Stephen Riley
Tenor Sax Solo on
I'm An Old Cowhand

About

Opening the solo section, this tenor sax improvisation spans three choruses of the 18-bar form at a medium swing tempo of 141 BPM. By placing it on an album filled with standards and jazz classics, Riley situates the song firmly within the improviser's repertoire rather than treating it as a novelty, revealing the rich harmonic and melodic possibilities embedded in Mercer's deceptively simple composition. Riley's tenor saxophone improvisation unfolds with an assured sense of melodic direction, each phrase building naturally on what came before. Following this solo, John Brown takes over on acoustic bass.

Stephen Riley was 31 to 32 years old at the time.