Following up on sax players, I realize I left out a few good ones from my collection, like Flip Philips, (who, to my mind, often sounds like a combination of Freddy Gardner and Lester Young), Stanley Turrentine, Charlie Rouse, who worked for years with Thelonious Monk, Johnny Hodges, and Sonny Rollins, he of the dozen ideas per second.  
There are some great Canadians who remain virtually unknown. Eugene Amaro did a couple of great albums with strings, Moe Koffman was equally at home on the sax as the flute, but of course is remembered only for “Swingin’ Shepherd Blues”. More recent players in this tradition include Fraser McPherson (CD “Honey & Spice”) , P. J.  Perry,(CD “P. J. Perry”),  Mike Murley (CD “Live at the Senator”). 
Then there are the trumpeters of this type whom I love to listen to: Bobby Hackett had a monopoly on this kind of playing, as evident on the LP “Most Beautiful Horn in the World” with pipe organ, and a few other LPs with what was called the “Jackie Gleason Orchestra”  Some people used to write this off as “elevator music”. They either had no ear or just weren’t really listening. Chet Baker is another who did a lot of this and is described often in liner notes with the same word as Hackett - “lyrical” (CD “Chet”).  Clifford Brown also did an album with strings, very easy on the ears.
The tradition is kept alive in Canada by Guido Basso who did a great CD with Doug Riley on organ perfectly entitled “A Lazy Afternoon” (It works for evening too).
 
I say let’s bring back “Make-out music” like this, since (in my opinion) most contemporary pop music is about as far away from being “romantic” as you can get!