Billboard Top Selling Jazz Albums

[Rabshakeh]

Does anyone know of a resource for the Billboard jazz charts (or equivalent) for years past? I'm particularly interested in the period after 1980.

[sonnymax]

1. Google

2. "Billboard jazz charts 1980s"

3. .32 seconds

Edited September 12, 2023 by sonnymax

[Rabshakeh]

26 minutes ago, sonnymax said:

1. Google

2. "Billboard jazz charts 1980s"

3. .32 seconds

Thank you for that helpful and useful answer.

Correct the decade, give it a go and see whether it works. 

If anyone does know the answer to the original question and isn’t just trying to be  clever, I’d appreciate the input.

[cbianchi]

The first resource that comes up on that Google site is quite an amazing resource if it fits your timeframe. (Sounds like it doesn't.) For instance, he has a PDF file documenting the Billboard chart history of (apparently) every jazz album that appeared on Billboard's jazz charts between 1975 and 1986.

If that timeframe isn't of interest, you may need to do the legwork yourself. You can find a very complete archive of Billboard at https://worldradiohistory.com. I would start with the very last issue of the year you are interested in. Billboard did (and maybe still does) a year-end wrapup that included the year's best performers by genre. In the years I mostly research (1970s and 1980s), I recall Billboard actually included year-end charts, but I think they later did away with that in favor of a prose write-up. Still, the write-up will tell you what the number one album of the year was. For instance, I randomly picked 1996. The last issue of the year tells me that the soundtrack to Leaving Las Vegas was the number one jazz album of the year, followed by Tony Bennett's "Here's to the Ladies." Kenny G had the number one contemporary jazz album of the year.

[Rabshakeh]

21 minutes ago, cbianchi said:

The first resource that comes up on that Google site is quite an amazing resource if it fits your timeframe. (Sounds like it doesn't.) For instance, he has a PDF file documenting the Billboard chart history of (apparently) every jazz album that appeared on Billboard's jazz charts between 1975 and 1986.

If that timeframe isn't of interest, you may need to do the legwork yourself. You can find a very complete archive of Billboard at https://worldradiohistory.com. I would start with the very last issue of the year you are interested in. Billboard did (and maybe still does) a year-end wrapup that included the year's best performers by genre. In the years I mostly research (1970s and 1980s), I recall Billboard actually included year-end charts, but I think they later did away with that in favor of a prose write-up. Still, the write-up will tell you what the number one album of the year was. For instance, I randomly picked 1996. The last issue of the year tells me that the soundtrack to Leaving Las Vegas was the number one jazz album of the year, followed by Tony Bennett's "Here's to the Ladies." Kenny G had the number one contemporary jazz album of the year.

Thanks. That link to the Billboards is exactly what I was looking for.

[sonnymax]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

Thank you for that helpful and useful answer.

Correct the decade, give it a go and see whether it works. 

If anyone does know the answer to the original question and isn’t just trying to be  clever, I’d appreciate the input.

Not trying to be clever, just showing how quick and simple it is to get the results you're looking for if you just put in a minimum of effort. I obtained a wealth of information in just a few minutes. Why should anyone take the time to find the answer if you can't be bothered to try yourself? And as far as "correcting the decade", you said "after 1980". To me, that means 1981, 1982, 1983 .... In other words, the 80s and beyond.

[Rabshakeh]

44 minutes ago, sonnymax said:

Not trying to be clever, just showing how quick and simple it is to get the results you're looking for if you just put in a minimum of effort. I obtained a wealth of information in just a few minutes. Why should anyone take the time to find the answer if you can't be bothered to try yourself? And as far as "correcting the decade", you said "after 1980". To me, that means 1981, 1982, 1983 .... In other words, the 80s and beyond.

Your answer was sarcastic and useless. Strangely enough, I had already tried your helpful suggestion of googling the answer. Unfortunately, as you would know if you had actually tried it for yourself, your suggestion did not give the results I was looking for.

Next time it occurs to you to be a smart aleck please consider whether you are actually right, or just wasting everyone's time.

1 hour ago, cbianchi said:

The first resource that comes up on that Google site is quite an amazing resource if it fits your timeframe. (Sounds like it doesn't.) For instance, he has a PDF file documenting the Billboard chart history of (apparently) every jazz album that appeared on Billboard's jazz charts between 1975 and 1986.

It is a good blog. Reading it is what led me to ask the question. But it only covers up to 1986. 

[sonnymax]

20 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

Your answer was sarcastic and useless. Strangely enough, I had already tried your helpful suggestion of googling the answer. Unfortunately, as you would know if you had actually tried it for yourself, your suggestion did not give the results I was looking for.

Next time it occurs to you to be a smart aleck please consider whether you are actually right, or just wasting everyone's time.

It is a good blog. Reading it is what led me to ask the question. But it only covers up to 1986. 

If I hadn't done the search myself, and if it didn't yield useful results, I wouldn't have posted a response. Believe what you wish.

[Rabshakeh]

11 hours ago, cbianchi said:

The first resource that comes up on that Google site is quite an amazing resource if it fits your timeframe. (Sounds like it doesn't.) For instance, he has a PDF file documenting the Billboard chart history of (apparently) every jazz album that appeared on Billboard's jazz charts between 1975 and 1986.

If that timeframe isn't of interest, you may need to do the legwork yourself. You can find a very complete archive of Billboard at https://worldradiohistory.com. I would start with the very last issue of the year you are interested in. Billboard did (and maybe still does) a year-end wrapup that included the year's best performers by genre. In the years I mostly research (1970s and 1980s), I recall Billboard actually included year-end charts, but I think they later did away with that in favor of a prose write-up. Still, the write-up will tell you what the number one album of the year was. For instance, I randomly picked 1996. The last issue of the year tells me that the soundtrack to Leaving Las Vegas was the number one jazz album of the year, followed by Tony Bennett's "Here's to the Ladies." Kenny G had the number one contemporary jazz album of the year.

Thanks again. I've been through them.

Interestingly, the Cashbox lists are far superior to Billboard's.

Billboard splits out "Traditional Jazz" (i.e., the critically approved stuff in an historical mode) from Contemporary Jazz (fusion, pop pretending to be jazz, and smooth, i.e., the stuff that people actually bought). Cashbox dumps everything in together so there's nowhere to hide.

Kenny G really does take over from the late-80s. It's weird to see it. Until then the charts are a fun mix of late fusion, smooth and a bit of young lion hard bop (the Harpers did better than i'd assumed). Then Kenny Bruce Gorelick's shadow is cast upon it and the whole thing shrivels. Once G disappears in the mid to late 90s, what's left is actually, if anything, bleaker. It is just pop does big band stuff and Christmas albums until the publishers mercifully gave up the whole charade.

[Big Beat Steve]

12 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

It is a good blog. Reading it is what led me to ask the question. But it only covers up to 1986. 

I am not quite sure what you mean by "only covers up to 1986".

Some weeks ago I hit upon the Billboard archive on the Worldradiohistory website (that Cbianchi pointed you to now) after having discussed that mag with a fellow collector interested in the 50s:
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard-Magazine.htm#50s

However, to me it looks like it does go on beyond 1986.

A random click on the link for an early 1988 copy yields this, for exdample:

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/80s/1988/BB-1988-01-09.pdf

[Rabshakeh]

51 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

I am not quite sure what you mean by "only covers up to 1986".

Some weeks ago I hit upon the Billboard archive on the Worldradiohistory website (that Cbianchi pointed you to now) after having discussed that mag with a fellow collector interested in the 50s:
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard-Magazine.htm#50s

However, to me it looks like it does go on beyond 1986.

A random click on the link for an early 1988 copy yields this, for exdample:

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Music/Billboard/80s/1988/BB-1988-01-09.pdf

The "only covers up to 1986" is a reference to the blog on jazz charts up to 1986, rather than to the World Radio History archive, which as you mention goes right up to present, and which was exactly what I was looking for.

[Big Beat Steve]

Ah ... my mistake ...

[Rabshakeh]

23 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Ah ... my mistake ...

No problem. 

It's a great resource.

Very strange / sad to see such a collapse in terms of what people were buying, though. From the 1990s it is all Pop Star Does Sinatra stuff and Christmas records.

Probably those are not 'jazz people' buying those records, and the effect is really that of a relatively enormous section of senile pop consumers drowning out the jazz charts. 

But, even then, it is not clear what happened to the 'smooth jazz people'. Funky lite fusion is a pretty plastic musical style that should have survived the G-pocalypse.

Edited September 13, 2023 by Rabshakeh

[cbianchi]

Interesting stuff, Rabshakeh. Did you look at the weekly charts to inform these observations, or was there an end-of-year wrapup that listed the top albums of the year? In the old days (the 1970s) they used to do year-end charts for pretty much everything imaginable---all genres, publishers, labels, etc., etc.

Edited September 13, 2023 by cbianchi

[Rabshakeh]

49 minutes ago, cbianchi said:

Interesting stuff, Rabshakeh. Did you look at the weekly charts to inform these observations, or was there an end-of-year wrapup that listed the top albums of the year? In the old days (the 1970s) they used to do year-end charts for pretty much everything imaginable---all genres, publishers, labels, etc., etc.

Just the year end charts.

From the late 1970s it is the two jazz genres for albums, but they do have sections for labels and artists too.

With time it is quite sad to see jazz shrink from a major position in the year end lists to one that is far smaller than even subgenres of country and hip hop.

Eventually there isn't even any jazz on the jazz charts. 

I've been thinking about that last point a bit further. From around 1985, the likes of Linda Ronstadt or Tony Bennett become mainstays of the jazz charts. But it is always just one or two records in the top ten, with the rest of the charts being quite healthy with records that we now regard as classics (surprisingly few that are not still well known).

It is only really from the late 1990s that the top 20 best-selling albums section gets completely crowded out with the Christmas records and the likes of Michael Bublé.

I had expected to see the 90s and 00s jazz charts full of Jarrett, Garbarek, Redman and Mehldau and other records of that (in my opinion) rather underwhelming period for jazz, but they are (comparatively) barely present.

@Teasing the Koreanbrought up the traditional pop and GAR phenomenon of the late 90s and early 00s in a recent thread. But I hadn't really realized the scale of it.

What was it about GAR / pop star goes swing thing that allowed it to drown out the jazz charts so completely?

Did Bennett sell less well than Bublé? Or was it more that jazz albums were selling comparatively less well in 2003 than in the 1980s? Was it because jazz fans were buying more diverse types of jazz, or buying more historic reissues? Or was it that jazz fans were buying Bublé that hadn't bought Bennett?

[Teasing the Korean]

34 minutes ago, Rabshakeh said:

@Teasing the Koreanbrought up the traditional pop and GAR phenomenon of the late 90s and early 00s in a recent thread. But I hadn't really realized the scale of it.

What was it about GAR / pop star goes swing thing that allowed it to drown out the jazz charts so completely?

It provided a convenient way for casual listeners - of whom there are millions - to subtly expand their horizons into jazz.  So thousands of listeners buying a pop-star-goes-swing album is going to make a bigger impact on the jazz charts than dozens of jazz obsessives buying the new Anthony Braxton album. 

 

 

Edited September 13, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

The two jazz charts were a 70s invention to account for the fusion explosion and the resulting controversy. Prior to that there was only one jazz chart, and what was on it explains a lot. At least what I saw of it did. 

[Rabshakeh]

8 hours ago, JSngry said:

The two jazz charts were a 70s invention to account for the fusion explosion and the resulting controversy. Prior to that there was only one jazz chart, and what was on it explains a lot. At least what I saw of it did. 

90% Ramsey Lewis. All year, every year.

10 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

It provided a convenient way for casual listeners - of whom there are millions - to subtly expand their horizons into jazz.  So thousands of listeners buying a pop-star-goes-swing album is going to make a bigger impact on the jazz charts than dozens of jazz obsessives buying the new Anthony Braxton album. 

Doesn't help that "the new Anthony Braxton album" was 68 different box sets every year.

[Rabshakeh]

But it does bear considering. Why do Robbie Williams and Michael Bublé flood the charts but Tony Bennett and Linda Ronstadt don't?

Another underrated thing is the sheer dominance of Harry Connick Jr at the start of the 80s. It's not quite Kenny G but it is very close. Connick is barely mentioned nowadays.

[Big Beat Steve]

At any rate Harry Connick jr. was/is fairly pleasant swing-like listening that might well have opened up the ears of a younger generation of listeners to Frank Sinatra and similar acts and orchestral accompaniment sounds and might have gotten some to move on to ... who knows who else in jazz ...
This would be one way of easing these "jazz newbies" gradually into "real" jazz because all of a sudden a certain brand of jazz will no longer sound that strange or old-fashinoned to them once they have been exposed to Connick, Bublé or whoeever ... (And they all are a notch above the "smooth jazz" fad that for a while was touted by certain media as what "jazz" was all about).
But of course this won't work (and probably didn't work) if a certain kind of "jazz" diehards blasts them at once because this kind of swing or jazz was not "advanced" or "art music"-ish enough to THEIR tastes ...

And since you refer to specifically to the 90s:
Remember how many among what I'd call the "jazz establishment" outright dismissed whatever options of broadening the listener (and therefore buyer) base there were when the "Retro Swing" movement of the 90s made a splash ... Some of this subculture still continues to this day, though on a much smaller scale. But when it made the headlines many among those who saw jazz as nothing but art music to be performed to a seated public at concerts but not as entertainment or even dance music (horror of horrors! ) claimed this music was no good, just noise (an accusation levied at jazz itself decades before so nothing new under the sun), instrumentally insufficient, too much rock in there (even Punk!  Horrors again! ), lacking depth (and whatever other put-downs they were able to think of). This certainly did nothing to get more people interested in "jazz" and entice them to eventually progress beyond the acts on the Retro Swing circuit. Pity, because there WAS an audience ... and the door to jazz WAS - and is, for that matter, open in that corner because Retro Swing did attune the ears of many to certain styles of "real" jazz ...

I still feel that exposure that introduces people (by offering a common musical ground that the newbies can relate to) instead of ALIENATING them from the genre would help a lot.

Particularly since style-wise the jazz scene has for decades not just been fragmented but rather splintered into countless sub-genres that not even within the hardcore jazz fans very many embrace in their totality with the same intensity throughout. Just like in the Rock world and its many, many facets ...

I remember the comment of a neighbor (who is in his mid-40s) when we casually discussed musical preferences and I mentioned my intense interest in jazz. His reply essentialy was "Jazz? All that really is too weird and all bizarre for me. I can't get into that." I do wonder what kind of "jazz" he had been exposed to (or should I say "subjected to"?). It cannot have been jazz styles like those of Louis Armstrong's All Stars or Count Basie or Woody Herman or Ella Fitzgerald or - yes - Joe Turner or Louis Prima, nor George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, and probably not even Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool (et al.) or Klaus Doldinger's Passport either ...  But of course if you shove any of those free or avantgarde or post-whatever acts down these people's ears as a first "confrontation" with jazz and proclaim that this is what "jazz" per se is ALL about then this kind of reaction by those "outsiders" is fairly inevitable ... And "jazz" WILL remain a niche within niches ...

 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Rabshakeh]

Harry Connick Jr is alright with me. I have been listening to a lot of the commercial stuff recently and Connick is a lot more "real" and less of a studio concoction than the likes of Buble.

As someone who got into jazz through the avant garde, the argument that the avant garde scares away fans never made much sense to me. All of the younger jazz fans I know came in via Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra and John Coltrane. I do know a few people of my own age who have highlighted an experience with Ornette Coleman as negative, but they are in the minority and tend to be more serious music fans who find the dissonance difficult to cope with.

I think that the biggest turn off for casual non-jazz fans is probably the music of Miles Davis' Second Quintet and its followers, which is a lot more abstract than free jazz, but also much more easily accessed by first timers. I have heard several complaints from non jazz fans about jazz being too "freeform" and I think exposure to the still widespread continued legacy of the Second Quintet may be what underlies it.

Also, continued weird ideas about Kenny G, jazz flute or Jazz Club (for English speakers outside of the US of a certain age). 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Rabshakeh

[Rabshakeh]

3 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

This would be one way of easing these "jazz newbies" gradually into "real" jazz because all of a sudden a certain brand of jazz will no longer sound that strange or old-fashinoned to them once they have been exposed to Connick, Bublé or whoeever ... (And they all are a notch above the "smooth jazz" fad that for a while was touted by certain media as what "jazz" was all about).

I should add that, whilst I don't dislike Connick, I would definitely take a lifetime on smooth jazz island over a lifetime in Pop Does Sinatra villas.

I'm pretty partial to the smooth stuff from time to time. Particularly the early greats like Turrentine, Crawford and Washington, but also stalwarts like Najee and Kirk Whalum. Even the Rippingtons are okay in doses, provided you have your insulin pump handy. Whereas Bublé I find a bit ersatz and joyless, even if not as bad as Robbie Williams etc.

[JSngry]

In the 60s, it seems that you would find a good bit of Getz, Wes, and other Creed Taylor/Verve records, as well as the Eddie Harris and Ramsey Lewis Soul Jazz.

So proto-CTI was already in the mix, as was what would be the 70s funk-jazz. 

[Big Beat Steve]

@Rabshakeh:
Yes I would not mind some of the smoother excursions of Turrentine et al. either. There are quite a few instrumentalists out there (though not Kenny G) who are quite palatable as "jazzy background" music. What I strongly object to is all those out there who (particularly during the period that "Smooth Jazz" was all over the place) insisted and went out of their way to mediatize that "Smooth Jazz" now was what "Jazz" (i.e. ALL of jazz) was all about and that "Smooth Jazz" was the savior and future of jazz and whatever ...
Ouch ... Yikes ...
Just like I never felt that "Fusion" (or even Jazz Rock) ever was the beginning and end and future of all jazz at any given moment. They all were/are just ONE substyle among many. These sweeping generalizations cooked up by the media and interested parties (and not so few jazz listeners who all of a sudden felt they were in the epicenter of the action) always grated enormously on me ...

As for Connick and consorts, I still feel their "merit" is that they were/are one way of acquainting a younger generation with a style of jazz (or jazz-influenced) singing that without these "intermediaries" would come across as all too outdated and less accessible to the young'uns.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

Connick often had interesting charts behind him and sang well enough, but his huge popularity was the result of "When Harry Met Sally" and he rode it for as long as he could, which was longer than usual for such things. But was he worth all the oxygen he sucked up? Not to my mind.

But nobody asked me. 😜