Kenneth Bruce Gorelick was born June 5, 1956, in Seattle, Washington, and started saxophone at ten after seeing a performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He studied accounting at the University of Washington while playing in the Seattle funk band Cold, Bold & Together, then joined Jeff Lorber Fusion in 1980 before signing his own solo deal with Arista Records in 1982.

His fourth album, Duotones (1986), turned him from a working jazz sideman into a mainstream star. Its lead single, "Songbird," reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1987, and the album eventually sold more than eight million copies. He topped that with 1992's Breathless, which sold over 12 million copies in the US alone, making him the best-selling instrumental performer in popular music history, a title he still holds. His 1994 track "Forever in Love" won the Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition. Across a career spanning more than 75 million records sold, he became smooth jazz's most commercially dominant name.

He also holds a Guinness World Record for holding a single E-flat note on saxophone for 45 minutes and 47 seconds using circular breathing.

Kenny G's warm, melodic, radio-friendly saxophone sound, built for maximum accessibility rather than improvisational complexity, defined smooth jazz's commercial peak more thoroughly than any other single artist, a lightning rod within jazz-critical circles precisely because of how completely he succeeded on pop radio's own terms.