From the Rolling Stones to Tiny Universe, Karl Denson is a late-night Jazz Fest icon

On the historic second Thursday of the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, saxophonist Karl Denson spent two hours onstage with the Rolling Stones in front of 40,000 fans.

But his day — or more accurately, his night — was still young.

Seven hours after he left the Fair Grounds, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe hit Tipitina’s for a late-night gig that started at 2 a.m.

Did he catch a nap in between?

“Most definitely,” Denson confirmed during a recent interview. “I’m a big fan of the nap.”

He’ll likely need several throughout the 2025 Jazz Fest. Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe will light up the Fair Grounds’ Congo Square Stage on opening Thursday. He’ll also be interviewed at 2 p.m. at the Allison Miner Music Heritage Stage inside the Grandstand.

He and his Greyboy Allstars hit the Tipitina's stage very late on Saturday, around 2 a.m.

On Tuesday, he'll join an all-star ensemble at the Blue Nile to perform the music of organist Dr. Lonnie Smith.

On Friday, May 2 at the Orpheum Theater, he’ll preside over “Exile on Bourbon Street II: The Bobby Keys Cuts.” Denson, two fellow Rolling Stones sidemen — keyboardist Chuck Leavell and vocalist Bernard Fowler — longtime Keith Richards collaborator Ivan Neville and singer-guitarist Jackie Greene will spotlight Stones songs that featured Bobby Keys, the band’s late, legendary saxophonist.

Those are Denson’s “official” bookings. But the longtime stalwart of Jazz Fest’s after-hours scene plans to hang in New Orleans for the entire span of this year's festival. Which means he'll pop up onstage with his New Orleans friends and collaborators throughout the week.

“I’m really looking forward to setting up camp, going out to hear my friends play, do a couple sit-ins and just absorb the vibe of the whole two weeks,” Denson said.

“I’ve gone to Mardi Gras and it’s not really my style. With Jazz Fest, the fact that people are there for art makes the whole scene just so vibrant. The Jazz Fest audience is the best.”

From avant-jazz to Lenny Kravitz

At 68, Karl Denson moves easily between two totally different musical universes: the blues/funk/R&B/rock of his Tiny Universe and the universally beloved catalog of the World’s Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Band.

His musical journey began in Orange County, California. In fourth grade, he aspired to learn saxophone but got talked into the cello instead. “I love cello now, I wish I’d kept it up,” he said. “But it wasn’t very cool in fourth grade, and carrying it home was a pain in the ass.”

His older brothers played flute and sax. A sax got handed down to young Karl, and he found his calling.

During high school in Santa Ana, California, he was the saxophonist in a Mexican wedding band called De Nada.

“I made a lot more money in high school than I did in college,” he recalled. “By college, I had decided to be an ‘artist’ — I wanted to play avant-garde jazz.”

Told that John Coltrane was the greatest saxophonist, Denson sought out Coltrane records, which were sometimes given to him for free.

“The reason they were giving them to me was because it was late-Coltrane crazy stuff (like) ‘Interstellar Space’ and ‘Live in Seattle’ with Pharoah Sanders. I’d be saying to myself, ‘Do you really like this?’ It made sense kinesthetically with the saxophone, to be making a lot of noise.”

At California State University, Long Beach, he veered into avant-jazz, churning out challenging, mostly improvised, atonal music inspired by Anthony Braxton, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and free-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor. Then in his early 20s, Denson had an epiphany at a Cecil Taylor concert.

“After about 45 minutes of him banging on the piano, I thought, ‘This is a lot more fun to play than to listen to.’ So that was it. I started working on tonal music from that point on.

“The thing about the avant-jazz was, it was all dudes. There were no girls there. My epiphany was, ‘I want girls to come to my shows. If the guy brings his girlfriend, I want her to want to come back.’

“The roots of jazz is dance music. I was trying to get back to that. I hung my hat on the fact that what I do should be danceable.”

To that end, he co-founded the Greyboy Allstars. Taking inspiration from West Coast boogaloo, a synthesis of Latin rhythms and soul/R&B, the Greyboy Allstars were “enough of everything at the same time to make a lot of in-roads early on.”

They found an appreciative audience on the jam band circuit among Grateful Dead and Phish fans.

Denson appeared in Eddie Murphy’s two “Coming To America” movies with the fictional band Sexual Chocolate.

He later launched Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe in part so he could sing more. It became “about crossing all the boundaries, an all-encompassing take on live music.”

In the late 1980s, he met an unknown singer, guitarist and songwriter named Lenny Kravitz. Denson played sax on Kravtiz’s “Let Love Rule” and “Mama Said” albums.

At the time, Kravitz couldn’t afford to tour with both a saxophonist and a backing vocalist in his band. So he hired a vocal coach to teach Denson and his other musicians how to sing. Denson still uses the vocal exercises he learned while in Kravitz’s employ.

Unlike Denson’s college avant-jazz bands, Kravitz had no trouble attracting women. One year during Jazz Fest, Kravitz was the surprise guest for a late-night Tiny Universe show at Tipitina’s. When the musicians came out for the second set, Denson recalled, “there were no dudes in the front. The women had completely moved all the guys out.”

'It's the freaking Rolling Stones'

In college, Denson would occasionally field drunken audience requests to “’play some Bobby Keys, man.’” He didn’t know who Bobby Keys was but resolved to find out.

“That’s when I realized he was the guy with the Rolling Stones. As a result, I started studying him and became a fan of Bobby Keys in my early 20s.”

Decades later, when Keys could no longer tour with the Rolling Stones — he died in 2014 — Denson stepped in. “I really felt like it was meant to be.”

It was Kravitz, a friend of Mick Jagger’s, who tipped off Denson that the Stones needed a new saxophonist. Kravitz also sent Jagger tracks from his catalog that featured Denson’s playing.

Denson submitted a recording of the Stones’ “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” from his performance of the entire “Sticky Fingers” album with New Orleans guitarist Anders Osborne.

Without ever actually auditioning, Denson was hired. He has toured with the Rolling Stones since 2014, usually splitting saxophone duties onstage with Tim Ries.

“I was totally prepared for it musically, but the 'hang' is next level,” Denson said. “Trying to keep your cool while you’re watching the world’s biggest band go through their routine ... it’s like, ‘What the hell am I doing here? That’s Mick Jagger. That’s Keith Richards.’ It’s surreal.”

Sharing the stage with such icons was more of an adjustment than facing stadium-sized crowds.

“People are like, ‘What’s it like playing in front of 60,000 people?’ It’s not 60,000 people — it’s the freaking Rolling Stones listening to you! That’s the big deal.”

At the Stones’ 2024 Jazz Fest show, which included guest appearances by Irma Thomas and Dwayne Dopsie, the sidemen were given time to shine. During “Miss You,” Denson, Ries and bassist Darryl Jones all embarked on long solos.

Jagger, Richards and Ronnie Wood “really enjoy playing music,” Denson said. “They’re not just a business. It always blows my mind hearing Mick after rehearsals. He’ll stick around with Steve (Jordan, the drummer), or with Charlie (Watts) when he was alive, and play guitar for a half-hour, or practice harmonica. They really are just guys who like to play music.”

More than a decade into his gig with the Rolling Stones, he’s still in awe of the band’s catalog. The hits get priority at concerts, but Jagger and Richards resurrect obscurities during the weeks of rehearsals that precede a tour.

“They’ll come in and just pick random tunes,” Denson said. “One time they played ‘Thru and Thru’ (from 1994’s ‘Voodoo Lounge’ album). It’s a beautiful piece of music.

“The first day, they listened to it, and Keith kind of picked at his guitar, but they didn’t really rehearse it. The second day, they kind of half-rehearsed it but were not really getting it. The third day, they played it twice. By the second time, they’ve got it.

“They’re always listening to traditional bluesy stuff, but then they write these gorgeous songs that are completely out of the box.”

He’s looking forward to showcasing Bobby Keys’ contributions to the Rolling Stones' catalog at the Orpheum on May 2.

“Me and Tim (Ries) always remark on how lucky we are that Bobby snuck in there and got some saxophone on these tracks. I think Bobby’s solo on ‘Casino Boogie’ (from 1972’s ‘Exile on Main St.’) is one of the greatest pieces of saxophone ever done. It’s on a Wayne Shorter level, of the simplicity of a few notes that really mean something.”

The “Exile on Bourbon Street” show starts at 9 p.m., early by Denson’s late-night Jazz Fest standards.

“Twenty-five years ago, we couldn’t get the regular slots, so we started taking the late-night slots. People liked what we did with them, so it’s become a thing. I’d much rather play at 9:30 and finish at midnight. But you do what you do.”

For Denson, that means inhabiting two very different musical universes.

“Doing Jazz Fest with the Rolling Stones, that’s way stranger of a day than playing my late-night gig. That’s like a whole other world.

“I’m 10 years into that world, but I’m 40 years into my own world. I’m fine with going back to my life.”