Using the criteria presented at Wikipedia – Smooth_jazz, along with your own definition and/or examples, try to identify your favorite Top Ten examples (with YouTube (or other) links) of the genre, either specific recordings or artists who specialize in the category.
Also, how do you rank Smooth Jazz among your favorite types of music.
Do you have a favorite radio station for listening to Smooth Jazz?
IIRC, the San Francisco area pretty well abandoned the auditory form of Comic Sans a few years ago when KKSF changed formats.
It was a popular staple in the satellite-generic radio station market. May still be.
David Benoit and Acoustic Alchemy are two names that jump up in my mind.
For a more pop version, Kenny G?
I prefer more of a fusion sound for my Jazz.
Well, shucks. I should have read your wiki link, avoided redundancy.
At the risk of thread-shitting: “Kenny G is not jazz. He is the Anti-jazz.”
Very nice! Thanks.
Agreed! Best to get that out of the way right up front.
I don’t care for or against him. As background music for an art exhibit with wine and cheese tasting, he’s okay. For actual listening, Kirk Whalum isn’t a bad choice. I’m sure he probably counts as Smooth Jazz.
I used to like Dave Benoit and Fourplay. Lee Ritenour would be in the same category. I think Acoustic Alchemy is usually in the “New Age” section at the music store, along with Ottmar Liebert. I don’t listen to any of them now, other than Benoit’s Christmas album, which is very good.
Yeah! Lots of crossover is what I recall. New Age, Fusion, etc…
Even sounds like Enya and Basia get mixed in in my head.
Would all the “Magic 104 FM” radio stations of the 80s- 90s count?
Houston had KMGQ or KMJQ
Smooth Jazz is indeed too broad (and thus almost meaningless) as a category. But there are very few categories that either don’t overlap with other named genres or sub-genres, or are so specific that they only include a very few example participants.
On top of that, at least in my own evaluation, almost every good Smooth Jazz musician or group has plenty of Non-Smooth recordings to keep from beiong pigeon-holed as Just Smooth.
That’s the main point of this thread: to try to identify those sounds that people actually like hearing in spite of the vague label to the music.
My best example would be George Shearing and his various “bags” over time. I’ve been a fan as long as I can remember and have accepted the various flavors his music took on.
To sort of add to the pile-on…
You might wanna try cool jazz instead. It’s what smooth jazz wishes/tries/pretends to be.
Here are two classic (and very accessible) cool jazz tracks to get you started
I remember a local FM radio station during the 80s that played orchestral stuff that might have been considered “easy listening” or “orchestral pop” or “beautiful music”. I’m not sure where the line between such music and smooth jazz would go, but for one thing (at least judging by the Wikipedia article) smooth jazz tends to feature solo performers.
The only album I remember clearly was Bob James/David Sanborn, with this pretty song “Maputo” on it. A college friend had it so it would have been later 80s.
Sticking strictly within the confines of smooth jazz, maybe Candy Dulfer and Dave Stewart’s “Lily Was Here”? Smooth jazz drives me crazy, but that song, for whatever reason, I can actually enjoy.
For a partial list of those musicians who may be (at times anyway) in the Smooth Jazz camp see List of smooth jazz musicians
If you have some favorites in that list please say so, if you will.
I would quarrel with the inclusion of at least three of the trumpet players on that list.
An approximate top 10 would be:
David Sanborn
Stanley Turrentine
Grover Washington Jr.
Pat Metheny
Lee Ritenour
David Benoit
Bob James
Herb Alpert
Chuck Mangione
Spyro Gyra
I generally prefer their earlier albums.
I rank smooth jazz below popular, classical, folk, trad jazz, fusion, and prog music, and rank it above metal, hip-hop, industrial, dance, disco, polka, march, kenny g and country.
I wouldn’t classify the Marsalis clan or Astrud Gilberto as smooth jazz though bossa nova can be considered a precursor.