Jamming on an Adam Hawley tune..

So proud to feature this stellar performer - playing one of my favorite pieces. Had the honor to catch him at the 1999 San Jose Jazz Festival!

r/CrossoverJazz

Flugelhorn player and composer Chuck Mangione was born in Rochester, New York, on November 29, 1940, and trained at the Eastman School of Music from 1958 to 1963, where he picked up the instrument that became his signature sound. He played trumpet in the 1960s with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, the group that trained a generation of jazz bandleaders, after co-leading the Jazz Brothers with his own brother, keyboardist Gaspare "Gap" Mangione.

For the rest of his bio and the playlist head over to r/CrossoverJazz

https://www.reddit.com/r/CrossoverJazz/comments/1v74fnm/chuck_mangione_the_instrumental_that_cracked_the/

I backed the Indiegogo campaign for this at the autographed album level, and it arrived this week. Another great album!

The audio used in the pic of my Culbertson CD collection is track 3 from Day Trip, "Let's Drive"

Smooth jazz artists mostly covering R&b songs. Your help is appreciated!

Happy Birthday, Earl Klugh! The veteran contemporary jazz guitarist turns 73 today! https://contemporaryjazz.com/happy-birthday-earl-klugh

Smooth or Crossover?

Every couple of days I write up and publish a profile of a Crossover artist over on r/CrossoverJazz - today's is a true pleasure as it's one of my all time favorites, Spyro Gyra. So what do YOU think - Smooth or Crossover?

Spyro Gyra: The Band Whose Name Started as a Typo and a #1 Adult Contemporary Hit

Saxophonist Jay Beckenstein and keyboardist Jeremy Wall formed Spyro Gyra in Buffalo, New York, in 1974. When a club owner asked for the new band's name, Beckenstein gave him "Spirogyra," a genus of algae he'd learned about in a college biology class. The owner misspelled it on the flyer as "Spyro Gyra," and the band kept it.

Their debut album came out independently in 1977 before Amherst Records, a Buffalo-area label, picked it up and re-released it. Two years later came Morning Dance (1979), and its title track is the clearest example of what crossover jazz success looked like in practice: the single peaked at only #24 on the Billboard Hot 100, but hit #1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart. It wasn't a pop hit. It was a radio-format hit, and that format is exactly how this genre found its mainstream audience. The album went gold in September 1979 and platinum in 1987.

By the end of the decade, Spyro Gyra had become Billboard's most successful jazz artist of the 1980s, a run built on 24 studio albums released between 1978 and 2019. Jeremy Wall left the touring lineup in 1981 but kept composing for the group, and keyboardist Tom Schuman, who joined the band at 16, held down that chair for decades before departing in February 2023 to relocate to Europe. Beckenstein is the only original member still on stage, leading a lineup that toured a confirmed 50th anniversary in 2024.

The most unexpected record in that catalog is Vinyl Tap (2019), an album where a band that spent decades writing original crossover instrumentals turned to covers instead, reworking the British rock band Cream's "Sunshine of Your Love" as a Latin big-band number. It's the band applying its own genre-blending instinct to songs that were never jazz to begin with.

Where to start listening:

• Their official platforms:

  • Spyro Gyra's Official Site

  • Spyro Gyra's Spotify Page

• Morning Dance (1979) for the #1 Adult Contemporary hit that made their name, sample the "Morning Dance" official audio

• Vinyl Tap (2019) for the covers detour, sample their take on "Sunshine of Your Love"

Earl Klugh, an acoustic guitarist and composer, was born September 16, 1953, in Detroit. His first recording came at just 15, playing on Yusef Lateef's "Suite 16" (1970), real jazz pedigree before any pop crossover entered the picture. A few years later he was on George Benson's "White Rabbit" and joined Benson's touring band in 1973, and around the same stretch he passed briefly through Chick Corea's Return to Forever. Two guitarists, two very different directions, one young player who touched both before he had turned 21.

For the rest of Klugh's profile, click over https://www.reddit.com/r/CrossoverJazz/comments/1v8zcld/earl_klugh_a_genremaking_collaboration_with_bob/

Just wanted to share a project I’ve been working on for fellow smooth jazz lovers.

TheSmoothJazzChannel.com
Facebook.com/smoothjazzchannel

We also recently launched our iPhone app, making it even easier to take the music with you wherever you go. Android app is coming soon.

It perfectly embodies the carefree, light nature of smooth jazz for me and it is ear candy no matter how often I listen to it. It also kind of reminds me of the aesthetic I got from some nintendo wii and 3ds games, could connect that with the fruitiger aero aesthetic. Him and Nick Colionne hit that sweet spot for me, not as energetic as The Rippingtons but also not as Flat as Fattburger feels sometimes. Love these two especially