Smooth Jazz is Jazz

I don't worry about labels. When the Bad Plus, a fantastic piano/upright bass/drums trio, started covering Smells Like Teen Spirit, it was playing a "rock" song. A lot of jazz standards started as Broadway or Tin Pan Alley pop songs. Maynard Ferguson covered the Rocky theme. Chuck Mangione had some sick trad jazz chops. Etc.

If you like it, you like it.

 

I hear you, Dr. Cheese.

Smooth jazz is my favorite, and most of my friends, who are mostly into rock, yell at me when I suggest playing Smooth Jazz at a party.

Allow me to submit some Alex Bugnon.

Tell me, who can stand still and not dance when this song starts?



Jeff Lorber:
Good Cracker!
Good Cracker!

Mike

 

I’ll give you guys just one more, otherwise I’ll post a hundred songs.



People tell me the music I listen to is too mellow.

Mike

 

smooth jazz hosts and boasts so many great players --- listening to the stuff might put some to sleep, but playing it will test your mettle.

 

This brings the "G" question. Is he playing Jazz too? *brings out popcorn*

 

During a cruise ship contract many years ago, I played a "smooth jazz" night every week in one of the lounges with some of the best, monster players I had ever played with. Grover Washington Jr. was no slouch!

 

Here is one of many example I can provide. This whole album (and many other Basia songs) are great jazz.

 

The passage that he slows down at 4:27 is very much like a classical music line, if it isn't one he borrowed from such.

 

The smooth jazz from the period of Lorber's Galaxian album was different than the smooth jazz that became popular as the 80's rolled on and Kenny G's later albums.IMHO
I love the period of Lorber's output and Danny Wilson's playing.

 

I've loved it from the moment in first heard it.

All of it.

 

Agreed! Given my druthers, I would much rather listen to 20 hours of smooth jazz than 10 minutes of listing to Coltrane. JMO.

As you point out, there is smooth jazz and there is "smooth jazz". I think in general the reason it is more popular than other forms of jazz is it is easier to digest. It doesn't take as much work to understand the musical logic and it can make an easy transition to background music when needed.

But on the other hand for those with sophisticated musical understanding, I can understand why listening to smooth jazz might have all the appeal of a renowned neuro surgeon having to deal with somebody's butt rash.

 

It rarely ends well when art collides with commerce.

Ella Fitzgerald was still a force of nature when she recorded "A Tisket A Tasket", but crap is crap no matter who birthed it!

 

Agreed on “not judging a genre by it’s (album) cover”. I used to say “country all sucks” but then I discovered that there is more to the genre than what you hear on the radio, and I enjoy a good bit of it. Admittedly, I haven’t dug into smooth jazz but I’m not surprised that the same is true for it, too.

 

George Benson's Breezin' is IMO the smoothest of the smooth and some of those tunes have tons of changes.

 

As Duke Ellington told us, there are only two kinds of music, good and bad. I'm pretty much a "mainstream" jazz guy, but I love Michael Franks, Al Jarreau, George Duke, Bob James, Lee Ritenour, etc. Does that make me a bad person, or does that make labels dangerous?

 

Beat me to it! And even that is subjective.

 

For me personally, smooth jazz went south when they stopped using the great rhythm sections and started using "programming" as a replacement.
I would go see artist like George Howard live and his band would be killing, but his CDs were all programmed, all the soul and pocket drained from them. I don't blamed them, the new format worked and some jazz cats got paid for a change.
Kinda like how "power-ballads" wimped out the metal scene.

 

This is jazz yet one might describe it as smooth. Use of space, beautifully phrased, non cluttered etc. It is all there, though, a minimalist approach.