Following his amazing solo "Early Autumn", which he recorded with the group of Woody Herman at the age of 20, he started getting public attention. In the early 1960s, he helped to grow the popularity of the bossa nova genre. In 1964, his notable piece "The Girl from Ipanerma" was a best seller. Among his most famous albulms are "The Steamer", "Jazz Samba", "People Time" and "Focus". Like the two other famous saxophone players described here, Getz too struggled with drug addiction. In 1945, he was incarcerated for a drugs offence and had other drug related problems with the law in 1969. He passed away in 1991.