What is smooth jazz?

**MarkRhodes** · 03-09-2011, 07:04 PM

Funny stuff. The guy has a sense of humor about himself and his music.

**Dad3353** · 03-09-2011, 07:36 PM

Wayne Shorter turned the job down...

**djangoles** · 03-09-2011, 09:12 PM

Thank you!!!! That was the worst thing I've ever seen....kill me now

**Dark Star** · 03-09-2011, 10:22 PM

That Kenny G vid was pretty funny.

**hot ford coupe** · 03-09-2011, 11:11 PM

I think my computer wasn't doing so well. Unfortunately, the videos streamed for me like a 92 year old man with a prostate problem. I'm going to try again at a different time in case it was a server problem.

I'm not much of a fan of smooth jazz. I'm not a fan of some other styles of jazz too but that's o.k. I'm sort of stuck in the big band/bebop/cool jazz period. After Bitches Brew, I wasn't much of a Miles fan and didn't like a lot of late Coltrane stuff and even some of Wes's really later stuff. (the early music is way cool.) That's o.k. though because everyone has different tastes and likes. Still, I don't call a lot of "smooth jazz" jazz. It's elevator music, Weather Channel music, doctor's office music or whatever you want to call it but it just "ain't" my concept of jazz. (in my dental office, I used to play Brubeck, Barney Kessel, Charlie Parker, Paul Desmond, Chet Baker, Dizzy, Bud Powell and even a bunch of Monk). I remember when I was talking to one patient about some jazz when one of my older dental assistants chimed in and said how she really loved jazz. Then she said and I quote "You have to listen to a piano player called Yanni. He plays great jazz." At the time, I never heard of him. Then I borrowed one of her Yanni CDs figuring I'd give it a shot. I can't exactly say what happened when I listened to that round plastic disc but I know my hair started falling out in clumps, my nose began to run heavily, my eyes burned, my ears started to bleed and I threw up everything I ate for the previous 3 weeks. If that was jazz then I'm Muhammed Ali. Then I came to the conclusion that some "authority" somewhere hypes a bunch of that stuff calling it jazz to unknowing, unsuspecting individuals who've never had any real contact with real jazz in their entire lives and tells them this is great jazz. It's a case of bad info being spread by those concerned with making money and not much else. I played her some classic Charlie Parker and Clifford Brown and she said she didn't like that kind of jazz. She was going to stick with Yanni. I scratched my head, walked away and thought "it's just not worth the effort to educate". Oh well.

**robertm2000** · 03-10-2011, 12:53 PM

A lot of so-called smooth jazz is not much more than people just playing the melody. But how about jazz singing? There doesn't seem to be a lot of room for vocal improvisation - of course, there's Ella, and she's just as much - maybe more than - a jazz musician as any instrumentalist. I like jazz but I also like nicely done instrumental arranging. Like Paul Weston and Robert Farnon, Nelson Riddle, Henry Mancini and such.

There is one musician in that style who I like - a guitarist. His name is Denny Jiosa, dennyjiosa.com. Although he wouldn't count as hard core jazz, his arrangements seem to have a substance beyond much of the so-called elevator music.

**patskywriter** · 03-10-2011, 01:16 PM

Originally Posted by robertm2000

... There is one musician in that style who I like—a guitarist. His name is Denny Jiosa, dennyjiosa.com. Although he wouldn't count as hardcore jazz, his arrangements seem to have a substance beyond much of the so-called elevator music.

thanks. i signed up for the free-tune-a-day email offer. he sounded familiar with the first note—i'm sure i probably heard him or someone just like him on smooth-jazz radio.

let's see … i'll try to list the guitarists i've heard on smooth-jazz radio:

george benson
earl klugh
toninho horta
pat metheny
oscar castro-neves
nick colionne
peter white
lee ritenour
steve laury
ronny jordan
larry carlton
jonathan butler
chet atkins
eric gale
hélio delmiro
john tropea
muriel anderson
phil upchurch
tony rice

if there's more, it might not even matter, LOL! i would think that most of 'the others' would have that faceless smooth-jazz sound, very much like all those soundalike smooth-jazz alto-sax players.

**wolflen** · 03-10-2011, 03:37 PM

Originally Posted by patskywriter

thanks. i signed up for the free-tune-a-day email offer. he sounded familiar with the first note—i'm sure i probably heard him or someone just like him on smooth-jazz radio.

let's see … i'll try to list the guitarists i've heard on smooth-jazz radio:

george benson
earl klugh
toninho horta
pat metheny
oscar castro-neves
nick colionne
peter white
lee ritenour
steve laury
ronny jordan
larry carlton
jonathan butler
chet atkins
eric gale
hélio delmiro
john tropea
muriel anderson
phil upchurch
tony rice

if there's more, it might not even matter, LOL! i would think that most of 'the others' would have that faceless smooth-jazz sound, very much like all those soundalike smooth-jazz alto-sax players.

i have heard eric clapton, john mclaughlin, larry coryell and others on "soft jazz stations...at a point it dosent matter...the lable just melts into mass marketing & playlists...

the other day im shopping at a major supermarket...and they are playing ZZ Top "Legs" as "shopping music"...so when ZZ Top becomes the new "elevator music" what does that say about current trends/marketing..

would we rather hear montovani again..

**Dark Star** · 03-10-2011, 04:17 PM

How about Craig Chaquico?
An aside here- looking through the iTunes store I found Tuck Andress doing Stella By Starlight. It was categorized as "New Age" music. Is that just because he's on Windham Hill?

**patskywriter** · 03-10-2011, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by Dark Star

How about Craig Chaquico?
An aside here- looking through the iTunes store I found Tuck Andress doing Stella By Starlight. It was categorized as "New Age" music. Is that just because he's on Windham Hill?

oh yeah, i forgot about those two! i only know about the evolution of WNUA in chicago, but i do remember that for a while "new age" and "smooth jazz" were almost sort of interchangeable.

when WNUA first hit the airwaves, they started out playing artists who were straddling the jazz/pop border—steely dan, herbie hancock, tôm jobím, weather report, george duke, gato barbieri, etc etc. it was actually pretty hip and i liked it right away.

then, their slogan became "music … for a new age." they started playing a type of music that sounded soulless to my ears— alot of ECM and windham hill stuff. then the phrase "smooth jazz" was coined and certain artists like lee ritenour began to dreck up their music so it would fit the new category. that's when smooth jazz really caught on. suddenly there were artists who fit the category perfectly, marketing-wise, most notably kenny g, who seemed to define the genre. ick.

i remember the ECM-type stuff made way for more poppy artists like phil collins, basia, and lord knows who else. i'm not living in chicago anymore and i heard that WNUA is gone. the straight-ahead jazz stations, WBEZ and WBEE are also gone. (edit: WBEZ isn't gone—they just don't play jazz anymore.) however, here in durham, north carolina, where i live now, we have two jazz stations, WNCU and WSHA. woohoo!

**Jazzpunk** · 03-10-2011, 05:09 PM

Originally Posted by fep

@ newsense

I dig that video. Talent is talent regardless of genre.

Thanks for posting that

I think folks are mainly slammin' the music (which I can understand as everyone's entitled to their opinion), not the talent level of the players involved.

Loeb is a smooth jazzer but I doubt anyone here is going to knock him when he plays like this: