Although few fans knew Steve Douglas by name, the sound of his muscular, R&B inflected baritone and tenor sax playing was an essential ingredient of innumerable late-Fifties and early-Sixties hits, including the Ventures’ “Walk – Don’t Run,” Bob & Earl’s “Harlem Shuffle,” the Crystals’ “He’s a Rebel,” the Beach Boys’ “Shut Down” and Jan & Dean’s “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena).”

In fact, virtually every sax solo on a rock record emanating from Los Angeles in the first half of the 1960s was played by Steve Douglas, and every subsequent saxophonist in rock history, from Denny Payton of the Dave Clark Five to Clarence Clemons of the E Street Band, owes a significant debt to Douglas’s palpably intense approach to the instrument.