Meet Dave Good

“Dave Good really knows how to play this music.” John Flynn, lead guitar for the Little Kings 

Dave Good was born in Ft. Worth, Texas, in 1953. He started fooling around with an alto saxophone at the age of 10 in an elementary school band.

“My parents didn’t play any instruments or sing in the church choir or anything like that, but they did have a big record collection. A lot of Broadway show soundtracks — to this day, I can almost sing West Side Story, Oklahoma, the Prince and I — and rising stars like Ray Charles, Herb Alpert, the Ventures. That music was playing in the house a lot of the time during my childhood years.”

By age 11, some school pals of Dave’s had started a surf-rock band. But Dave was not their first choice for sax.

“The guys chose the other alto sax player in the elementary school band class to be in their after-school band, but when the kid’s dad found out about it he forbade him to continue.” Enter Dave. He learned some very valuable lessons that he continues applying to this day.

“I was their number two draft pick, and I really wanted to stay in that band, so I tried harder. That, and I learned all of their songs by ear. The  band members didn’t have any sheet music. Instead, they had learned the songs by listening to records. The guitar players would play the melodies for me, and I would repeat them until I had them down cold.”

Dave continued to perform in rock bands all through junior high school. He was introduced to jazz music in high school.

“I went to Crawford high in the early 1970s, and despite being a real podunk campus, they had a superb jazz class. Fifty years later, and people are still talking about that band and all the awards we managed to take home from up and down the West Coast.”

No wonder — the class members included Hollis Gentry on alto sax (he would later hire on with Larry Carlton,) future Grammy-winning bassist Nathan East (Fourplay, Eric Clapton,) Gunnar Biggs, ‘bone player Steve Christy, Bill Cody on trumpet, Carl Evans (Fattburger founder) on keys, and Skipper Raggsdale on drums.

“But rock and pop music was my true vibe. I landed up in a very loud Chicago-era horn band with trumpeter Eddie Luchansky, and we gigged a lot of dances all through college. I loved it.”

Out of college, Dave played sax and worked for years as a radio broadcaster, music television host, and eventually as a music journalist.

“I was always around music. And those couldn’t have been better day jobs for a guy like me. I learned so much because I got to talk to some of pop music’s biggest stars. And I was able to weasel unofficial sax lessons from some big names, names like Doc Kupka from Tower of Power and Kenny G.”

Dave was re-introduced to jazz saxophone years later when the legendary Godfather of Jazz Joe Marillo took him on as what would ultimately be Marillo’s last student in this lifetime.

“It was an honor to sit with Joe in the garage of the tiny house he shared in San Diego and play horn and listen to Joe’s stories. Lessons sometimes lasted for five hours! And he wouldn’t take any money for them.” The two would play small gigs and jam for a year of Sundays at the legendary Java Joe’s coffee shop in Normal Heights.

At Sax Lessons San Diego, you will study with a pro, not a professor — Dave offers lessons that he has mastered from years of performing on the bandstand.