Teen Jazz November 2005 Artist Influence
Phil Sobel- Saxophonist
By Shannon Kennedy
Name:Phil Sobel Profession:Saxophonist Years Playing: since the
age of 6 Location:Los Angeles,
CA
Phil Sobel was born 1917 in New York. Both parents were amateur musicians
– which helped to expose him to music at an early age. His first instrument
was ukulele, which he played out on the street where people would throw
pennies to him.
He later found a violin in his grandmother’s attic and taught himself to play.
He took his first violin lesson at 13, but found that it bored him. Instead he
began playing the melaphone, tuba, and sousaphone in the Columbia
university band. He later received an Albert System rubber clarinet and fell
in love with it.
At one point, Phil Sobel joined a group on clarinet, but a sax player stole
their gig. Angry at the saxophone player, Phil took his violin up to 8th
avenue in New York and traded his violin for a C melody saxophone. When
he discovered he had the wrong type of saxophone, he went back and
traded the saxophone for a $200 violin (which was valuable then). Phil Sobel
then went to Conn in New York and bought his first saxophone.
When Phil Sobel finally owned a saxophone, he got on a train to go look for
a teacher in New York. On the train he just happened to sit next to Paul
Whiteman’s sax player, who dropped him off at Henri Lindeman’s house.
Lindeman told Phil that he would only teach someone who was willing to
work hard because talent can only take you so far.
Phil was a very talented and skilled sax player while he was studying with
Lindeman, but Henri would never tell him this. Lindeman made sure that Phil
Sobel worked hard. This helped to ensure Phil Sobel never developed an ego
as a player – as he said, “confident does not mean egotistical”.
Phil eventually began playing in an orchestra, which lead to a contractor
calling him to play bass clarinet in movies. At the time, Phil Sobel didn’t
really play bass clarinet, so he spent 3 full days in his garage learning the
solo for the movie “The Theif”. Including that movie, his first two real jobs
were on bass clarinet.
His success in the film music genre eventually lead to subbing the first
saxophone part at the Oscars, his first gig in California. In California, Phil
began teaching students privately as a sort of crusade to teach Lindeman’s
Method. Leo Potts was one of his first serious students, although Phil says
all his students were very thoughtful musicians.
Phil continued to work as a professional musician in the LA area. He
performed on television shows such as Laugh In, My Three Sons, My
Favorite Martian, Barnaby Jones, Lassie, Streets of San Francisco, and Lux
Theatre, in addition to playing with stars such as Dean Martin, Andy
Williams, and Fred Astaire. Phil Sobel came close with several of the people
he worked with in ways that when his alto flute was stolen, Dean Martin
bought him and new one, and Fred Astaire paid him compliments such as
“You aspired me to dance the best I’ve ever danced before, I said ‘If I can’t
dance as good as he played, then I have to do it again!’” However, the gig
that has stood out to him the most over the years, was playing a sax soli
behind Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.
Phil Sobel eventually began the West Coast Sax Quartet, which was started
primarily to record a CD for Paul Creston. The group was at Cal State Long
Beach, and it was the “most special thing” Phil says he ever did.
