![]() It’s fitting that the west coast was the birthplace in 1987 of the first “smooth jazz” station, KTWV in Los Angeles, 94.7 THE WAVE, home of all sorts of laid-back grooves since the very beginning of jazz and pop. ![]() ![]() It was in one of those groups that a woman described the music like Benson and Bob James as “smooth jazz,” and the name stuck. As freeform stations were bought out by corporations, market research firms targeted audiences with focus groups. His records went platinum which meant something in the days of rock’s ascendancy and jazz’s fall.īut as Earworm points out, Smooth Jazz only became a thing when marketing stepped in. He even scat sang his solos at the same time as he played them on the guitar. If Coltrane could break “My Favorite Things” into cubism, surely there was a place for Wes Montgomery to riff over the groove of “Goin’ Out of My Head” by Little Anthony and the Imperials.Īnd from Montgomery we get to George Benson, silky smooth and undeniably funky. ![]() This also could be seen as an evolution of jazz’s raiding of the Great American Songbook along with Broadway hits. ![]() What emerged was something closer to r’n’b and soul with improvised melodies over the top, or covers of popular pop hits from the ‘60s. While Miles Davis was exploring difficult sonic textures, jazz headed into free improv territory, splitting from tonality in much the same split as befell classical music. Earworm first traces the history of the form back to Grover Washington Jr., CTI Records, and other artists like Wes Montgomery. ![]()
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