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Narrator: Alchemy, sorcery,

the infernal creation of the mad inventor,

Adolphe Sax:

a man driven by a dream of dancing demons,

summoning the devil himself.

A Serpentine cylinder of brass,

breathing a sound more deeply human

than the human voice.

The saxophone breeds temptation.

Just as the player must choose which way to bend each note,

he must also choose

which way to bend his soul:

towards the saint or the sinner.

I think that came from a pope, didn't it?

Didn't a pope refer to the saxophone

as the devil's horn?

The saxophone has been in my life for many, many years,

a instrument of love.

When I blow, things happen,

I can't explain it,

'cause I'm blowing from my soul.

It's from here and here, both.

You have good heart, good gonna come in.

You have bad heart,

bad music is gonna come in.

Narrator: Charlie Parker,

Lester Young,

John Coltrane.

Whoever chooses the tainted embrace of the saxophone

risks being consumed by its fire.

It is the devil's horn.

[Jazz Music]

*

Narrator: The saxophone was conceived in Belgium.

Adolphe Sax was born in the small town of Dinant, in 1814,

the age of Napoleon and Beethoven.

His father made trumpets and clarinets for a living,

fascinating his young son with the mystical transformation

of base metals into music.

From the day of his birth,

a strange destiny hung over Adolphe Sax like a cloud.

He drank poison in his father's workshop,

thinking it was milk.

The roof shingle split his head in two,

a gunpowder explosion burned half his body,

and he almost drowned in the river behind his home.

Narrator: But he did survive,

long enough to breathe life into a new instrument

and to give it his name.

It's an instrument

that draws people towards it with a strange fascination

and casts a spell over them that can never be broken.

Jimmy Heath fell under that spell a long time ago.

He's now almost ninety years old.

He was part of a generation of giants

whose brilliance was darkened by its shadow.

*

*

It can be the devil's horn if you want it to be,

and it could be the angel's horn.

It can be an instrument to try to attract the opposite sex.

And, you know, people do that.

If the guy, that guy with that saxophone is getting the girl,

I'm gonna get me one of them so I can get me some girls!

It doesn't work like that.

'Cause a lot of those ladies,

want to give the drummer some!

[Jazz Music]

*

I love him, he knows that.

He knows it!

He's the greatest saxophone player in the world,

'cause he hired me and give me a job.

That's the only reason?

No! And musically, and musically,

he's the baddest dude I played I don't know nobody...

The first thing he said is I gave him a job!

Musically, that comes second!

David Wong even called me up.

Look at him, he's talk dark and handsome, there he is!

This is my man, right here.

If I was gay,

I would hit this guy.

[Offscreen Laughter]

I'd give him some.

[Jazz Music]

*

*

Jimmy Heath: Oh yeah, that's my brothers.

Percy is the bassist,

and my brother, Tootie, he is the drummer.

We're taking after my father and mother there in that picture.

My mother sang in church choir, she's a singer.

And my father played the clarinet.

*

Hey,

know who that photo is:

Sonny Rollins and Ruby Dee.

That's Quincy Jones and that's Roy Haines.

James Moody and myself.

And that's my mentor,

right there: Dizzy Gillespie.

In my time we didn't go to college to-to learn jazz.

We learned from um our...associates,

the guys who were before us, the elders.

*

Uh, Train died uh forty-eight years ago,

because uh we are,

he's uh one month older than I.

Uh, that picture you see up there,

you can hardly see it,

but on that picture that's my big band

and Charlie Parker is playing my saxophone

'cause his was in the pawnshop,

and he borrowed my horn.

And that's my back,

and in between us is a picture of Coltrane with a cigarette.

And he's looking at Bird like,

'cause Charlie Parker was playing all this

wild and beautiful music.

And uh we all were in awe of Charlie Parker

'cause he was the genius that we really latched on to,

when he came on the scene.

Narrator: Charlie Parker:

the rebel angel that led the armies of jazz into the future.

Did it with a needle in his arm

and a demon on his shoulder.

He spent time in a mental hospital,

he attempted suicide,

and by the end of his life,

Birdland, the club that was named after him,

wouldn't let him play there.

If you look through a list of the saxophone greats,

you'll see name after name whose lives were filled

with torment and despair.

Stan Getz was arrested trying to hold up a drug store

to get morphine;

Sidney Bechet challenged a rival musician to a gunfight,

accidentally wounded three bystanders,

and served a year in a Parisian jail.

Wardell Gray was discovered on a lonely road in the desert,

killed three times over:

his neck broken,

his skull fractured,

and a lethal dose of heroin in his system.

Sure,

the players of other instruments have had misfortunes too,

but there's something about the saxophone,

something about the way your soul passes through it

and hovers,

naked and exposed,

waiting to be consumed.

*

Narrator: Picking up the saxophone

is like stepping up to do battle with a fearsome opponent.

Not everyone can win that battle.

Some people lose their lives,

some people lose their souls,

and some lose the world to which they once belonged.

*

*

Matt Lavelle: Giuseppi was a complete mystery.

If you look on the record, there's no,

I couldn't-even online I couldn't find any actual photos,

or actual image of who he was.

So at Sam Ash you never know who's gonna come in there.

Do you need a neck strap, man?

Man: Sure, yeah.

Matt Lavelle: I mean, every day,

people from every scene...

anyone could come in there,

from all over the world of Jazz.

It's a common thing with guys that play on the street,

and are pretty low on funds, they'll come in.

You can tell that, you know,

they're a street kind of person,

and they usually ask for one reed.

So Giuseppi came in.

Uh, I didn't know who he was.

So I looked at him and tried to figure out,

well which lost legend is this?

Because I'm used to encountering stuff like that.

So half-kidding,

more for myself than anything else,

you know, I said:

Man, so who are you, man?

You who are you like,

Giuseppi Logan or something like that?

So, turns out,

it was Giuseppi Logan!

Narrator: In the 1960's,

Giuseppi Logan had a future and a family.

In those days he would come to Tompkins Square Park

with his young son.

He was a musician on the rise,

playing with people like Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman,

the artists who were inventing the new form

called "free jazz".

But all that came to a sudden stop,

when Giuseppi Logan disappeared.

Yeah, knocked out, you know. Yeah, knocked out, you know.

Uh, he was-he was put into a mental home,

but it was pretty serious.

I mean, it was, you know, they locked it-they locked it down.

I don't know if they did shock treatments,

like they tend to do.

But uh he was-he was away for a while.

Steve Swell: You gotta realize

somebody like Giuseppi, from the 60s,

when people were doing something very amazing in music

that has allowed a whole host of people nowadays

who don't even realize their connection

even to people like Giuseppi,

who were out here playing free music.

He actually talked about freeing the music up,

eliminating bar lines,

eliminating chord changes and just playing freely,

and Giuseppi was one of those people,

at the beginning of that time.

I heard Giuseppi first on a Roswell Rudd record

called "Everywhere".

Do you remember that, Giuseppi?

You don't remember that? Oh man.

Matt Lavelle: There's a photo of that day in the paper.

That's actually from that day.

Narrator: Giuseppi Logan emerged from the shadows:

he recorded his first album in 34 years,

there was an article in the New York Times,

but none of that meant that the shadows had disappeared.

Let's do Satan's dance!

Bap bap, baaa da bap...

*

Narrator: Satan's Dance is the composition of his

that everyone remembered.

But the thing about dancing with Satan

is that when the music stops,

the dance still goes on.

Yeah!

Matt Lavelle: When you talk about the devil's horn,

there are some people that won't be able to relate to that,

and you can hear that in their music.

I'll put it like that.

You know, you don't-you don't have to dance with the devil

to play jazz.

But the people that do,

you can hear it in their music.

And the people that don't,

you can hear it too.

Giuseppi's music, when you hear it,

those forces, it's almost like an elemental force,

is part of it.

It's deeper than who you are physically,

it's who you are spiritually,

it's what you need to do to be who you are.

[Jazz Music]

*

*

Narrator: Giuseppi Logan lived in shelters

until he was beaten and robbed.

Then he lived on park benches.

Now he has a room,

but he can't practice the saxophone there,

so he sits and waits for the next day to come.

With the saxophone,

you have this particular thing that is really

so rich and so flexible,

that you can really put any nuances of emotion in the tone.

And of course, human emotions can be good,

or ah less good!

Narrator: François Louis makes mouthpieces.

The most famous saxophone players in the world

make the long pilgrimage to his tiny studio

in the Belgian countryside

because François Louis

is the man who can open the door that lets their breath

turn into sound.

I'm a mechanic.

I was a mechanic, I raced motorbikes,

and I prepared and raced bikes for other people too.

I put a lot of dedication into those engines and things.

And at a certain point I started questioning my dedication.

Because I thought it was a little unuseful,

or maybe not as rich as it could be,

to dedicate so much, uh, vital energy

to have two wheels go as fast as possible

and taking chances for my life doing that.

This is very important because that's where the air will

flow in the mouthpiece.

Even if it's a very precisely made mouthpiece by computerized,

controlled machineries,

you need this final touch by hand.

And I had experimented a lot on the engine,

when I prepared motorbikes' engines.

All the fluid dynamics, is very important,

the way the gas mixed with air,

enters the chamber of the engine.

Actually, problematic is exactly the same,

as the air stream interrupted,

here by the reed that opens and close the mouthpiece.

And I say: okay, we have the same problem,

I think the same solution should be helpful.

Playing any mouthpiece,

a strong player will always have the same sound,

and will do the same thing.

But with one mouthpiece,

that's not the perfect mouthpiece for him,

he's going to have to-to struggle with the piece

to get what he wants.

So what I'm trying to do

when I make a custom mouthpiece for someone,

is to have the thing that just makes him feel like

there is no mouthpieces anymore, you know?

He's there, he's blowing his ideas.

You can blow directly your ideas into sound

without even thinking you have to go through the mouthpiece.

*

Narrator: In honour of Adolphe Sax's 200th birthday,

two hundred saxophones are getting ready to perform

in the place where he was born.

Indeed, the whole town is preparing to celebrate

its favourite son.

[Uptempo Saxophone]

Narrator: Sax had created an instrument

that allowed the players to bend the sound to their will,

shaping the timbre,

bending the pitch,

ranging from a whisper to a scream.

It took the best features of the orchestral instruments

and merged them into one.

Alain Crépin: He took from a brass instrument,

the metal, like-like the brass,

but he took the system of the flute for the fingers,

and the system of the clarinet for the mouthpiece.

Narrator: He showed it to the most famous composers in the world,

hoping it would earn a place in the classical orchestra.

Hector Berlioz proclaimed that no wind instrument

could match its expressiveness.

But it turned out

that that versatility would lead it to places its inventor

had never intended.

The first place where it became wildly successful

was in military marching bands,

first in Europe,

and then the New World as well.

When jazz was born,

the saxophone was there waiting for it.

It turned out it could play a role in any form of music

you could imagine.

And the saxophone

spread around the world like an uncontrollable virus.

[Gypsy Folk Music]

*

*

It's the gypsy music, you know.

*

*

Narrator: Yuri Yunakov plays the music of the Roma people.

Music created to accompany the great celebrations of life.

Music that would make him the most famous sax player

in Bulgaria.

*

Bulent Kayabas: He's the best of the world gypsy music,

and he's the best saxophone player.

Sunaj Saraci: I know he plays Turkish music,

he plays Bulgarian, very-very good music,

he plays Albanian music, he plays Serbian music,

any Balkan music, Yuri's the best.

*

Yuri Yanakov: The rhythm is very important.

This rhythm is good for any kind people who not understand

this music to dancing.

You can't sit on the chair to listen this music,

you play gypsy music.

You have to stand up,

you have to dancing.

You're not going to stay on the chair!

*

Narrator: In communist Bulgaria,

the Roma did not officially exist.

Their languages were forbidden;

their music was "ethnically impure".

But Yuri Yunakov's saxophone

became the voice of a persecuted people

who refused to be crushed.

He was forbidden from performing in any public venue,

but at private parties throughout Bulgaria,

his music was welcomed and celebrated.

Before long,

it wasn't just the Roma celebrating Yuri's music.

It didn't matter if it was considered subversive;

the father of the bride

would still want the best band in the country,

no matter what unwelcome attention it might draw.

The owner of the-the wedding party,

he invite almost like 200 people or 250 to 300 people.

On the outside,

these people are coming to see us, you know,

it's a thousand, thousand people to five thousand,

ten thousand.

Whole town, town, town is coming to see the-the-this orchestra,

and to dancing, you know.

Narrator: The jazz age was born:

a new age of freedom for the young,

a new age of sweetness and seduction.

The saxophone still sounded like a human voice,

but now it was a voice that was laughing.

Rudy Wiedoeft

was the most celebrated saxophonist of the age,

and his playing captured the delighted spirit

of a generation running wild.

*

Narrator: But no matter how light his playing,

there was darkness behind it in his life.

His wife stabbed him with a butcher knife

in a domestic dispute;

he would die an alcoholic's death.

The saxophone became a symbol of unbridled freedom,

and all of its evil consequences.

[Saxophone Solo]

*

When I first started,

people didn't want to receive the saxophone in the church,

you know, it was known as the devil's horn

and it was at the clubs and everything;

they didn't think, ever,

that the sax could be in a church.

I started making records,

I made a 45, one of those 45s at first,

and then we started giving them to radio announcers.

They wouldn't play it!

They wouldn't play it;

they said you gotta be joking.

A saxophone playing gospel music?

They said, you're joking!

[Amazing Grace]

Narrator: Pastor Vernard Johnson

has become the man that many now call

the greatest gospel saxophone player in the world.

You gotta realize that-that Vernard Johnson...

God used Vernard Johnson to-to take the saxophone

from the clubs to the pulpit.

[Gospel Music]

This is our building now.

It doesn't look like much,

but I got a vision here.

It's about twenty-six thousand square feet

of this building,

it's a solid building,

just brick and steel.

And I see a triple dome up here on this building.

A bigger dome in the middle and then two smaller domes

on the right and left and we're gonna call it

Amazing Grace Triple Dome.

[Gospel Music]

*

Vernard Johnson: Let's go up the stairs,

let's go up the stairs.

I plan to build a area right here for my secretary

and her office will extend all the way down

to the light down there.

Now here is our Multi Purpose Room,

it's gonna get a little dark in here because, you know,

we're working on it.

We'll have a table here and the staff can put their

uh lunches in the cabinets, and everything like that.

Uh huh, yeah!

This is our sanctuary...to be!

Yeah. This is our sanctuary.

Oh my God,

I can feel the presence of God even when I walk in!

The stage will be right here,

uh maybe a foot,

foot and a half high,

not too high,

but it will be right here,

and I'll speak:

Hey everybody, how y'all doing?

Praise the Lord, Everybody!

I'll be speaking to the crowd here.

*

*

Vernard Johnson: Now I gotta get y'all

to see something extremely important

for this building.

This is the reason why I believe

they couldn't sell this building:

'cause God had it held for us.

They had stacked canned goods all up in this corner

and of course they had a partition across it.

And it got so hot in here

that the canned goods exploded.

And they exploded on this wall!

And when they got through exploding,

there was the face of the Lord,

the face of the Lord right there.

There's the eyes, there's his hair,

there's his fist balled up and coming down here.

Oh my God.

And then that priestly crown on his head up there.

Oh.

Nothing could have made that except God, you know.

Man could-could not have drawn this,

and they caught him, right there,

fighting for us.

Oh, thank God.

*

[Cheering & Clapping]

For the 200th anniversary of Adolphe Sax

we had to do something with

all Adolphe Sax instruments we have here in the collection,

because our collection is the biggest

and the most beautiful in the world.

He wanted to be able to have an orchestra

that could play all the range, musical range,

with the same instruments.

So he make families from the high voice to the low voice,

and that was really like his madness, you know.

His instruments was almost perfect,

just from the beginning.

There are small differences in the keywork for example,

or in the shape of the bell,

but the saxophone as Sax invented it,

and the saxophone today,

is almost the same instrument.

The saxophone is still at its beginning, you know.

It's an instrument that is so open,

there are so many possibilities to explore,

that not the whole instrument has been explored yet.

So young generations,

they approach the saxophone with another idea,

with another sound in their mind.

And then they find ways to make their own sound, nowadays,

with the saxophone.

[Deep Growling Saxophone]

*

It's not like just shooting air through the-the

mouthpiece and vibrating the reed

and having the resonance of the saxophone,

'cause every-like so much of what

we do to make the sound that we individually create

is happening in here.

It happens in here,

um and so that's all just absolutely personal.

[Deep Growling Saxophone]

*

And then the other thing is that saxophone,

because it's had the history that it's had,

has been able to be so many different things.

So you can-your sound can be...

I mean...you can-you're free to invent.

[Deep Fierce Uptempo Saxophone]

*

*

None of the techniques that I do are unique to me...

multiphonics is all part of saxophone playing,

and vocalizing:

you use a hum to create.

You don't hear the specific pitches;

what you hear is the-the sound of the saxophone

change in colour.

*

*

Circular breathing is certainly

thousands and thousands of years old,

and I think it's probably one of the first things

that we did in making sound

and interacting with the universe.

*

You breathe in air through your nose,

at the same time breathing out air through your mouth.

You get enough of a um, of a reservoir of air there,

so that you can continue to keep the-the air pressure

through the mouthpiece and through the reed to keep

all of the sound being produced,

and at that moment you suck in air through your nose.

*

*

At first,

its-it takes everything that you have

just to get that just the quick back and forth.

And then after some time dealing with it,

you can increase the volume,

you can increase the amount of air that you can do that with.

The bass saxophone just takes a lot more pressure

so your lungs need to be bigger,

uh face needs to be bigger,

face needs to be stronger,

um and then so yeah,

then you figure out how to make your lungs bigger.

And which is true and real.

*

We train our bodies to do something.

It's not like I just asked you to step up,

having not had my life,

and then now you're doing this thing

which would blow some portion of you out.

But it's all in the context of a lifetime

and of the activities that get us to a place we're at

in the moment.

Narrator: The free spirit of the saxophone was despised

wherever a rigid system sought to constrain

the human mind.

The pope banned it from the church.

The Nazis banned it from the face of the earth.

[Clapping]

Narrator: It was music played by negroes and Jews,

for the Nazis that was degenerate music,

and it went on the fire along with books.

In the great Soviet Republics,

the saxophone reeked of the decadent West.

Stalin sent saxophone players to exile in Siberia.

Music was for the glory of the revolution,

not for the liberation of the human spirit.

Yuri Yunakov learned that lesson.

Here, from uh 1988.

This are my old band!

[Fast Tempo Gypsy Music]

*

Narrator: In Bulgaria,

the music of the Roma sprang to life like a flame.

A flame the state was determined to stamp out forever.

Bye.

Hey Bubby.

Bye Daddy!

[Saxophone Solo]

*

*

*

Here coming the police; he arrests us,

he put in the jail, fifteen days.

That's it; you have be fifteen days in the...

he put us, you know, the best musicians in-in the Bulgaria,

the-the top musician, you know.

*

Three times, haircuts, everything.

He take my car.

[Indiscernible Dialogue]

How many times?

The people, five thousand people you watch,

the best musicians.

How-how-how? Running.

How? Running, because it's coming the police to catch us.

*

Narrator: The legendary master of the gypsy saxophone fled his country

and now works during the day as a limo driver

in New York City.

Yuri Yunakov: I'm start here from this country from zero.

Just from twenty dollars.

I'm not gonna forget this home, never.

*

Yuri Yunakov: I love America. I love it.

Anybody in this country is together.

No Chinese, no Arabic, no Armenian,

Turkish or Bulgarian or something.

You know, everybody together, living, you know.

It's like, you know, one family.

No more prison. No.

François Louis: To me, first of all,

I was attracted by just the shape

and the image of the instrument.

It's like a factory.

It's a sound factory, you know?

So many mechanisms that interact and things and:

it's a whole conception.

And to me it's really a pure product of the industrial era.

It came at the same time as

the railroad and all those things.

It is pure industrial product but turned into music.

That's also what makes it a little futuristic.

And that probably makes Sax wasn't understood,

too much.

By the time he designed the saxophone

and he presented the first saxophone,

he really had like enemies,

people making this instrument ridiculous,

saying it's out of tune,

saying whatever, "The sound is like an elephant!"

I mean so-so yeah.

That wasn't easy for him.

Narrator: The saxophone arrived on the scene like an atom bomb.

Wherever it was shown,

it drew crowds of thousands.

At competitions between brass bands,

it annihilated the opposition.

But all that success didn't come without a price.

He made enemies in Paris

of wealthy and powerful instrument manufacturers

who couldn't compete with the quality of his work.

But they could try to destroy him.

His factory was set on fire;

a bomb, placed under his bed, went off early.

[Boom]

He survived.

A hired assassin was sent to kill him,

but by mistake killed his assistant instead.

Adolphe Sax survived.

But the curse of the saxophone wasn't done with him yet.

[Saxophone Solo]

Vernard Johnson: We're right in the middle of the inner city.

Some people call it the hood, or the ghetto.

And somebody asked the question:

Can anything good come from the hood?

And I say yes, Amazing Grace.

*

Charles Davis: I grew up in California in a life of crime;

I was an ex-gang member.

And now I'm a minister.

Gina Hodges: I had this vision

of a place where I was,

and there was a white house there,

and a hill,

and up over this place

there were all these children

that were reaching for me.

I had no idea what was going on.

But I came to Kansas City

and when I got here and I was standing in the doorway,

I happened to look across the street,

and there's the white house.

And I looked to my left, and there's the hill.

I was like, okay God, is this where you want me?

Quindaro, up there, that's one of the worst streets,

they say, in Kansas.

We've had shootings up there

and all kinds of things on the news, so, you know,

everybody knows where it is,

but they don't know it in a positive manner.

We're gonna change that around.

Narrator: This is Kansas City.

This is ground zero,

because it's here that Charlie Parker lived as a young man.

And it's here that, after a car accident,

he went to the pharmacist

who suggested that he try a cheaper painkiller

called heroin.

And when that first needle entered Charlie Parker's arm,

the hands of the devil tightened their grip around the saxophone.

Vernard Johnson is trying to rip it from his clutches

and return it to the hands of God.

In this community, people are broken,

and they're bruised, and they're wounded.

And what I try to do is-is bring healing through God,

through Christ, to the broken-hearted.

Music has a way of integrating all of us.

Everybody that comes to church doesn't have the same feeling,

but once that horn gets there,

it brings the whole-the whole body together.

It's a spiritual transformation that takes place.

And when we're finished,

it's as if we've had a rebirth.

Renee Abernathy: It's-it's like the holy spirit just enters into you.

It-it words don't even have to be stated.

He just his-his music just brings that joy out of you.

[Gospel Music]

*

It is God's voice.

It's kind of like you're being used,

but-but God is singing through your instrument.

I guess that's why people get so happy and shout,

'cause they hear God speaking to them,

through the saxophone.

The devil's horn that has been made God's horn.

Narrator: It was not just the church

that feared the sinful and sensuous sound

of the saxophone.

Hey Stella!

Narrator: Even in Hollywood, it had its enemies.

Stanley: Hey Stella!

Narrator: A Streetcar Named Desire was a very sexy film

until the League of Decency got through with it.

Woman: I wouldn't mix in it.

Narrator: The composer had to rewrite the music for this scene

for French horn

and audiences in the 50s never got to hear

the original steamy New Orleans saxophone.

*

*

Narrator: When you hear this kind of music,

you know the story that's being told.

The story that nobody in the 50s wanted to be told just yet.

But they were going to be hearing it soon

harder, faster, and louder than ever before.

[The Sonics]

* Some folks like water

* Some folks like wine

* But I like the taste

* Of straight strychnine

* Wahhhh!!

Narrator: Before the electric guitar,

it was the saxophone that gave the angry,

edgy sound to rock and roll.

Wherever bad girls were turning worse,

wherever good boys were crossing the tracks to find them,

the saxophone was blowing its cool.

* Wine is red

* Poison is blue

* Strychnine is good

* For what's ailin' you

Narrator: And the saxophone defined the sound of the band that was punk

before punk was born,

that was grunge before grunge was created.

While other bands were singing about fun in the sun,

the Sonics were singing about poison, witches, and death.

* Strychnine-oh, oh

* Strychnine-oh, oh

* Wahh! Strychnine...

The difference, for me,

between playing clean and playing sax in The Sonics.

Clean is sort of:

*

And playing in The Sonics is dirtier,

and what I mean by that is something like this:

*

Like that.

And it's-it's just gravel, it's just dirt, you know.

'Cause we're a dirty ol' rock n roll band,

and I'm a dirty ol' rock n roll sax player.

* Well you know you will

* Say don't you know

* And do you remember

* That I told you so

* Gonna do you in

* Cause she's a witch

* Ahhh-hoo, ahhh-hoo

[Cheering & Applauding]

The Sonics were playing,

and the Vietnam war was going on,

and there was a draft.

And I got a draft number,

and I went to a draft physical,

four months before I was gonna get a degree from college.

And I was naïve

and I tried to talk reason to them:

I said, well, leave me alone for four months,

I'll get my degree, and then I'll do it.

They said: no, you don't understand kid,

you're going in two weeks.

Narrator: For the Sonics, and for Rob Lind,

the Vietnam War was the end of the road.

Rob Lind became a Navy pilot,

and didn't pick up the saxophone again for 40 years.

* With your devilish tricks

* Let's just say if I need to call ya *

* I'll dial 666

*

*

Narrator: Perhaps it's just as well that Lind was drafted,

because in Vietnam,

he was safe from the saxophone's curse.

[Cheering & Applauding]

"Mona's Mood".

When he wrote "Mona's Mood",

I said: why did you make it so sad?

I don't find this life so serious or sad.

But he was telling another story.

*

You know, I was on the rebound of a love affair

that ah went wrong,

and that's when somebody offered me some,

what they call now, as substance abuse.

They all know me as a little happy guy,

you know, they don't know me,

they didn't know me then,

stealing and all that stuff.

I was poisoned, I was poisoned.

It was a scourge of the earth as far as I'm concerned,

is narcotics so,

we don't even have to talk about this;

let's get back to the saxophone, man!

Albert Heath: I'm so used to seeing him like he is now,

and not like he was, until,

I have to really search my memory to go back

and-and look at all of those things that happened

in my childhood.

The impact of his addiction on the family.

And I always say to Jimmy,

now, that he never,

my mother never saw this side of him.

He was always a pain in the ass.

Jimmy Heath: There's a certain degree of deep concentration

with one of the drugs that I was using.

That one, heroin.

That ah, I-I find, you know,

it's not worth it!

But when I was in it

I found out, you know,

that's probably why Coltrane could practice so hard all day.

'Cause he was zooming right in on everything he didn't know.

And he would make sure

he was working on something all the time.

And he could concentrate on, you know,

on that deep concentration.

*

*

You don't-you don't really think,

that that drug, man.

That's a powerful thing.

When it gets a hold on you, you get sick without it.

An addiction is rough,

I don't care what you are addicted to.

There's only two ways you leave:

you die or you go to jail.

Or both!

Narrator: Jimmy Heath was convicted in 1954

of selling heroin to an undercover officer,

and spent four and a half years in a federal prison.

Jimmy Heath: When I was away,

a lot of musicians of my generation

reached their pinnacle,

and their height in the music.

Coltrane became a household jazz name,

while I was away, man.

When I came back,

Coltrane was a monster in recognition, you know.

But, you know,

there's a-a lot of guys who fell by the wayside with narcotics.

The fact that they took the time away from him,

and he corrected all those bad habits,

and he realized that was not him,

he's another person,

uh it might have been a blessing

because a lot of the people that did not go through

what he went through,

didn't survive.

I saw him in the pain-in the pain,

that he was in, -And that was it!

and how awful it was for him

to have to go out and do this kinda stuff daily.

I remember he used to hide shit in his socks in a drawer.

Be needles-be needles and shit in a drawer,

you know, like eyedroppers and spoons

and I'd find it wrapped up in my socks.

I said, what the hell is this?

Sticking this shit in his arm.

Oh my god, I'm not doing that.

I'm like all right, that's it.

I'm not doing that.

[Cheering]

*

*

Narrator: Adolphe Sax's life was one filled with turmoil and strife.

He'd invented the most successful instrument

of his age,

but that instrument dragged him into an endless battle

against those who wanted to sabotage his work

and steal his ideas.

Narrator: His business was in ruins,

his debts were mounting,

and now a new curse descended upon him:

a black tumour appeared on his lower lip

and grew to a monstrous size.

He could only eat through a tube.

The only solution seemed to be surgery

that would remove half the flesh from his face.

In desperation,

he fell upon a certain mysterious doctor from the east,

Dr. Noir,

who treated him with secret herbal preparations

from the islands of Indonesia.

Dr. Noir was later revealed as a trickster and a fraud,

but all the same,

Adolphe Sax's tumour fell off

and healed completely.

Once again,

some mysterious power intervened

to save Adolphe Sax from death.

I decided that I had tried many things,

and they had failed.

And I had hit kinda rock bottom.

Empty inside, lonely inside.

And I looked up to heaven and I said God,

if you're truly real,

If you are real,

I want you to touch my lungs

and take this asthma that I had all of my life

out of my lungs.

And one day as I was blowing,

"Only what you do for Christ will Last",

oh my God.

And while I was blowing it,

something happened to me.

I held this note,

* "only what,"

and I held this note so long,

till I passed out.

*

If God doesn't touch me,

I'm gonna die right here, you know.

I'm-I'm gonna hold this note until he comes.

*

Vernard Johnson: When I came to,

I heard that same voice say,

check your lungs, Vernard.

And I was-I was miraculously healed.

Thank you Jesus.

Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord.

[Gospel Music]

*

*

*

I can't explain what happens to me when I blow.

Um, all I know is that, oh my God,

please don't let me get happy here,

but all I know is when I think of the goodness of Jesus

and all he's done for me,

my soul cries out: Hallelujah,

thank God for blessing and saving me.

Colin Stetson: What I try to get to is the same place that we talk about

when we talk about meditation.

Which is to purely experience

this moment in time as consciousness.

You know, as consciousness pure,

unadulterated with contemplation of future and past,

but to be in the moment.

So when I'm performing my solo music,

my goal is to,

to become the sound as much as I possibly can.

So that, consciously,

I cease to be this um,

and-and this interaction,

I cease to be body having an effect on this piece of metal,

and instead become the sound.

So you now are just the sound,

and you can...

you can become whatever it is that you want to be.

*

*

Colin Stetson: In my pursuit of,

for lack of better terms,

we call like "transcendent experience" with music,

I don't think of it as supernatural.

I don't think of it as magical,

I think of it all as some very, very profound parts

of what it is to be conscious.

There's something about working our physical form

to such a degree.

It's not-it's not out of body,

it's not removing yourself from that,

but you become something more.

And once you've glimpsed that,

it's very hard to just come back from it,

and not to pursue it for the rest of your life.

[Saxophone Solo]

*

[Gypsy Music]

*

*

Narrator: As Adolphe Sax's life drew towards its close,

he realized that his dream,

of getting the saxophone into the classical orchestra,

would never come true.

Narrator: In the Damnation of Faust,

Hector Berlioz,

the saxophone's greatest champion,

left two lines of music blank,

for a saxophone part that was never written.

Adolphe Sax's patent had expired,

and other people were building his saxophones now.

With his business and his fortune gone,

he was reduced to working as a stagehand

in the opera where his instruments were now rejected.

His mind turned to thoughts of revenge.

His new inventions were a giant musical instrument

that would blast the people of Paris with bombastic music

from a hilltop

and a huge cannon that would level the city with a cannonball

ten metres wide.

In his final years,

he wrote to his brother to tell him of a terrible dream

in which black demons with saxophones

carried the souls of sinners down to hell.

[Thunder]

Sometimes the-the events are blurry about what happened...

happened when, but at some point

he was in the hospital again.

He got hurt again and there's conflicting reports

about what actually went down.

I haven't seen him now probably I'd say,

in like less ah eight months, nine months.

Right now we're heading out to Far Rockaway, Queens.

End of the A line.

All the way at the end,

where we located Giuseppi Logan at a nursing home.

Well, he told me that he fell,

and I believed I-I believed that he fell;

I mean, yeah, he's an old guy he could fall and everything.

But uh, it turns out that ah he actually didn't fall,

that he had gotten shot by one of these drug dealers,

maybe one of these kids, you know,

and I'm not really sure exactly what went down but

I don't doubt it.

But out here-out here in the nursing home though,

he isn't-he's cut off. He's cut off.

He's cut off from Tompkins Square Park,

and he hasn't even had a horn.

But he's been cut off from everything.

[Organ Music]

Matt Lavelle: Hey man!

What's up, baby?

[Laughing]

What's going on man?

Mr. Logan, well, when he came in,

we didn't really know that he was famous until Robin,

his social worker, did-did her interview.

And then we found out that he played the saxophone.

I've been in here a long time.

Matt Lavelle: Where your reeds at?

Giuseppi Logan: Is that a two or a one?

Matt Lavelle: That's a two but the two might-the two might work.

Diane Moore: I can check downstairs to see if he left any in the other cases.

Matt Lavelle: I'm gonna take your horn back to the city

and get it fixed, man.

And then we'll get you 1.5 alto reeds,

and then you'll be back in business, man.

This is the joint when he sings,

this-this might be my favourite track.

Right here, this is Giuseppi singing a ballad.

[Love Me Tonight-Giuseppi Logan]

* The way you used to love me... *

Matt Lavelle: That was for his first wife!

And it didn't work out, but uh,

you know, it's a love song.

But it's very personal.

You know, it wasn't a song for, you know,

to get a hit record or get paid.

It was a song for someone that he loved, you know.

* You make me feel crashing *

* down in your mind

* all your loving and your kisses *

* will bind my heart forever more *

* please love me tonight,

* and never let me go

* Doo-do-do-do

* Never let me go

[Laughing]

When he has a bad day,

he usually comes downstairs and we put on music

and everything is forgotten.

His bad days are wanting to be back outside in the park.

He talks about that all the time.

But once we start putting music on

and we start talking about the different

jazz artists that he played with,

he forgets all about going outside.

He's happy.

Alright, it was good to see you, man. Alright?

Take it easy now

I'll uh...I'll tell Dan what's up with that new horn

and we'll probably have it within a week,

and then you'll be back online.

All right, man.

All right, brother.

You all take care of yourselves now.

Cool.

You should have a story to tell, you know.

Miles Davis had a story to tell, you know.

Charlie Parker had a story to tell.

Having a story and-and telling it through your music.

Narrator: Adolphe Sax's story came to an end

on the 7th of February 1894.

He had created an instrument

that enchanted everyone that heard it.

But for himself,

he had chosen a path that led to bombs and burning,

poisons and cancer,

and in the end,

a lonely death as a destitute and disappointed man.

It's a horn that for nearly two hundred years

has led some people down a pathway to evil and despair,

and yet has opened the path for others to experience the ecstasy

of being truly human.

[Happy Birthday Song]

*

Man: Bonne Anniversaire, Mr. Sax!

[Clapping & Cheering]