Dave Koz

David S. "Dave" Koz (born March 27, 1963) is an American smooth jazz saxophonist.

Early life

Dave Koz was born on March 27, 1963 in Encino, California to Jewish parents: Norman, a dermatologist and, Audrey Koz, a pharmacist. Dave has a brother, Jeff, who is also a musician, and a sister, Roberta. Although he is Jewish, Koz plays both Christmas and occasional Hanukkah songs at his concerts. He attended William Howard Taft High School in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California performing on saxophone as a member of the school jazz band. He later graduated from UCLA with a degree in mass communications in 1986, and only weeks after his graduation, decided to make a go of becoming a professional musician.

Career

Within weeks of that decision, he was recruited as a member of Bobby Caldwell's tour. For the rest of the 1980s, Koz served as a session musician in several bands, toured with Jeff Lorber. Koz was a member of Richard Marx's band and toured with Marx throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s. He also played in the house band of CBS' short-lived The Pat Sajak Show, with Tom Scott as bandleader.

Dave Koz (album)

Dave Koz is the 1990 debut album by Dave Koz. It was released on Capitol Records in September of 1990. Koz himself co-wrote eight of the 11 tracks, as well as having a reworking of the Richard Marx hit Endless Summer Nights. He is supported by various people depending on the song.

Track listing

Production

You Make Me Smile

"You Make Me Smile" is a smooth jazz song by American saxophonist Dave Koz. The song appeared in his second album Lucky Man released in 1993.

Chart performance

The song is the first Billboard chart hit of Koz, reaching number 20 in Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks. Album Lucky Man also followed a widespread success, spending two years in Contemporary jazz charts and gaining RIAA Gold label.

Music video

The music video of the song follows a serenade-like and somewhat comical events. Narrating texts of the events of the song appears in the video and also the lyrics of the song. Dave Koz plays his saxophone to a woman whom he loves. The woman seems to evade his advances, Koz continually try to melt her heart. At the end of the video the couple start dancing and the last narrating text reads: "Everybody happy... except the saxophone left under a streetlight to rust".

Track listings

CD-Maxi

Charts

References

External links

You Make Me Smile (album)

You Make Me Smile is an album by American flugelhornist Art Farmer's Quintet featuring saxophonist Clifford Jordan featuring performances recorded in 1981 and released on the Soul Note label.

Reception

The Allmusic review called the album "Creative bop-based music with Farmer's usual subtlety clearly in evidence".

Track listing

Personnel

References

Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)

"Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)" is a song by British rock band Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, released as the lead single from the band's album The Best Years of Our Lives in 1975. Written by Harley, it reached the number one spot on the UK chart, spending nine weeks in the top 50. The song received a UK Silver certification in February 1975 and has sold around 1.5 million copies worldwide as of February 2015.

More than 120 cover versions of the song have been recorded by other artists, most notably by Duran Duran and Erasure, although Harley has stated his favourite cover version is by The Wedding Present.

Writing and composition

Make Me Smile

"Make Me Smile" is a song written by James Pankow for the rock band Chicago with the band's guitarist, Terry Kath, on lead vocals. Part 1 of Pankow's 7-part Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon song cycle/suite, it was recorded for their second album, Chicago (often called Chicago II), which was released in 1970.

Background

A radio-friendly edit of "Make Me Smile" (incorporating the end of "Now More Than Ever," the final track from the Ballet) was released as a single in March 1970, becoming the band's first Top 10 record, peaking at number nine on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. When Chicago released their compilation album The Very Best of: Only the Beginning in 2002, they featured a new edit of the song, with the "Make Me Smile" and "Now More Than Ever" parts segued together again, but without the numerous cuts—the full intro and the guitar solo of the former part, and the full outro of the latter part, were thus included.

Since the death of Terry Kath in 1978, the vocals for live performances of "Make Me Smile" were handled by Bill Champlin, who joined the band for the recording of Chicago 16, until he departed the group in August 2009. On shows that Champlin did not attend, Robert Lamm sang the lead vocal. Champlin's replacement Lou Pardini has now taken over the singing of "Make Me Smile".