Your Top 5 Sax Players?

The Five rule is masochistic and it makes otherwise highly deluxe members (Ejlif for example) commit horrible crimes of omission. Anyway here are a few more that shouldn't ought to be left out:

Ken Vandermark
Scott Rosenberg (Rosenberg's Red/Owe)
Tom Guralnick (Pitchin')
Anthony Braxton (Start w/ 8 Standards on Barking Hoop)
John Gilmore
Jean Derome
Thomas Chapin
Dewey Redman
David Jackson (Van der Graaf)
Ned Rothenberg
Kurt McGettrick, Motorhead Sherwood, Ian Underwood (FZ)
Rich Halley
Jindra Dolansky (Uz Jsme Doma)
Dirk Bruinsma (Blast)
Charlie Kohlhase
Sabin Hudon (Miriodor)
Odean Pope
Johannes Pappert (Kraan)
James White
Archie Shepp
Pierre Labbe
Louis Sclavis (usually clarinet/ sometimes sax)
Yochk'o Seffer

There was no shortage of players around to develop strains of the smooth jazz pathogen, Paul Desmond might be viewed as a source. Tom Scott, John Klemmer, Klaus Doldinger and Jan Garbarek (all great players) probably would have pumped out the same generic swill with or without David Sanborn, (they all put out records that pre date Sanborn's first record). Hoardes of others could have crossed any microscopic artisic chasm that existed prior to the smooth stuff in the early and mid 70's. No one person can legitimately be blamed or credited for the birth of McJazz.

Frogman,
It's obvious that you like some great stuff and i'd be hard pressed to disagree wit ya most of the time, but this thread is about looking back not forward, (it's also about whose playing you like most, not who was most influential). If you listen to the records and check out the dates on em' the fact that Sanborn was not almost singlehandedly responsible for the prevalence of the saxaphone in pop music beginning in the early 70's is pretty irrefutable. I'm not really a big fan of Paul Desmond but he was a guy who steered the instrument toward a whitebread sensibility that's at the core of the dreaded smooth jazz saxaphone. Hey at least we both spelled hordes wrong.

Desmond and Klemmer blow me away. Klemmer's "Eruptions" record (1970) is an amazing brain scorcher w/ tons of depraved guitar work, "Constant Throb" and "Intensity" are also excellent.