Smooth Jazz

[tru blu]

Well, I've written this on the forum before, but the dirty little secret about most of the "smooth jazz" cats is that they're all topshelf musicians…they just choose to keep it schmoove. Has to do with commerce. When I'm in a smooth kinda mood, though, I'd still prefer listening to John Coltrane's Ballads, Coleman Hawkins' At Ease With…, Lucky Thompson's Lucky Strikes, Stan Getz's Voyage, Serenity, Anniversary! or Bossas and Ballads: The Lost Sessions, maybe Joe Henderson's So Near, So Far, which is Miles Davis tunes.

 

[Spyro]

Quote:

Originally Posted by tru blu /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, I've written this on the forum before, but the dirty little secret about most of the "smooth jazz" cats is that they're all topshelf musicians…they just choose to keep it schmoove. Has to do with commerce. When I'm in a smooth kinda mood, though, I'd still prefer listening to John Coltrane's Ballads, Coleman Hawkins' At Ease With…, Lucky Thompson's Lucky Strikes, Stan Getz's Voyage, Serenity, Anniversary! or Bossas and Ballads: The Lost Sessions, maybe Joe Henderson's So Near, So Far, which is Miles Davis tunes.

Yes, of course. Most all of them most likely studied jazz in college at Boston Berklee or some other noteworthy music school and started as session musicians playing "straight ahead".

The other thing to note about jazz musicians as they are always very comfortable playing in a rock setting but most rock musicians become lost quite quickly in a jazz setting, but with all the programming in smooth jazz THAT transition shouldn't be too difficult. And again, that's how I draw a key distinction between smooth and contemp....the amount of electronic programming versus the use of live musicians.