Celebrating the Sax

Thank you for participating in our Jazz Appreciation Month Listener Poll…today we celebrate the saxophone. Be sure to tune in to hear all of your favorites, including Rickey Woodard.

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When it comes to jazz, saxophonist Rickey Woodard admits to being old-school. Although he loves and plays a variety of jazz genres and instruments, his personal jazz favorites hail from the 1940s and 50s.

Woodard was born in Nashville to a musical family in 1950. His earliest musical performances were with the family band, playing  the blues – an experience that served him well. For eight years, starting in 1980, Woodard played with Ray Charles and his band and recalls how he used to get so mesmerized by watching Charles at work that he sometimes forgot to come in on cue. He cites Charles as one of the biggest musical influences of his life.

Woodard moved to LA in 1980 and, following his gig with Charles, decided to go solo in 1988.  He’s been playing with a catalog of jazz greats ever since, such as The Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, Jeannie and Jimmy Cheatham’s Sweet Baby Blues Band, the Frank Capp Trio, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, The Temptations, Kenny Rogers and Diana Krall. The versatile musician plays tenor, alto and soprano sax as well as flute, clarinet and guitar. He is also a composer and arranger, with more than 200 original compositions to his name. He leads his own quartet and quintet, composing and arranging for both. His most recent release, Pineapple Delight, is entirely comprised of original compositions for his quintet.

In 1993, Woodard began taking annual trips to the Peterborough Jazz Club in England so he could play with British jazz legends such as Dick Morrissey, John Burch and Tony Archer. His love for jazz is a driving force in his life, sending him on countless musical adventures, and he couldn’t be happier about that. As he once told the LA Times, “It’s something spiritual, a part of me that I would never be able to stop. I’ve been doing it all my life. I feel it.”