During Lockdown One – the real one, the only one – I discovered an old
friend of mine has a makeshift studio ‘under the stairs’ (UTS). I approached
him with regard to doing a jazzshow on Mixcloud, intending
to take a very large, open and inclusive view of jazz, not to alienate rock and
soul people too much.
As somebody who knew me well in the seventies and early eighties but less so since, he was keen for me to do soul music, so we produced five between August and November last year. I’ve always taken the view that, if jazz, blues and soul aren’t the same thing (and that may well be how history records them), they’re at least siblings, and if jazz is a musician’s music, soul is undoubtedly a singer’s music. They can be accessed at Mixcloud David Mobbs. The first has been the most popular, though they’re all brilliant, but I would say that wouldn’t I.
When he found himself locked down in
Bournemouth, it seemed we couldn’t get my voice on to shows so I had the idea
to do a jazz-funk top-twenty with just the countdown, having already done a
modern soul top 10. That may have been what we should have gone with, but it
turned out we could reasonably replicate it with a mobile phone. Artists
featured include Herbie Hancock, Roy Ayers, Freddie
Hubbard, Grover Washington Jnr, Donald Byrd and George Benson.
Whether jazz-funk
ever gains mass acceptance from jazz purists remains to be seen. Its live-evil
twin – to continue the familial analogy – jazz-rock is just about getting there,
at least in the hands of Miles, Mahavishnu and Weather Report. There’ll no
doubt be calls of sell-out, jazz-pop, jazz-disco, jazzak, muzak, elevator music
or - worst of all - smooth jazz, and there’s no denying that’s where it all
ended up. I’ve always considered it as much part of soul and funk as it is
jazz.
Future projects
include part two, the aforementioned jazz universe, a northern soul story,
eighties' soul and a two part history of funk, as well as more modern/rare/
deep/ sweet soul music.
Steve T
1 comment :
During the show I refer to a couple of albums that were reputed to be the biggest selling Blue Note albums ever at the time. Just read the liner notes to a 1993 (I think) reissue of Wars' Platinum Jazz which claim that it 'later lived up to its name by becoming the only platinum album in the history of Blue Note Records'.
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