When did smooth jazz start?

Well there's two kinds of jazz improvisation and there may be more but for brevity I'll outline two. There's the brief noodling around Bebop style colorization usually after the first bridge with smooth jazz. Think of Vince Guaraldi's Linus & Lucy where Vince breaks into a short and sweet note bending, honky tonk Floyd Cramer blues style with a staccato like syncopated Bebop rhythm. Just that description alone tells you its attention grabbing intent. It's fun and interesting and brief.

As opposed to the lengthy chain of conscious soul searching and wildly impulsive outbursts of a string of discordant notes with varying lengths of silent pauses from the likes of Coltrane and Charlie Parker where the listener doesn't no where it's going and is along for the ride.

 

Like I said, a lot of smooth jazz sounds like imitation Steely Dan to me, like these guys heard Aja and said, "Hey, I/we can do that!!" (and in the interest of full disclosure I can say guilty as charged on that score; the Dan are a big influence on my own music)... but I'd rather listen to the real thing (or my own). Funny that a Steely Dan stalwart like Larry Carlton was in Fourplay.

 

And here we go with an example . . . . . . .

 

Some of the players on Aja had already done proto-smooth music in bands like the Crusaders, L.A. Express and Stuff, but yes, Steely Dan was an influence. Kind of wish they had been more of an influence on some smooth albums I've heard.

 

Yeah...the Dan, even instrumentally, still have an 'edge' to their music most of the actual smooth jazz genre lacks.

 

It makes sense, hmm, then perhaps it should be renamed Smooth Fusion

 

yes, they would go here.

 

Smoosion.

 

I agree. However, as I said in the my previous response you quoted, Weather Report pointed the way on how to integrate those cultural styles and influences into creating original compositions (didn't play Jazz standards) that others either were inspired to follow or outright copied their sound that resulted in coming across as smooth jazz.

I think every pop musician on the planet took note of the commercial success of "Birdland" especially since it didn't have a commercial sound. Even the intro sounded strange. I was asking what the heck the instrument they were playing. There was no other pop artist or jazz group that sounded like them.

I remember while I was in high school band reading about them back in the '70's where it indicated a lot of the top 40 hit artists back then listened to Weather Report to get ideas. They were termed the musician's musician.

 

Why start there? American jazz wrists recorded both "with strings" albums and bossa albums prior to Getz. The Getz albums cited sound nothing like smooth jazz.

 

My vote is for "Smewth Fusion" (pronounced SmYOOth)

 

Interesting to see how many times Jazz that SOUNDS smooth (Stan Getz) has incorrectly been called smooth jazz. Also seeing hardcore Fusion (Weather Report) bands incorrectly being called smooth jazz makes me shake my head in wonder. The original question asked was 'when did SJ begin?'. Can't answer that unless we can agree WHAT exactly it is! BTW, the question's been pretty much answered here but as I've mentioned before, the facts seem to get buried by the opinions!

 

What is "hardcore" fusion anyway? There's all kinds of musical fusion. Weather Report wasn't really jazz/rock. They were never one thing because the band constantly evolved.

 

I understand what yr saying, and I'm not trying to argue here, but Weather Report, regardless of the complex nuances of their music, will now and 4ever be recognized as not only A Fusion Band, but one of the all-time GREAT Fusion bands!

 

I just think of them as a great jazz group. They get tagged as fusion because they were active in the 70s, and they used synths. And they were never one definitive band. Every other year the rhythm section changed. Sometimes every year.

Some smooth jazz can be engaging if the musicians are talented like Marcus Miller, or Grover Washington. But the Kenny G stuff doesn't do it for me.

 

Don't know where you got the idea to associate a style of jazz termed fusion to a certain time in the '70's and its use of synths.

Fusion from its very name says what it is...fusing culturally sourced musical styles defined by the uniqueness of the sounds of their instruments both percussive and harmonically built on top of the improvisational framework of composing on the spot that is jazz both with custom arrangement of songs and style of playing those instruments within the jazz motif.

It's knowing the difference between the terms "orchestrated" vs "improvised".

An orchestra (orchestrated) is music that is strictly controlled by a composer writing sheet music so a large group of musicians can play familiar and traditional sounding instruments all at the same time and always the same way over and over. It will always sound the same with every performance.

Jazz and jazz fusion is the opposite of that. It is musical freedom that is inclusive to all cultural influences from around the world not just Vienna or Italy (the source of orchestrated classical music).

Jazz and Jazz fusion will always have its own unique fingerprint that comes from expressing one's self freely. There's no mistaking it from any other sound on the planet.

Smooth Jazz has the sound of homogenized freedom.

 

Yeah, I know the difference. I know when the band is playing a written part verses somebody soloing or a group improv. I just don't need the labels. But I have no idea what "homogenized freedom" is.

 

Homogenize: definition..."make uniform or similar", "Standardize". Smooth Jazz has an unmistakable commercial sound that attempts to appeal to a broader audience. You know I'm making all this up, right?

A little fact in reference to freedom and those yearning for it but Weather Report's founder Joe Zawinul was a former Nazi youth classical Vienna pianist who was forbidden by Nazi regime officials to play or study Jazz (a favorite of Joe's) at a Vienna music conservatory. He escaped Vienna just around the time it was being bombed and immigrated to the US and soon took up Jazz. Years later he ended up as part of Miles Davis quartet in the '60's and later went out on his own to start Weather Report.

Pretty good UK documentary on him...

 

You've touched on something that, while completely unrelated to the thread topic, I
think is a phenomenon worth mentioning. Of course we all know how music often conveys the emotional state of the artist. There have been very few instances in my life, where the joy of newly-found freedom from an oppressive dictatorship is heard in the music. There used to be a supergroup in Cuba called Irakere. The founding members are Latin Jazz superstars Chucho Valdes, Arturo Sandoval, and Paquito D'Rivera. D'Rivera & Sandoval defected from Cuba (years apart) and lemmetellya, there's such an exhilaration and joy to be heard on their 1st releases after they defected (D'Rivera- Blowing, Sandoval - Flight To Freedom). To me, it's always sounded like the joy of being free! In all the 1000's of recordings I own I only have a handful of records where I feel this!

 

It obviously started in 1931.

 

I agree with you on this point even though that is not the reason behind my comment about freedom of expression and what it sounds like. Besides I skipped forward in that Zawinul documentary where he points out all the US jazz greats he began working with as a pianist told him his sound behind his style of playing wasn't conducive to jazz and told him he had the talent to do better. Remember Zawinul was a composer and wrote quite a few of the jazz standards of that era.

So to change his style of playing Joe dropped acid and it changed his whole POV about life and his style of playing. He did compose "In A Silent Way" afterward.

 

Composing is a form of improvisation. Jazz soloists compose on top of the composition. Even the way an original composition is interpreted through different styles and attitudes of the era in performance and arrangements demonstrates another way to show freedom of expression.

I found an example of this yesterday with two different interpretations of "Cherokee", by the same musician but years apart...First interpretation...


Second interpretation...1964 to show times, they are a changing...

Cherokee-Harry James & Buddy Rich 1964

Which one do you prefer? Time has a way of changing people's minds when they play the same song. They're like two different songs.

 

I like some smooth jazz. And I also like some new age music as well. But I also like genres that are more sophisticated or more aggressive.
Sometimes I like something soothing or reflective and sometimes.....not.