Penny Lane's revelatory documentary Listening to Kenny G, one of the Music Box docs on HBO, has lots of folks talking about smooth jazz again — more than a decade after this Nothing More Than a Radio Format died a mostly-well-deserved death. Lane, prankster extraordinaire, took a man who had become a symbol of uncool and held him up to the light, demonstrating that he understands the Kenny G jokes but has been laughing all the way to the bank for decades. His critics — and I am the one in the film who called his music the equivalent of masturbation — might seem comparatively petty, schoolmarmish, the musical "East Coast Elite."
But, brilliantly, Lane also catches Kenny G proving his critics right. He is hardworking, yes, but unaware of the history of his art. He's in on the jokes, OK, but not in on the privilege of his whiteness. And how about his ego? This is a guy who relentlessly practices but more relentlessly boasts: about how good he sounds playing the same old licks, about the Oscars he is sure he will win if he does a film score, about how people will confuse him with Brahms if he makes a classical album, then about his apple pie technique, and then even about how white he gets his golf pants in doing his own laundry. Yes, how white he gets them.
But I'm not here to make additional uncomfortable faces as "Songbird" plays for the umpteenth time. I'm here to confess that... I like smooth jazz! And you should too. Maybe not Kenny G's tepid version of the genre, however. Despite his boasts at having invented smooth jazz, he nabbed his Quiet Storm Saxophone Smoothosity from other, better players who were making slick but substantive music before he had grown out his famous curls. The only thing Kenny added to the formula was that cringeworthy hair style.
So, folks, follow this Kenny G skeptic into the world of hip smooth jazz: the good stuff. It's still chill, it's still full of pretty melodies, but the voices at the center of it are genuinely soulful and haven't been robotically pieced together in the studio. It doesn't feature digital recreations of great jazz playing; it is great jazz playing. Just, you know, smoother.
Why Smooth Jazz Has Value Beyond Mere Mood Music
In Listening to Kenny G, some humor comes from the fact that people openly describe the G Force's tunes as music for lovemaking. Critic Ben Ratliff contemplates this for what is a good 30 seconds and finally, stretching himself, admits such a thing is possible. G himself, well, he considers it an honor to be in the room when baby-makin' is takin' place.
Me? I lean more toward Al Green or Miles Davis for procreative inspiration. But what I like about smooth jazz is less that it puts me in the mood — or even just sets a mood — than that it can be legitimately soulful. When the genre works, it combines jazz sophistication with a slippery-slick groove.
What does that mean? The godfather of smooth jazz is, really, Ray Charles. Brother Ray started out emulating jazz pianist (and singer) Nat "King" Cole: he loved the slick indirection of jazz harmony and phrasing, but then he became Ray Freaking Charles when he married jazz intelligence to a sanctified groove that came from gospel and blues — which were, after all, sources for jazz to begin with. Ray may have had a raspy voice and down-home attack, but he understood that to communicate to an audience, his music had to be smooth too. So Ray, at his best, did both. Listen to just about any Ray Charles performance and you will hear the DNA of Black American music in a pure form packaged with pop gleam. Move that forward a quarter century and you have Whitney Houston. Slick? Of course. Soulful? Yes, that too.
The weak-tea smooth jazz — and there is plenty of it, particularly after 1990 — is all Tootsie Pop, all candy coating with no soul in the center. You know what you get if Perry Como takes the vocal on a Ray Charles arrangement? It's not soul music.
The best smooth jazz is a Ray Charles album of some kind. Which doesn't mean that white folks haven't played the style well. But it means that, when it's good, smooth jazz has some meat on its bones, a voice with integrity, a connection to making art and telling a story, not just moving units.
Here, then, are ten examples of smooth jazz at its best. Am I surprised that so much on the list dates from before 1980? Not really. The creeping market forces that ultimately created Kenny G, along with the general "sound" of pop music in the '80s decade, were not friendly to jazz. (That is also the decade when a young Wynton Marsalis made his mark, triggering a return in the jazz world to acoustic bands that were indebted to pre-rock jazz styles.)
Still, this list will give you plenty of soothing chill. It just won't neglect your soul and your brain at the same time.
10. John Klemmer, Barefoot Ballet (1976)
In a sense, John Klemmer is the guy Kenny G should have been emulating, since he essentially hit on the G Force formula about a decade before G did. The formula on this album and its 1975 predecessor, Touch, is a gentle and melodic saxophone sound blended with a buoyant, beautiful rhythm section. What's the difference? First, there is Klemmer's own talent, which has a depth and weight that balances the feathery tone that he uses on these dates — not to mention his early use of the Echoplex effect to make his horn sound even more ethereal. Klemmer had already played with jazz heavies like Oliver Nelson and Don Ellis, plus he was playing with rock artists and developing an approach with a harder edge. His style as an improviser was unabashedly in the Coltrane mode, with sweeping "sheets of sound" and an aggressive approach. So, as he went "smooth" in the mid-'70s, there was more behind it than just an urge to soothe.
Second, Klemmer's band for Barefoot is legit: Dave Grusin, the future label king of GRP Records and soundtrack composer, is playing nice Fender Rhodes lines, and the trio of guitarist Larry Carlton (of The Crusaders, Steely Dan), drummer John Guerin (Joni Mitchell's "Hejira" is about him, plus he played with Zappa, The Byrds, Sinatra, the list goes on) and bassist Chuck Domanico were essentially the rhythm section in L.A. during that decade. While they lay down lovely textures for Klemmer's gorgeous explorations, they are doing with artful humanity: no click tracks, no freezing cold digital emulation, no "punching in" slightly better notes with a modern editing board.
9. Earl Klugh and Bob James, One on One (1979)
These guys — an acoustic guitarist who idolized Chet Atkins (and appeared on television's Hee-Haw with him as a kid) and a jazz pianist with a knack for melody — made several incredibly pleasant records together over the years. What could be slicker than the bell-like, chiming Rhodes piano of James (as famously featured on "Angela", better known as the theme song for the TV show Taxi) and a finger-picking guitar style that amounts to James Taylor serenading some pretty girls around a campfire but with slick, funky grooves making it actually sexy?
This was the first and best, the most charming, of the Klugh/James collaborations. All of them (Cool from 1992 is nice, Two of a Kind from 1982 is more snoozy) showed a brilliant knack for creating an ensemble sound a bit like what George Shearing used to achieve with piano, vibes, and electric guitar. Here, despite some gentle string sweetening, the star is the way that James mixes acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes electric piano, flute-y synths, and the crunchy bite of Klugh's acoustic guitar.
On "Kari," you might not notice James' tasteful string arrangement because the real joy is in how Klugh's plucked guitar contrasts with that bell-like electric piano. And when James layers in acoustic piano as well, it's all that much more a confection. Probably the best track is "Winding River," a smart multi-part composition that is similar to some of the cool piano/guitar work that would emerge from the Pat Metheny Band in the coming decade.
8. Pat Metheny, Pat Metheny Group (1978)
If you think jazz critics don't like Kenny G... well, even we found it a bit tough to read aloud on camera the screed penned by Metheny after the infamous Kenny G/Louis Armstrong "collaboration" on "What a Wonderful World." Here's the truth: Pat's music was often quite smooth. But I mean that in a good way. After he teamed up with keyboard-cousin Lyle Mays, a group was born that would make 13 albums across four decades. Synthesizers, strings, grooving rhythms, pretty melodies — all the possible pitfalls of the Smooth-iverse can be found in these records. Chief among these gorgeous but slick things is Metheny's own distinctive guitar tone, lightly chorused and singing to the back of the arena.
Metheny's is the best kind of smooth jazz. The tunes, while perfectly pleasing to the ear (dramatic like film music, mood-inducing, memorable) work as good fodder for improvising. Metheny has a knack for constructing harmonic progressions and themes that inspire good improvisors to take off in interesting directions. And his music is rare in jazz in that it really is written to demonstrate the beauty of the guitar. So many jazz guitarists seem to want to be saxophonists, playing single-note lines with dexterity. But when you hear the opening lick to "Phase Dance", well, that is guitar music. Smooth as it all is, Metheny's music comes from a kid who started playing rock in Kansas. That origin comes through.
The PMG would keep evolving over time (adding wordless vocals, percussion, trumpet, guitar synth), and almost any of the band's albums could sit on this list. But this is the first one - the one that set the template. Maybe Offramp (1982) would be my second choice, with its indelible melody "James" being heard for the first time. But you're invited to dig any and all of this music. Metheny hates Kenny G's music? Great, cool, whatever. And Pat is also G's antidote: proving that smooth jazz can also be a filling meal.
7. Bob James and David Sanborn, Double Vision (1986)
The very year that Kenny G's breakout album (Duotones - yeah, the one with "Songbird") arrived, our buddy Bob James put out a recording 50 times better, featuring a saxophonist whose style, tone, and commitment to artistry swamps that of the G Force. David Sanborn's sound on alto is so distinctive that just about everyone adores it, even if they don't know that they know it. You know David Bowie's song "Young American"? That's Sanborn crushing the horn. When he was only 14, he was playing with blues legends Albert King and Little Milton — and he joined the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1967, which is how he happened to make an appearance, two years later, at a gig we all call "Woodstock." Elton John, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, James Brown — they all hired him. Ever see the movie Lethal Weapon? That's Sanborn on the theme, along with Eric Clapton. That whiskey-soaked cry he gets and the killer phrasing? Yow.
Double Vision is something of a soul concerto that Bob James constructed for Sanborn's sound. The band is the cream of New York players from that era: bassist Marcus Miller (he was playing with Miles Davis at the time), drummer Steve Gadd (famous for playing on Steely Dan's "Aja" and Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover"), percussionist Paulinho da Costa, and James on keys. The first two tracks are slinky Miller tunes custom-made for Sanborn's sound; two are by the co-leaders of the date; and two are standards: "Since I Fell for You" and the country song made famous by Ray Charles, "You Don't Know Me". All you have to do is listen to the first tune, "Maputo", to understand what "Songbird" so utterly lacked: there is copious call and response between Sanborn and the band, which suggests a pleading conversation.
6. George Benson, Breezin' (1976)
In any history of smooth jazz, the name "Wes Montgomery" should appear early and prominently. Serious jazz guitarists all cite him as a critical influence, and he made straight-ahead jazz records that are fluid genius. But in the 1960s, he made a series of recordings for Verve Records that were produced by Creed Taylor and included covers of pop songs by the Beatles and the Fifth Dimension. Record sales were very good. Were these records kinda cheesy? Strings and production gook? Oh, yeah. Smooth jazz had just popped outta the chute. They literally called it "easy listening" back then, another phrase from the radio-format folks.
In the next generation of guitar players, Wes seemed to be embodied by the soulful George Benson, not yet a pop star and singer but a killer modern jazz guitarist capable of playing with chitlin-circuit organ stars and with the 1960s Miles Davis Quintet. And when Creed Taylor started his own record label, CTI, putting out somewhat poppy, sweetened jazz sides, guess who joined the label stable? Benson made some lovely CTI records, but the hippest and smoothest was his first after jumping ship for Warner Brothers, Breezin'.
The fact that Benson sang with Wonder-esque panache on Leon Russell's "This Masquerade" made this record go to the top of the pop, R&B and jazz charts all at once. When Benson sings wordlessly in unison with his improvised guitar lines on the hit - yes. But the whole record is terrific and is all about that fluid guitar style. The grooves percolate, the improvising is sharp and memorable, and everything gleams but, honestly, not too much. Just enough of Breezin' still sounds like a good jazz date.
5. The Crusaders, Chain Reaction (1975)
Built around a group of high school friends from Texas, The Jazz Crusaders sold some records in the 1960s by combining hard-bop punch with Longhorn soul. The group's signature sound was the somewhat unusual combination of trombone and tenor saxophone in the front line. As the decade turned, the guys added electric bass and electric guitar to their sound and dropped the word "Jazz" from their name. But their recordings were still full of great solos, wonderful give-and-take between the horns, and the piano (and electric piano) of Joe Sample, and soul-blues groove.
Like other bands exploring the open territory between jazz and popular music, The Crusaders would soon find a hit by including some vocals into their sound ("Street Life"). But just before that, they were at a creative peak. 1975's Chain Reaction is my favorite — just the core band with no orchestration, Larry Carlton being a magician on guitar, Wilton Felder sounding brilliant on tenor saxophone, and Wayne Henderson's brawny 'bone. These guys were at their best writing original material as harmonically and melodically rich as jazz, while still making you want to dance a bit.
4. Michael Franks, The Art of Tea (1976)
And as long as we are praising the playing of The Crusaders, who would have thought to match their sound up with a laidback, West Coast singer-songwriter with a penchant for naughty metaphors and Brazilian rhythms? Producer Tommy Li Puma did — getting Joe Sample, Wilton Felder (on electric bass), Larry Carlton, and John Guerin to add genuine jazz magic to a set of nine catchy original tunes. Michael Franks has a modest voice with a seductive, sandpaper whisper to it, but he is remarkably up to the task of working with this amazing rhythm section. The fact that we get a couple of saxophone solos too (by Dave Sanborn and also Michael Brecker, whose Brecker Brothers Band could easily have made this list) just adds to the sense that this Joni-ish record is really a jazz record. But around this time, weren't Joni Mitchell's own albums starting to become jazz albums, too?
There are a couple of runaway favorites here — funny, melodically lovely songs with impish charm. "Popsicle Toes" actually swings, as the narrator sings an ode to a naughty partner with weak circulation. And "Eggplant" is a none-too-subtle tale about how cooking and making love mix nicely. Franks can be delightfully bittersweet ("I Don't Know Why I'm So Happy I'm Sad") and genuinely heart-breaking ("St. Elmo's Fire") too.
But what makes this platter so strong is that the songs are met fully by a great band. Because Franks's voice is so smooth, well, it qualifies in this category. And all the musicians here understood the format. But almost every later Franks album would grow increasingly more slicked-over in one way or another. The Art of Tea is for all time, though — the genre's own Court and Spark.
3. Stanley Turrentine, Don't Mess with Mr. T (1973) / Hank Crawford, Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing (1974) / Freddie Hubbard, Polar AC (1975)
OK, I'm cheating here, with the three-way tie for third, but no list of smooth jazz would be complete without an album from Creed Taylor's CTI label (or three). Taylor's strategy was simple: as the market for straight-ahead jazz dried up in the late '60s, he hired many of the very best players to record for him, glossing up their sound. The results often were ripping and fantastic. These three sessions, featuring tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, alto sax beast Hank Crawford and trumpet firebrand Freddie Hubbard, are neither the best sessions from CTI nor even the best each musician recorded for CTI. But they are classics of smooth jazz.
Turrentine always had a pulpy, blues-soul approach. He recorded naturally with organ bands, using his ripe cry to best effect. On Don't Mess with Mr. T, he straddles his Blue Note Past and his smooth future with élan — being recorded in the legendary Rudy Van Gelder studios but with arrangements by Bob James. The standout track, perhaps, is actually one of the "bonus tracks" for the compact disc, a vigorous version of Michel Legrand's "Pieces of a Dream," which Turrentine made into a minor hit after he left CTI for another label. This version is better, with the strings backgrounded and a Rhodes solo by Harold Mabern just as good as what the leader plays.
Hank Crawford played with Ray Charles, and he had a background that was as much soul as jazz, with a gorgeous sound on alto. Crawford is famously Sanborn's role model, and maybe Grover Washington, Jr.'s as well. Which kind of makes him Kenny G's spiritual ancestor, somehow. This date for CTI's sister label, Kudu, has Crawford playing three originals and two Stevie Wonder tunes. The title track is familiar, but the Bob James arrangement and Crawford's improvisations turn it into something else entirely. Every track is compelling.
Freddie Hubbard was the baddest of the hard-bop trumpeters, a guy who played so high and hard that he literally ripped open his lip later in this career. On CTI he also showed what a great mellow player he could be, and this compilation album (taking tracks from various early sessions and released after Hubbard took his game to Columbia Records) is soooo tasty. The title track is actually "Fantasy in D" by pianist Cedar Walton, but transformed here for maximum cool. Then we get two Philadelphia soul covers, brilliant jazz rethinkings of "Betcha By Golly, Wow" and "People Make the World Go Round." There is a straight jazz ballad that includes a guitar solo by George Benson and terrific flute solo from Hubert Laws, and then a Hubbard classic, "Sky Dive." Smooth jazz never sounded so roundly brassy.
2. Lonnie Liston Smith & the Cosmic Echoes, Expansions (1975)
Lonnie Liston Smith was a keyboardist who played with many of the major cats in the 1960s. With Miles Davis and Pharoah Sanders, he started experimenting with electric piano and organ, and channeling the kind of "spiritual jazz" that has made a comeback in this decade. In the early '70s, he formed The Cosmic Echoes, creating a sound that combined funk, jazz, astral/spiritual jazz, and smoooooth vocals. The keyboard grooves he pioneered, with his Rhodes going through some hip effects to sound utterly atmospheric, are distinctive to this day.
1975's Expansions opens with "Expand Your Mind," a floating two-chord groove so infectious that you'd be happy if it went on for twice its six-minute running time. Singer Donald Smith is calm and soulful, and he plays some keen flute. The sound of the band isn't unlike some of the Gil Scott-Heron records from around this time, but rather than spoken-word wit and politics, Liston Smith is after a calming and cleansing of your spirit. The rubbery acoustic bass of Cecil McBee; layers of percussion laid in by drummers Art Gore and Michael Carvin and two hand drummers; gauzy saxophone/flute harmonies; his own chiming piano and keyboards — it's as if Miles Davis' bands from the '70s wanted to make you happy. There are other funky grooves, but there's also a wonderful ballad reading of Horace Silver's "Peace," with Donald Smith delivering a measured tenor vocal that the leader limns with synth and delicate acoustic piano improvising.
Expansions deserves to be this high on any smooth jazz list because it sounds great, but also because it truly connects the origins of the genre back to what is best about jazz and the best about soul. As you listen to Liston Smith's long piano solo on "Summer Days," you can hear the incredible power of the John Coltrane Quartet's meditation on "My Favorite Things" — and also feel the sunny joy of, say, Sergio Mendes and the funky dance impulse as it was channeled by Marvin Gaye. Smooth jazz, in concept, wasn't supposed to be a rigid genre but a pleasant collage of styles.
1. Grover Washington, Jr. Mister Magic (1975)
Well, here he is at last: the only saxophone player Kenny G seems to have any use for. The guy whose album his band teacher gave him in the 1970s, and whom he reported he wanted to be the "White" version of. Grover Washington, Jr. grew up listening to classic jazz as the son of church chorister mom and music fanatic dad; his brother became a church organ player. He made his first album when Hank Crawford couldn't make a recording date. That album, Inner City Blues, on which Washington plays tunes by Marvin Gaye, Bill Withers, and George Gershwin, is the one G used to play while he fell asleep at night.
That one is cool, and Washington would later have bigger hits (such as his Withers duet, "Just the Two of Us"), but the best Grover album is Mister Magic. This platter is so pleasurable that it's easy to lose track of how fabulous it also is on purely artistic terms. The knock on so much smooth jazz, of course, is the excessive sweetening — be it through gauzy synthesizers or actual strings sections or vocals. But the only place that really occurs here is on a rather intriguing version of Billy Strayhorn's "Passion Flower," with an out-front string arrangement from (who else?) Bob James. The strings here aren't really "sweetener" but the main thing: this amounts to quite a modern string treatment of a brilliant song, with Washington's plaintive soprano saxophone, James' Fender Rhodes, and Harvey Mason's drums providing jazz and groove content.
Better, though, is a James original called "Earth Tones" that is legitimately hip modern jazz with a driving theme, cloaked in a combination of atmosphere and percolating beat. The fact that it leaves room for long, interesting improvisations demonstrates that smooth jazz needn't always be lowest-common-denominator stuff.
The highlights of this album, however, are the title track and "Black Frost", both mid-tempo funk tunes in the style of Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon" — and just as memorable, catchy, and danceable. James integrates strings and brass in subtle, ingenious ways, Eric Gale's funk guitar licks and James' Rhodes lock together like puzzle pieces, and Washington delivers heartfelt, sly, sexy, blues-drenched solos.
Comparing his saxophone playing on these tracks to Kenny G's playing is like matching Steph Curry against the best kid on the 8th grade middle school team in a suburb somewhere. Okay, the kid can dribble and shoot, but he's not really playing ball yet. Whereas, Grover Washington, Jr. scores from all over the court. He testifies on this horn, calling out for the spirit to visit him. And it does.
