He appeared on RCA’s 1960 jazz album “The Nashville All-Stars - After the Riot at Newport” with Atkins, guitarist Hank Garland and pianist Floyd Cramer. However, Randolph’s first few RCA recordings, including one of “Yakety Sax,” were not mass-market breakthroughs.Īlthough RCA did not see Randolph as a solo artist, executives recognized his adaptability and made him a session musician. Burns successfully appealed to his brother-in-law, Chet Atkins, then a rising RCA Records executive, to sign the saxophonist in 1958. The Rich-Randolph composition caught the attention of Jethro Burns of the popular country comedy act Homer and Jethro. With guitarist James “Spider” Rich, Randolph wrote a version of what became “Yakety Sax,” inspired by the Coasters hit “Yakety Yak.” Afterward, he played with a Decatur, Ill.,-based group called Dink Welch’s Kopy Kats, and after a brief time in a Louisville, Ky., rock outfit, he returned to start his own group in Decatur. Toward the end of World War II, he played sax, trombone and vibraphone in an Army band. “It was standard for us to come home from one of those contests with the car loaded down with cans of corn and peas, boxes of macaroni, bacon, bread and so forth.”
“There were times when we didn’t have much to eat, but we always had music,” he said in 2002. He and his siblings used to win Depression-era talent shows at which food was the prize.