Smooth Jazz

Polished tone and relaxed rhythm, with a saxophone melody over electric backing, written for radio

Related

ContemporarySoprano SaxophoneElectric guitarDrum Kit

Smooth jazz is the lyrical branch that split from fusion at the end of the 1970s and through the 1980s. It flattens dynamics and tone, writes short songs, folds solos into the melody and reached listeners mainly through radio.

Origins and era

In the early 1970s CTI Records placed jazz players inside strings, electric piano and electric bass, with brighter, thicker recordings. George Benson's Breezin' crossed over in 1976, and Grover Washington Jr.'s Winelight in 1980 put alto saxophone over slow funk. In the mid-to-late 1980s American radio adopted "smooth jazz" as a format, with instrumental melodies and tracks usually four to five minutes long.

What you hear

Tempos sit at medium-slow, drums play straight four or a light shuffle with the snare on two and four, and electric bass keeps a simple line. Harmony relies on seventh and ninth chords and inversions, with plain progressions and little dense ii–V motion. The lead is often soprano or alto saxophone or electric guitar, its tone rounded by compression, reverb and delay, and the melody repeats one memorable phrase. Solos are short and usually give way to a chorus-like return.

Key figures

Grover Washington Jr. put saxophone melody into slow funk, George Benson took guitar and voice onto pop radio, and Bob James and David Sanborn made electric piano and saxophone signature sounds. Spyro Gyra pushed fusion in a lighter direction from Buffalo in the 1970s, and Kenny G reached the largest audience in the 1980s.

Lineage

Fusion, soul and rhythm-and-blues production feed in, with 1970s CTI recordings as a direct ancestor. Quiet storm, contemporary jazz radio and commercial scoring come out, and the word "smooth" became something many jazz players kept at a distance.

Common misunderstandings

Smooth jazz is not jazz played by people who cannot improvise. Most early lead players had hard-bop and fusion training and were simply asked for short statements. Nor is it the same as fusion, which keeps longer solos and harder rhythms while smooth jazz edits for radio. Treating it as a harmonic style misses that production and airplay were its core.

Sources

• Mark C. Gridley, Jazz Styles（Pearson, 11th ed., 2012），用于核对融合爵士与平滑爵士的分期
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Smooth jazz，用于交叉核对电台格式与制作

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.