Steve T's Jazz-Funk Top 20 Countdown.

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