Should Bob James, David Benoit, etc., be in jazz guides and syllabuses?

[Brad]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

Really I am just interested in your views.

The likes of Dave Koz, Chris Botti, latter day Bob James or David Benoit are central to what a large part of the listening public has liked about jazz for decades. Commercial and popular easy jazz; some good tunes, emotional when needed, yearly Christmas releases, good for driving to, etc. This stuff is and remains very popular. It is not really the kind of thing that the forum members enjoy, though. 

I'm interested to know whether the members of this forum think these artists and their ilk should be held out as important jazz artists that kids and uninformed first time listeners should be encouraged to go and track down? Should they get a chapter in a notional new version of Ted Gioia's book, or an episode in the even more notional enlarged Ken Burns documentary?

Sorry. Idle Monday morning thought. 

Simply, no. 

[JSngry]

Teach people to play.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

At the risk of getting a bunch of shit for this, I'm still going to say it... if the stuff free-blowing players like Brötzmann play is "Jazz", then why shouldn't the stuff smooth players play be labeled similarly? Because let's be honest with ourselves - Smooth Jazz is a lot closer to Jazz than a lot of the really out stuff being labeled as such.

I used to think I knew what Jazz was. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago.

One of the albums that turned my head was The Bad Plus' "These Are The Vistas" with their cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". If Jazz can include covers of grunge metal, anything goes, right?

[HutchFan]

1 minute ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

At the risk of getting a bunch of shit for this, I'm still going to say it... if the stuff free-blowing players like Brötzmann play is "Jazz", then why shouldn't the stuff smooth players play be labeled similarly? Because let's be honest with ourselves - Smooth Jazz is a lot closer to Jazz than a lot of the really out stuff being labeled as such.

I used to think I knew what Jazz was. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago.

One of the albums that turned my head was The Bad Plus' "These Are The Vistas" with their cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". If Jazz can include covers of grunge metal, anything goes, right?

You'll get no guff from me on that.

 

[ghost of miles]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

I think that I have mentioned before, but I wouldn't be at all surprised is Smooth Jazz becomes an area of interest at some point in the near future. It is a genre that is uncool at least partly due to association with the Gorlitz machine. We've all watched as soul jazz and 70s spiritual jazz emerged from the ashes to become extremely hip. 

What form such a revival would take is unknown to me, partly because I think Smooth Jazz is a bit of an umbrella genre and also because I'm definitely of the Gorlitz-scarred generation. I suspect that the music is much better handled as singles than albums (despite being an album led genre) and some enterprising Brooklyn record label will put together a good comp at some point. 

I think such a revival has already been bubbling for the past few years--Concord now markets some of its new jazz releases as smooth jazz. You could even go all the way back to the 2012 release of Robert Glasper's Black Radio album as a starting point. 

[clifford_thornton]

37 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

At the risk of getting a bunch of shit for this, I'm still going to say it... if the stuff free-blowing players like Brötzmann play is "Jazz", then why shouldn't the stuff smooth players play be labeled similarly? Because let's be honest with ourselves - Smooth Jazz is a lot closer to Jazz than a lot of the really out stuff being labeled as such.

I used to think I knew what Jazz was. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago.

One of the albums that turned my head was The Bad Plus' "These Are The Vistas" with their cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit". If Jazz can include covers of grunge metal, anything goes, right?

I would agree.

[JSngry]

All of this is (even more) academic masturbation  Learning about sound just by reading about it? Seriously?  That's not teaching, that's preaching. And of course, here comes the collection plate 

We've had harm enough already.

[JSngry]

There's at least a week or two or more of good lessons in connecting dots from something like this:

But this is about sounds (plurals) not reading words 

[HutchFan]

13 minutes ago, JSngry said:

All of this is (even more) academic masturbation  Learning about sound just by reading about it? Seriously?  That's not teaching, that's preaching. And of course, here comes the collection plate 

We've had harm enough already.

I strongly disagree.  I think the premise of this thread is an interesting, worthy topic of discussion. 

Plenty of books have influenced my listening -- if only by pointing out music that's worth exploring. 

Incidentally, this forum serves the exact same function, and making a recommendation is precisely what you've just done above.  Does that qualify as "masturbation"?  I don't think it does.

 

[JSngry]

Yes it does.

[T.D.]

Long ago (late '80s-early '90s), I occasionally listened to a "Smooth Jazz" radio station, CD101.9 in NYC. Worked as background music.

I got the impression that "Smooth Jazz" as a genre has been pretty much absorbed into the broader genre of "Adult Contemporary". Not sure what AC exactly is, though...seems to have overtones of background/bedroom music.

I can see a book chapter or section on smooth jazz. I'd actually be interested (to a degree) in its history and development.

Edited 19 hours ago by T.D.

[JSngry]

5 minutes ago, T.D. said:

I can see a book chapter or section on smooth jazz. I'd actually be interested (to a degree) in its history and development.

How far back do you want to go?

There's a lot of dots to be connected. There will be R&B, cultural studies, record industry profiles, and oh by the way, jazz.

Yours Truly,

Dr. Hankly Wankerston

 

 

[Rabshakeh]

Or a seminar or podcast or teaching session or whatever. The point is do you direct people to it or not. And not the roots (which I think we all agree on); the fruit. Commercial jazzes 1977 - 1993 or whatever. 

Edited 18 hours ago by Rabshakeh

[JSngry]

I don't think we all do agree on the roots and therefore not the fruits.

Hell, I don't think there's agreement on why it was popular, because there was not a single "type"  of fan, just as there was not one single type of product 

[T.D.]

49 minutes ago, JSngry said:

How far back do you want to go?

There's a lot of dots to be connected. There will be R&B, cultural studies, record industry profiles, and oh by the way, jazz.

Yours Truly,

Dr. Hankly Wankerston

 

 

Hey, I'm warmed up. I spend time on a cryptic crossword forum that has competitions to write cryptic clues for a given word.

Today's word was TAEKWONDO and I managed to work in WANKED [Wanked too vigorously for kicks (9)] before seeing this thread.

[Kevin Bresnahan]

2 hours ago, T.D. said:

Long ago (late '80s-early '90s), I occasionally listened to a "Smooth Jazz" radio station, CD101.9 in NYC. Worked as background music.

I got the impression that "Smooth Jazz" as a genre has been pretty much absorbed into the broader genre of "Adult Contemporary". Not sure what AC exactly is, though...seems to have overtones of background/bedroom music.

I can see a book chapter or section on smooth jazz. I'd actually be interested (to a degree) in its history and development.

Here's one of my early favorite "Smooth Jazz" dates.

[Dub Modal]

5 hours ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Here's one of my early favorite "Smooth Jazz" dates.

[Ken Dryden]

Several memorable groups recorded for Windham Hill Jazz, the Denny Zeitlin Trio and Turtle Island String Quartet both come to mind. 

But I've yet to hear any smooth jazz that held my interest, especially Bob James and Kenny G.

[Dub Modal]

12 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

whether the members of this forum think these artists and their ilk should be held out as important jazz artists that kids and uninformed first time listeners should be encouraged to go and track down?

After watching that Sun Ra documentary I'm going to give a hard "nah." Too many other artists out there like Ra that have fascinating stories and deserve to have more coverage and discussion. Maybe if there was more public control of the airwaves here we'd get stuff like that but that's a lament for elsewhere. Just seems like a waste of folks' time covering ground on smooth jazz at this point. 

If they are included, then more interesting to me would be discussion of the labels and corporate interests involved. Along with the origin of the genre name, what ROI were these producers expecting? Why were these artists attracted to it? Maybe there's a story there, because the whole thing seems more like a business venture than an artistic pursuit. Not trying to blame the artists here because I don't know their intentions, etc. But smooth jazz has to be the top revenue earner over other jazz genres right? And it seems like it's been that way for decades now. Maybe I'm wrong about that but they have the most cruises and air play. 

Here's a David Benoit soundcheck from 2012. Those drums might grab you but those melodies? It's more like "soft funk" to me but that label won't move product. 

 

 

[JSngry]

Before there was "smooth jazz" there was "quiet storm", which was to me a genre that was created (initially) after the music had happened rather than vice-versa.

Who among us does not like us some prime Anita Baker?

Or...

 

[Rabshakeh]

4 hours ago, Dub Modal said:

If they are included, then more interesting to me would be discussion of the labels and corporate interests involved. Along with the origin of the genre name, what ROI were these producers expecting? Why were these artists attracted to it? Maybe there's a story there, because the whole thing seems more like a business venture than an artistic pursuit. Not trying to blame the artists here because I don't know their intentions, etc. But smooth jazz has to be the top revenue earner over other jazz genres right? And it seems like it's been that way for decades now. Maybe I'm wrong about that but they have the most cruises and air play. 

This Onion article from back in the day is a classic:

https://theonion.com/no-one-sets-out-to-be-a-smooth-jazz-musician-1819584390/

 

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Before there was "smooth jazz" there was "quiet storm", which was to me a genre that was created (initially) after the music had happened rather than vice-versa.

Who among us does not like us some prime Anita Baker?

Or...

 

I think that the most authentically interesting about smooth jazz proper is the intersection with the contemporary trends in "urban contemporary" R&B. 

From a British point of view, the likes of Incognito and Sade of some sort might have been the last time that jazz of some sort was in the charts. 

I'm always amazed at the love for Incognito (who I never really enjoyed) among both listeners of a certain age and also younger musicians. Every Incognito fan I have ever met regards himself or herself as a "jazz" fan. Sade is obviously having a big comeback at the moment among younger listeners, although that is perhaps more ambiguous in its relation to jazz. 

I was also interested to find out that the Fast Show's Jazz Club sketch ("Niiiiice!") which at the time I regarded as such an attack on jazz, was in fact intended by Johnny Thomson, who regarded himself as a big jazz fan, as some sort of purificatory distancing from the excesses of critically acclaimed jazz. His own music picks can be found here, and are clearly Fuzak-aligned: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/nov/11/john-thomson-london-jazz-festival-fast-show-cold-feet

Edited 6 hours ago by Rabshakeh

[Big Beat Steve]

19 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Really I am just interested in your views.

The likes of Dave Koz, Chris Botti, latter day Bob James or David Benoit are central to what a large part of the listening public has liked about jazz for decades. Commercial and popular easy jazz; some good tunes, emotional when needed, yearly Christmas releases, good for driving to, etc. This stuff is and remains very popular. It is not really the kind of thing that the forum members enjoy, though. 

I'm interested to know whether the members of this forum think these artists and their ilk should be held out as important jazz artists that kids and uninformed first time listeners should be encouraged to go and track down? Should they get a chapter in a notional new version of Ted Gioia's book, or an episode in the even more notional enlarged Ken Burns documentary?

Sorry. Idle Monday morning thought. 

Rather an animated discussion in such a brief span of time, so you touched on a subject that either is a bone of contention to many or a log-felt oversight to others. 

Personally I'd side with the basic statements made by Dan Gould, Niko and Kevin Bresnahan further up in this thread about how things ought to be weighted when the WIDE field of jazz is discussed. But OTOH I have to admit that while I'd never add anything typically "smooth jazz" to my collection there are such recordings out here that when listening to them accidentally you sort of get at least a "jazzish" vibe that is not off-putting. And besides, aren't the limits of this "smooth" genre rather fluid? I'd wager a bet that some of the MUCH more commercial efforts from the output of Wes Montgomery or George Benson, to name just two, would not be a million miles away from what is commonly labeled "smooth jazz" elsewhere. As can be seen from the track listings on many compilation "smooth" or "lounge" or "for lovers", etc. jazz CDs  that have been thrown on the market since the 90s.

An inevitable trend, of course, in all this is that once such a genre on the outskirts of straight-ahead jazz is admitted into "jazz" then there will be many who claim this now is what jazz is all about and what all jazz fans will have to embrace in order to be with it and this is where all the marketing clout goes under the flag of "jazz". Happened with jazz rock and then fusion in the 70s, etc. And of course this does not sit well with many. Rightly so. 
Not to mention that there has been quite a lot of music during recent decades that tried to sail under the banner of "jazz" because "jazz" always had a "hip" enough marketable image to it but all that seemed to have been "jazz" about that music was that it audibly was neither rock nor pop nor Black Music nor folk/ethno. So what remains as a tag to paste on? Jazz. For what good? To ACTUAL jazz and to jazz listeners, in particular?

So IMO in the end it all depends on how you emphasize a "borderline" subcategory such as "smooth jazz" vs outright "straight-ahead" jazz in the overall presentation. And this is where I think many jazz listeners, fans and collectors willl sternly disagree in accordance with their personal preferences and preconceptions of what is jazz and what isn't. It seems to depend on what kind and degree of "crossover" (which means "dilution" of jazz to hardcore jazz followers anyway) you are prepared to accept. 
I remember the outcries or horror by many purists when Neo-Swing was all the rage througout the 90s (before abating to a trickle that goes on to this day but is under the radar of most). Visibly this kind of "crossover" cross-pollination of swing-era jazz, R&B and lounge pop with various styles of rock (from rockabilly to punk) did not sit well with many. Though Neo-Swing never claimed to be what "jazz is all about now" (contrary to jazz rock and fusion way back then ...). I always found and still find quite a bit of it enjoyable and entertaining WITHIN my jazz listening (when the time is right ...), contrary to all that fusion stuff, for example. 

In short, different strokes . .. and a debate that probably can never be settled to everyone's satisfaction.

[Dub Modal]

4 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

This Onion article from back in the day is a classic:

https://theonion.com/no-one-sets-out-to-be-a-smooth-jazz-musician-1819584390/

😆 Mel Jablonski lol

[JSngry]

I can like Incognito, and have definitely enjoyed Bluey's remixesm but I've never really thought of them as "jazz".

That's just good pop music, full of hooks and Easter eggs , and yes, there were dance clubs in 1975 (and later) where this was the groove, and people called it "jazz" . But you know.. 

[Rabshakeh]

1 hour ago, Dub Modal said:

😆 Mel Jablonski lol

It is full of zingers.