Double Bass Jazz vs. "smooth jazz"? How to articulate the difference?

[Treyzer]

Wonder how Kenny's Golf game compares to his soprano stylings.

 

[John Le Guyader]

It's like a guy who dresses really really well in expensive clothes and is constantly afraid of getting his sharp suit wrinkled or dirty. It's afraid of trying, and it tries to make a virtue out of narcissistic detachment.

This made me think of Senator Charles Schumer. I use to play in a Grateful Dead cover band in DC that regularly played for Pat Leahy's annual beer and ice cream social (Pat's a Deadhead). Schemer was always there dressed to kill while many were in tie dye...thankfully we never played smooth jazz....

 

[Schlyder]

Man, smooth jazz sure gets a rough time. Unfairly I might add.
The musicians are all very competent, and there skills exceed those of many other styles of music, and it has commercial appeal.
I don't see what is wrong with that. I myself enjoy smooth jazz. I also enjoy bebop, and swing, and fusion, and latin, in small combos, to full big bands. Smooth jazz is just another flavour.
Just like sometimes I want plain vanilla ice cream, and other times I want chocolate, and other times I want pistachio. It's nice to have a wide selection to choose from.

 

[jsf729]

My wife is a classically-trained amateur pianist and flautist. She likes something she refers to as "smooth jazz," which to me sounds like elevator music. And I'm friends with a long-standing Jazz Department Head who insists that "smooth jazz" is not Jazz at all.

Well, I certainly agree with him, but for me "smooth jazz" is like obscenity--"I know it when I [hear] it" (Justice Potter Stewart, 1964), but I can't articulate the difference between it and what I think of as Jazz.

So, my wife and I have been trying to come up with a way to describe that difference to people who don't know either Jazz or smooth jazz. So far, we've settled on one word only--and I'd like to withhold that word for a while so as not to influence you folks, to whom we are now putting the question:

If you were speaking to someone who did not know either one, how would you articulate the difference between Jazz and "smooth jazz"?

One goes "ding-digga-ding-digga-ding-digga-ding, the other one goes bump- babump- bump-bump- babump