It’s the most unloved and derid­ed of music gen­res, but the his­to­ry of Smooth Jazz is not as bad as you might think. In anoth­er chap­ter of Vox’s excel­lent Ear­worm series (see Chap­ter 1 here and Chap­ter 2 here), Estelle Caswell explores the rise and fall of this mod­ern day ele­va­tor music and asks if it’s worth recon­sid­er­ing.

The undis­put­ed star of smooth jazz has to be the “Song­bird” him­self, the frizzy-hair be-coifed Ken­ny G. (The only part of the video I took issue with is when one fan is quot­ed say­ing “he was the cool white boy.” Ma’am, all due respect, but Ken­ny G was nev­er cool.) The man played along­side Clinton’s inau­gu­ra­tion and once broke a world record by hold­ing a note for 45 min­utes. The smoothest of smooth jazz issued forth from his sopra­no sax and like it or not, his was a read­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able sound in a genre where noth­ing is sup­posed to stand out.

Ear­worm first traces the his­to­ry of the form back to Grover Wash­ing­ton Jr., CTI Records, and oth­er artists like Wes Mont­gomery. 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. 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. This also could be seen as an evo­lu­tion of jazz’s raid­ing of the Great Amer­i­can Song­book along with Broad­way hits. 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.

And from Mont­gomery we get to George Ben­son, silky smooth and unde­ni­ably funky. He even scat sang his solos at the same time as he played them on the gui­tar. His records went plat­inum which meant some­thing in the days of rock’s ascen­dan­cy and jazz’s fall.

But as Ear­worm points out, Smooth Jazz only became a thing when mar­ket­ing stepped in. As freeform sta­tions were bought out by cor­po­ra­tions, mar­ket research firms tar­get­ed audi­ences with focus groups. 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. 
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. Oth­er sta­tions would soon fol­low suit, reach­ing a height of pop­u­lar­i­ty in 1994, when Ken­ny G won Best Adult Con­tem­po­rary Artist at the Amer­i­can Music Awards. It was “smooth sounds for a rough world,” as one adman called it, but what it real­ly was com­fort music for office drones.

Iron­i­cal­ly, the forces that put smooth jazz at the top were respon­si­ble for its fall, as new tech­nol­o­gy to mea­sure radio rat­ings found it couldn’t pick out the music from the back­ground sounds. By 2008 and the finan­cial implo­sion, smooth jazz radios sta­tions were on the decline and the great reces­sion killed it off.

It’s fit­ting because smooth jazz was the sound­track to a dream of cap­i­tal­ism, all the rough edges bur­nished away, blink­ered aspi­ra­tions made into melody. But when the dream melt­ed for every­body, smooth jazz evap­o­rat­ed. At least with soft rock you got songs and tales of heartache.

How­ev­er, it would not sur­prise me to see Smooth Jazz make a nos­tal­gic, iron­ic-but-not come­back. If Japan’s City Pop, which trades in sim­i­lar smooth tex­tures, can speak to the dis­af­fect­ed youth about a deep, afflu­ent wish that nev­er came true, Chuck Man­gione can’t be too far behind. And it just feels. so. good.

P.S. If you have a han­kerin’ to hear some smooth­ness right now, Vox has a Spo­ti­fy playlist for what ails you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Youtube’s Algo­rithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japan­ese Song Into an Enor­mous­ly Pop­u­lar Hit: Dis­cov­er Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love”

The His­to­ry of Spir­i­tu­al Jazz: Hear a Tran­scen­dent 12-Hour Mix Fea­tur­ing John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Her­bie Han­cock & More

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

With a name like a laid back 60s robot, the Mel­lotron has been most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with psy­che­del­ic pop like The Bea­t­les’ “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” the Moody Blues “Nights in White Satin,” and David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” But the ear­ly sam­pling key­board, an elec­tro-acoustic device that used pre-record­ed tape strips mount­ed inside an organ-like key­board, was first mar­ket­ed, Gor­don Reid writes at Sound on Sound, to “old-time/­mod­ern/Latin dance audi­ences.” It was sup­posed to con­vinc­ing­ly repli­cate an orches­tra.

The Mel­lotron, built and sold by Mel­lotron­ics, Ltd., was based on an ear­li­er instru­ment, the Cham­ber­lin Music­Mas­ter, which used record­ed notes from mem­bers of Lawrence Welk’s band—hardly the hippest sounds on the scene when the Mel­lotron MK1 debuted in 1963. By the time of the MK2, how­ev­er, the device devel­oped into a pow­er­ful mul­ti­tim­bral machine, with a dual key­board, “con­tain­ing more than 70 3/8‑inch tape play­ers, a reverb unit, ampli­fiers and speak­ers.”

The rock world “took the Mel­lotron to its heart,” Reid com­ments, “and it was this that ensured its suc­cess.” It could sim­u­late oth­er instru­ments, but it did so with its own dis­tinc­tive fla­vor (pro­vid­ing not only the flute intro to “Straw­ber­ry Fields” but the Span­ish gui­tar at the begin­ning of The White Album’s “The Con­tin­u­ing Sto­ry of Buf­fa­lo Bill”). Brad Allen Williams sums up the slight­ly more portable Mel­lotron M400’s lim­it­ed oper­a­tions suc­cinct­ly at Fly­pa­per:

Due to the rather prim­i­tive tape mech­a­nism (and the inher­ent chal­lenges of keep­ing 35 play­back heads and pinch rollers in good con­di­tion), Mel­lotrons are a lit­tle unpre­dictable and can be quite char­ac­ter­ful. The action of the key­board is stiff and unusu­al-feel­ing, so vir­tu­osic play­ing is not usu­al­ly in the cards. All of these “bugs” some­how become “fea­tures,” how­ev­er — the quirks add up to a son­ic char­ac­ter that’s icon­ic and instant­ly rec­og­niz­able!

Like so many dis­tinc­tive ana­log instru­ments from pop music’s past, the Mel­lotron has returned in Nord’s updat­ed Mel­lotron MK VI, which “uses new mechan­ics and state of the art tech­nol­o­gy, but orig­i­nal unused stock tape heads.” That’s groovy news for musi­cians who dig the Mellotron’s dat­ed idio­syn­crasies. In the short film above, how­ev­er, from 1965, British TV per­son­al­i­ties Eric Robin­son and David Nixon intro­duce the instru­ment to view­ers as a first-rate new “musi­cal com­put­er.”

With built in rhythms and a wide selec­tion of sounds—including trom­bone and French accordion—the Mel­lotron was on the cut­ting edge of its day. Robin­son and Nixon put the device through its paces, show its inter­nal oper­a­tions, and gen­er­al­ly show off what essen­tial­ly looked like a nov­el­ty organ built for liv­ing rooms and cabarets before Lennon/McCartney & Co. got their hands on it in 1967. Just above, see McCart­ney give a mod­ern audi­ence a dif­fer­ent sort of demon­stra­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

Every­thing Thing You Ever Want­ed to Know About the Syn­the­siz­er: A Vin­tage Three-Hour Crash Course

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Whose music do you put on when the hol­i­day sea­son comes around? Per­haps musi­cians like Lon­nie Hol­ley, Gur­ru­mul, Erkin Koray, and Juan Luis Guer­ra? Maybe you’ve just thrilled with recog­ni­tion at one or more of those names, or maybe you’ve nev­er heard of any of them — but in either case, you should get ready for a high­ly uncon­ven­tion­al hol­i­day expe­ri­ence fea­tur­ing their songs and those of many oth­ers, all of them curat­ed by David Byrne. Each month the peri­patet­ic, oft-col­lab­o­rat­ing musi­cian and for­mer Talk­ing Heads front­man posts a new playlist on Radio David Byrne, and the lat­est, “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” will get us into a kind of sea­son­al spir­it into which we’ve nev­er got before.

“So… who rec­om­mends this stuff to me?” Byrne asks. “I’ve known Lon­nie Hol­ley as an artist for quite some time. I saw him do a show at Nation­al Saw­dust not too long ago with trom­bon­ist Dave Nel­son, who toured with St. Vin­cent and I a few years ago.”

“I heard an orches­tral inter­pre­ta­tion of this song by Gur­ru­mul when I was wait­ing to do an inter­view at the radio sta­tion in Mel­bourne, Aus­tralia. I asked, ‘Whose music is that?’ ” “Erkin Koray I heard after first hear­ing Barış Manço, who may have been rec­om­mend­ed by some friends in Istan­bul when I was there years ago… Turkey had a seri­ous psy­che­del­ic peri­od.” “Juan Luis Guer­ra may have been rec­om­mend­ed many years ago by music jour­nal­ist Daisann McLane at a music fes­ti­val in Carta­ge­na, Colom­bia.”

The 41-song jour­ney that is “Eclec­tic for the Hol­i­days,” which you can stream below or on Byrne’s offi­cial site, offers not just a chance to hap­pen upon intrigu­ing artists you’d nev­er come across before — as hap­pened to Byrne in all those chance encoun­ters that went into its con­struc­tion — but a break from the same fif­teen or twen­ty songs that have long dom­i­nat­ed the hol­i­day-sea­son rota­tion in homes and pub­lic spaces around the world. The hol­i­days them­selves teach us that tra­di­tion has its place, but Byrne, whose com­pul­sion to dis­cov­er new music from an ever far­ther-flung range of soci­eties and sub­cul­tures, shows us that you can’t let them get you com­fort­able enough to close your ears.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Radio David Byrne: Stream Free Music Playlists Cre­at­ed Every Month by the Front­man of Talk­ing Heads

David Byrne Cre­ates a Playlist of Cre­ative Music From Africa & the Caribbean—or What One Name­less Pres­i­dent Has Called “Shit­hole Coun­tries”

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

Hear the Christ­mas Car­ols Made by Alan Turing’s Com­put­er: Cut­ting-Edge Ver­sions of “Jin­gle Bells” and “Good King Wences­las” (1951)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Update: Accord­ing to the BBC, Peter Green died peace­ful­ly in his sleep this week­end, at the age of 73.

“Of all the gui­tar giants to emerge from the British blues boom,” writes Stu­art Pen­ny at Emp­ty Mir­ror, “Peter Green was per­haps the most nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed.” After replac­ing Eric Clap­ton in John May­all & the Blues­break­ers (and earn­ing the nick­name “The Green God”), the gui­tarist formed his own band, orig­i­nal­ly giv­en the unwieldy name “Peter Green’s Fleet­wood Mac fea­tur­ing Jere­my Spencer.” Soon short­ened to Fleet­wood Mac, the band record­ed their debut, epony­mous album in 1968, and went on in the fol­low­ing year to spend “more weeks on the UK sin­gles charts than the Bea­t­les, the first time any­one had achieved that feat since 1963.”

Sad­ly, Green suc­cumbed to what Pen­ny describes as “the ear­ly onset of men­tal ill­ness thought to be the result of an unso­licit­ed LSD expe­ri­ence in Munich, Ger­many.” He left his band and joined the ranks of oth­er wild­ly tal­ent­ed 60s musi­cians like Syd Bar­rett, Roky Erick­son, and Moby Grape’s Skip Spence whose careers were cut short by seri­ous men­tal health issues appar­ent­ly brought on, or wors­ened, by seri­ous drug use.

Green began to be for­got­ten, espe­cial­ly as his lega­cy with Fleet­wood Mac was over­shad­owed by albums like the leg­endary Rumours and the band’s sec­ond self-titled record.

1975’s Fleet­wood Mac was like a reboot of the band after the intro­duc­tion of Ste­vie Nicks and Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham, who resist­ed play­ing any of the old mate­r­i­al. Fans may get to hear those old songs live again—Fleetwood Mac is back and tour­ing, and they’ve even reignit­ed old feuds by fir­ing Buck­ing­ham (he’s suing, of course). The move gives them the free­dom draw from their back cat­a­log again. Nicks remarked in May, “we’re gonna lock in to the his­to­ry of Fleet­wood Mac, which we were nev­er able to do since 1975, because cer­tain peo­ple in the band weren’t real­ly inter­est­ed in doing that.”

Green won’t take part in the band’s revis­it­ing of old mate­r­i­al. But he deserves full cred­it for the band’s suc­cess, despite its many suc­cess­ful rein­ven­tions, as Mick Fleet­wood told the Irish Times last year.

For his lega­cy I think it’s impor­tant we remem­ber that Fleet­wood Mac was, first and fore­most, a blues band. We all played and loved blues. And long after Peter left, we went to Chess Records in Chica­go where we record­ed with Willie Dixon and Bud­dy Guy. Can you imag­ine how that made us feel? Such an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence could not have hap­pened with­out Peter because, even though he wasn’t with us, the rea­son there’s a Fleet­wood Mac at all is because of him.

Green made four albums with the band before depart­ing in 1970 and scored a hit with the sin­gle “Black Mag­ic Woman,” before Car­los San­tana made the song his own. Like Bar­rett, Spence, and Erick­son, he con­tin­ued mak­ing music after leav­ing his famous band, record­ing in the ear­ly 70s with for­mer band­mate John May­all. In 1972, he did a ses­sion with BB King, who called him the only British blues gui­tarist “who gave me the cold sweats.” Vot­ed the third great­est gui­tarist of all time by Mojo (after Hen­drix and Steve Crop­per), Green is still revered by diehard fans and gui­tar play­ers of all kinds, even if his strict­ly blues-rock ver­sion of Fleet­wood Mac nev­er had as wide an appeal as the pop jug­ger­naut the band lat­er became.

But the low pro­file was part of Green’s per­son­al­i­ty. He has always bris­tled at the acclaim heaped on his play­ing, telling The Tele­graph in 1996 “If I was a gui­tar hero, then what does that make my mas­ters and teach­ers?” As Mick Fleet­wood puts it, “Peter could have been the stereo­typ­i­cal gui­tar play­er and con­trol freak. But that was­n’t his style. He named the band after the bass play­er and drum­mer, for Christ’s sake.” Green’s col­lab­o­ra­tive spir­it and self-effac­ing man­ner may be rare qual­i­ties for a rock star, but he nev­er seemed to aspire to that role. Nonethe­less, he left his mark, as All­mu­sic’s Thom Jurek writes, as “the ter­mi­nal­ly shy skin­ny kid who could rain down fire from the heav­ens and draw water from the wells of hell on a gui­tar.”

See and hear some of Green’s clas­sic per­for­mances with Fleet­wood Mac in the videos here (some with out-of-sync audio), includ­ing “Black Mag­ic Woman” at the top. And just above, see a much mel­low­er Green in a much more recent per­for­mance play­ing “Alba­tross” with an acoustic ensem­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

23-Year-Old Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Since 1946, The Unit­ed States Army Field Band has trav­eled through­out the world, per­form­ing at pub­lic con­certs, school assem­blies, edu­ca­tion­al out­reach pro­grams, and oth­er venues. Above you can watch one of the band’s per­form­ing units–the Six-String Sol­diers–play an acoustic ver­sion of Pink Floy­d’s “Wish You Were Here.” Because we all know some­one we sure­ly miss. To explore more of their work, see their cov­er ver­sions of The All­man Broth­ers’ “Ram­blin’ Man” and The Bea­t­les’ “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Pink Floyd’s 1975 Com­ic Book Pro­gram for The Dark Side of the Moon Tour

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Under­stand­ing Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Their Trib­ute to Depart­ed Band­mate Syd Bar­rett