What's Up With Smooth Jazz?


By Wil Forbis

December 1, 2019

I recall the first time I consciously appreciated smooth jazz. It was about a decade ago and I was at the house of a friend with whom I was engaged in a musical project. He had a cable TV music station quietly playing and the tune in the air was akin to background music but not without its charms. It was upbeat and "funky but not too funky" with an approachable melody and sophisticated chords. "What station is this?" I thought to myself, only to look at the television screen and see that the station was titled "Smooth Jazz." "Ghaghhh!" I exclaimed, leaping towards my friend. "You tricked me into enjoying smooth jazz!"

Well, okay, that last part didn't happen. Rather I just raised an eyebrow at the realization that I was, in fact, enjoying a genre of music that I had always considered not so much bad as simply ignorable. Smooth jazz is regarded by most to be the musical equivalent of a Hallmark card: sanguine and syrupy —- earnest enough that you can't hate it but impossible to take seriously.

And that was (and largely still is) my opinion. But that brief moment of enjoyment did make me realize I'd had other positive interactions with this style of music. When I was a teenager with a love for Devo and heavy metal, I heard a tune off a then current George Benson and Earl Klugh album, "Collaboration", and purchased it. Not long after that I picked up Stanley Jordan's "Flying Home", an album that, in hindsight, fell into the smooth jazz category. And when I was 19 I attended the Musicians Institute of Technology for a year and took an enjoyable class from guitarist Norman Brown. While I was in the class, Brown got signed to the Mo-Jazz label and launched a still successful career as a jazz musician who's music would fairly be called smooth.

All these minor events caused me to ask: have I been unfair to smooth jazz? Have I damned it as pablum without giving it a fair shake? Should I not dig beneath the surface?

Thoughtful readers may be asking, "What is smooth jazz anyway?" Or, more pointedly, "what separates smooth jazz from jazz?" Smooth jazz, like regular jazz, is mostly instrumental. Also like standard jazz, it utilizes a lead instrument that plays a main melody as well as numerous improvisations over fairly sophisticated chord progressions. But here the similarities end. Smooth jazz, unlike classic jazz, doesn't swing and instead utilizes funk and pop-orientated grooves. It also limits the adventurousness of its improvisations, keeping them with the realm of what could be called ear-friendly.

When was smooth jazz born? As with all music genres (or any form of art) the answer is debatable. Some would trace smooth jazz back to Wes Montgomery's more commercial albums from the 60s (an allegation that many Montgomery defenders would duel to the death to dispute). I recall seeing a talk show interview with Miles Davis from decades ago where the male host asserted that Davis created smooth jazz with his 1960 album "Sketches of Spain." Miles looked at the guy like he was seriously considering killing him. I tend to agree with many that the song that really made smooth jazz "a thing" was George Benson's* 1976 hit, "Breezin'." It's a tune that sounds like its title: buoyant, casual, and very smooth.


*I've always been curious about how Benson viewed his smooth jazz legacy. Smooth jazz is considered by many to be light on substance, but Benson is well regarded as a "real" jazz guitarist who can play the balls off classic jazz tunes. That said, in the interviews I've read, I've never seen Benson try to disavow or shy away from his title of "king of smooth jazz."

I will put forth the contrarian thought that what prompted the creation of smooth jazz was the arrival of its opposite: the decidedly "un-smooth" music recorded by artists like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy in the 1960s. Albums like Davis' "Bitches Brew", driven by wailing horns and thrashing percussion, intimated that jazz was evolving into something wild, youthful and agitated --- too far-out for sensitive ears. There was, I suspect, a concern that jazz was going to become like experimental classical music: loved by few and loathed by many. Pressure arose, perhaps from label heads and accountants, to rein jazz in and keep it audience friendly. Smooth jazz responded to this need with a sound that accommodated the needs of timid listeners.

The 60s music of Davis, Coltrane et al was heavy with angst. Smooth jazz, it's fair to say, is angst-free. According to most critics and hipsters, this is a major crime. But is this fair? Does all music have to have gravitas? Not every moment of life need be mired in turmoil; shouldn't we have some occasional pleasure? And don't such moments need a soundtrack, one smooth jazz is well suited to provide?

The pushback against that argument is as follows: the modern world is rife with agony and inequality and to seek to ignore this, to pursue pleasant moments, is to be willfully blind. As the saying goes, if you're not mad you're not paying attention. Music should, according to certain social critics, awaken us to injustice, not allow us to slumber.

It doesn't help matters that smooth jazz is associated with the upper class. It's the music of golf courses and cruise ships and has never been performed in a venue where the bartender couldn't recommend a good Cabernet. Additionally, smooth jazz is also music for adults (even middle aged adults) a group long at odd with the arbiters of cool.

There's one guy in particular who has come to represent all the evils of smooth jazz: Kenny G. The saxophone player has sold over almost 50 million albums since the mid-80s but it's almost impossible to find anyone who will admit to owning them. His music, for many, has come to epitomize the worst aspects of smooth jazz - the lightness, the triteness and the lack of adventure. In another genre like pop or folk, Kenny G might have attracted less notice. But, being that his music is labeled jazz (albeit smooth), it is held up to a certain standard by his fellow jazz musicians. Kenny's greatest misstep was to record himself playing over jazz master Louis Armstrong's classic "What a Wonderful World" which earned the following condemnation from jazz guitarist Pat Methany:

"But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician."

Whew. Tell us what you really think Pat.

This illustrates an interesting and somewhat surprising aspect of smooth jazz: despite being essentially background music, it still manages to inspire great animosity from of certain people. This is because all music and musical decisions (like deciding to record on the pre-existing track of an established musician) can be viewed in a political context. The music can be interpreted to be making a certain statement and there's always someone who will object to that statement.

Me? I just think it sounds nice.

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