The real jazz icon

At first, today's Smackdown topic seems an easy one to answer. Which instrument has had the bigger impact on jazz, the sax or the trumpet? Gotta be the sax, right? I mean, sure, the trumpet had Louis Armstrong and Clark Terry and Miles Davis. But John Coltrane, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker... That is a tough lineup to beat.

To me, the sax is the instrument that is most emblematic of jazz. When you see someone with a sax, rightly or wrongly, you assume they play jazz. The trumpet, though, is also associated with classical and especially with military band music. (Let's not forget that even Wynton Marsalis, perhaps the most famous jazz musician of our time - and a trumpeter - got a huge career boost in the early 80s when he released an album of classical trumpet concertos.). The sax? Well, Adolphe Sax invented the instrument in the 19th century as an orchestral instrument, but it never caught on there, and despite the efforts of Debussy, Glazunov, and other composers, the saxophone has never become a standard instrument for classical music. In fact, I'd even claim that without jazz, the sax would be almost completely forgotten. Jazz proved to be its true musical home; it is the quintessential jazz instrument.

But wait - what was that question again? Which instrument had the greatest impact on jazz? The sax didn't begin to gain its ascendant spot in jazz until Coleman Hawkins, really. By that point, jazz had already been formed by musicians like Armstrong, King Oliver, Buddy Bolden, and a host of other trumpeters (and cornet players, especially in the early days). Even as the sax began to move to the fore, trumpeters weren't done innovating: Dizzy Gillespie with bebop, Miles with cool jazz... I think the current state of the art may be sax-heavy, but the art itself was formed by trumpeters.

Tell us: which instrument is the most important in jazz, the sax or the trumpet?
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