The influ­ence of J.R.R. Tolkien on met­al is so wide and deep it has become almost cliché. There are count­less Tolkien-themed songs, albums, band names, and an entire sub­genre of Tolkien met­al in which the fan­ta­sy mas­ter’s work has become “the foun­da­tion,” as Loud­wire writes, that such bands “have built their per­sona upon.” After all, “the doomy hellscape of Mor­dor is a set­ting that rivals hell itself, mak­ing it the per­fect fod­der for lyri­cal bru­tal­i­ty.”

Of course, there’s more to the fas­ci­na­tion than doomy hellscape. Mys­ti­cism, mag­ic, and mythol­o­gy; “themes of friend­ship, adven­ture, betray­al, greed, and mor­tal­i­ty.” The Hob­bit and Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy fold lit­er­ary rich­ness and depth into a ful­ly real­ized alter­nate real­i­ty full of swords and sor­cery, gob­lins, orcs, and walk­ing trees. What met­al­head can resist? Even those who might want to have a hard time get­ting away from Tolkien.

He’s in the source code of the genre, in its clas­sic rock chro­mo­somes. The most promi­nent pre­cur­sor of Tolkien met­al, Led Zep­pelin, real­ly loved Tolkien. As Robert Plant put it in a lat­er inter­view, “when I read those books, they kind of dis­solved into me.” In the short video above from Poly­phon­ic, we get a sur­vey of the num­ber of Tolkien ref­er­ences not only in Zep­pelin, but in Gen­e­sis, Rush, and oth­er pro­to-met­al prog-rock bands.

One key fea­ture of Tolkien that makes his work such great mate­r­i­al for epic songs is that the nov­els are already full of epic songs (and poems, in Elvish and oth­er lan­guages). “Music plays an inte­gral role in the very found­ing of Mid­dle Earth.” Tolkien ref­er­ences crop up in Black Sab­bath, Uri­ah Heep, and dozens of 70s pro­gres­sive rock bands whose influ­ence exceeds their fame.

One band the Poly­phon­ic video doesn’t men­tion, The Bea­t­les, aren’t often thought of as Tolkienesque, or as hav­ing much influ­ence on heavy met­al. But they were mas­sive Tolkien fans and even approached the author in the 60s about mak­ing a Lord of the Rings film, with John as Gol­lum, Paul as Fro­do, Ringo as Sam, and George as Gan­dalf. McCart­ney even approached Stan­ley Kubrick to direct.

Report­ed­ly, when McCart­ney told Peter Jack­son the sto­ry, the direc­tor replied, “It’s the songs I feel bad­ly about. You guys could have banged out a few good tunes for this.” Tolkien him­self didn’t think so and turned them down imme­di­ate­ly. We don’t have any record of his thoughts on the 70s rock bands who enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly adopt­ed him, if he even knew of their exis­tence. But we do know that he didn’t like The Bea­t­les.

Does this mean he wouldn’t care for any of the clas­sic rock and met­al to whom he has inad­ver­tent­ly giv­en so much? Prob­a­bly. But one com­menter in a dis­cus­sion thread on this very ques­tion imag­ines anoth­er reac­tion Tolkien might have to hear­ing “Ram­ble On,” etc.: “I believe he raised a fist into the air and extend­ed the index and lit­tle fin­gers in imi­ta­tion of a horned crea­ture, while vig­or­ous­ly, emphat­i­cal­ly nod­ding his head back and forth, toss­ing his hair to and fro like a fish­ing boat caught in a rag­ing storm.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Lord of the Rings Mythol­o­gy Explained in 10 Min­utes, in Two Illus­trat­ed Videos

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

The Ori­gins of the Death Growl in Met­al Music

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

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.