Years ago—oh, around 1980 to be precise—I had an assignment to do a feature on saxophonist David Sanborn, an artist I particularly admired for his soulful work with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, David Bowie, and Stevie Wonder.  His emerging jazz concepts would latter blossom with the Gil Evans Orchestra, but he was then in a state of flux between soul jazz productions and decidedly commercial balladry for, as coincidence would have it, the Warner Bros label. I wasn’t too keen on his then current recording, a Vaseline lens bit of fluff called Voyeur, but I was quite interested in Sanborn’s blues and jazz roots, and figured I could politely tap-dance around the new release.

Well, once David realized I wasn’t a predator from the "Gotcha!" school of journalists, and an enthusiastic music fan to boot, he opened up and we had a real lively chat.  David fondly recalled the older black musicians who’d encouraged him as a teenager on the local St. Louis scene, traced his roots in the music of Ray Charles and his star saxophonists Hank Crawford and David "Fathead" Newman, and finally went into a long epiphany about the inspiration of Bach and Charlie Parker.  "And do you know who the new Charlie Parker is?" he enthused.  "Julius Hemphill!" 

Right on.  Finally, the moment I feared came: "So, what’d you think of the new album."

Of such moments are 55-gallon drums found floating off the Jersey shore.  I smiled, and said "Well..." After a prolonged theatrical pause I allowed as how "...it seemed like good music to make time with an upper class black woman."

David laughed and the conversation quickly turned to the realities of the jazz biz, and the greater music biz in general.  I took his confession and offered him a jazz rosary ("Play a chorus of minor seconds and call me in the morning"), and he explained how once you get a hit, they (the dreaded they) expect you to play the same thing over and over again.  "Well, everybody sounds like David Sanborn these days," I countered, and David’s countenance kind of clouded over. "Good—that means I don’t have to."

Anyway, about a week later I get a phone call at home and it’s David Sanborn.  Hey, man, how ya doin’?  "Yeah, I just wanted to call you up to let you know how much I enjoyed our interview.  It was nice to talk to someone who really cared about music for a change.  Also, I wanted to thank you for calling me out about my music, but doing it in such a nice way." 

Well, I was thunderstruck.  Apparently I’d struck a raw nerve, but it’s not as though that’d been my intent.  Sappy music is the lifeblood of this industry, and if someone wants to cash in on a sentimental journey, that’s no skin off my back—I just don’t listen.  Besides, Sanborn, like Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny and a handful of others, are able to navigate commercial outreach and straight no chaser jazz with real authority.  Listen to Sanborn’s spacey, vocalized sopranino and alto improvs in the collective context of Tim Berne’s gripping Diminutive Mysteries (Mostly Hemphill) on JMT, and I defy anyone to call Sanborn’s name in a Blindfold Test.  Powerful stuff.  Or his equally evocative solo album Another Hand, where Sanborn made a compelling case for his kind of creative fusion...hmmm, wonder how many copies that sold?  And of course, there was the daring Late Night music carnival he co-hosted with Jules Holland.  Produced by everyone’s favorite hectic eclectic, Hal Wilner, Sanborn got to present himself and his musical guests in a bold continuum of sound without category.  People like Sun Ra and The World Saxophone Quartet sharing the bill with the cream of progressive pop, funk and alternative sources from around the globe, not to mention stunning archival footage of many classic artists.  How long did that run before executives pulled the plug?

The point being that when it comes to the major labels and our sentiment encrusted popular culture, you can’t go wrong by dumbing down.  Thus a tough, gritty film like L.A. Confidential, a noire classic that looked for all the world as if it’d been shot though yellowed old newsprint, barely makes a ripple in our consciousness, while a quarter-billion dollar teenage wet dream such as Titanic captures the popular imagination.

So what’s the point?  That fifty million Frenchmen can be wrong?   Well, there’s that, but there’s also a sense of dismay in reading Matt Pierson’s response to the Pariah’s most recent diatribes dealing with that big clumsy term…jazz.  I’m afraid that the dumbing down strategies label exec Pierson suggests might work on its behalf are clearly not applicable. 

"What is jazz?" Pierson asks in raising the subject of a proposed jazz organization.  "If this organization views jazz as only ‘straight-ahead’, acoustic-based, improvised music, our scope will be severely limited.  The power base that exists through the "Smooth Jazz" radio format and the value of the more credible commercial jazz artists cannot be underestimated.  Not only is this an ever-expanding audience for instrumental music that could develop into a large fan base for "straight-ahead" jazz, the "Smooth Jazz" format is a major success story that we can all learn from."

While I agree with Pierson that a narrow, politically-correct definition of jazz is limiting, and recognize that smooth jazz is a viable commercial juggernaut, the notion that "...this ever-expanding audience for instrumental music that could develop into a large fan base for ‘straight-ahead’ jazz," is an exercise in intellectual sophistry that has been proven wrong time and time again since the first blush of fusion went sour in the mid-70s.  Early fusion—as exemplified by the Gary Burton Quartet (with Larry Coryell, Steve Swallow and Roy Haynes), the Tony Williams Lifetime, post-Bitches Brew Miles Davis and the work of his acolytes in Return To Forever, Weather Report, Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi and Headhunters bands, and the original Mahavishun Orchestra—was largely derived from the most progressive aspects of ‘60s post-bop and avant garde jazz, the cutting edge of instrumental rock and blues bands such as Cream and the Hendrix Experience, third world music, 20th century classicism and funk icons such as Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Sly Stone and Funkadelic.  And yes, these early bands did indeed fashion a bridge between rock and jazz audiences (a two-way bridge, I hasten to add, forged on the opposite shore by the Beatles, Brian Wilson and Frank Zappa among others).  However, almost without exception, these bands reached commercial critical mass as they phased out their more ostensible jazz and avant garde aspects and zeroed in large scale rock and funk gestures.  And as the fusion movement became over-ripe in the later ‘70s, it inspired a politically correct acoustic jazz lashback, much as the corporate rock of that era inspired the punk movement.  And in short order, the major labels co-opted these alternative movements.  Any bridge between differing genres was blown to bits, the ruins salted, the women carried off into slavery. Wither Carthage?

"At the Grammy Jazz Screening Committee meeting last month, we had a heated discussion about whether or not Kenny G is a jazz artist.  I asserted my belief that not only is he a jazz artist, but in my estimation, he is a terrific improviser.  Although this comment inspired some giggles from the esteemed panel, I feel strongly enough about this opinion to sustain the wrath."

Not wrath Matt, more like bemused pity or the grudging admiration of one hustler to another.  As in, "...Hmmm, wonder if Matt is trying to sign up Kenny for his label," or as W.C. Fields might have put it, "More than one way to skin a cat, my little kumquat."  (Although since Kenny G. has reportedly amassed enough money to own 30% of Starbucks, it would seem like the height of madness to even consider leaving Clive Davis' fashion runway.)

I first heard Kenny Gorelick with the Jeff Lorber Fusion at the Bottom Line back in the ‘70s.  Our table looked like the audience during the overture to "Springtime For Hitler."  My drummer friend Gary turned to me and cackled, "He really likes himself, doesn’t he?"  Sitting just next to me, the late writer Robert Palmer, a longtime champion of musical miscegenation, recoiled in horror as the audience roared its approval.  "My God," Robert drawled, "haven’t any of these people ever heard a Horace Silver record?"

See, Matt, Kenny G is what used to be known as a "legit player."  Jimmy Dorsey played jazz-flavored music, and had a phenomenal technique (enough so to have moved both Lester Young and Charlie Parker), but it wasn’t jazz.  Neither in his phrasing nor in his rhythmic conception was there any hint of the blues or the kind of rhythmic buoyancy that distinguished the playing of jazz innovators from Louis Armstrong on. He couldn’t swing from a rope, and neither can Kenny G.

"Kenny G improvises melodies over chord changes," Pierson asserts.  "Every time he plays a solo, he tells a different story.  Most importantly, he tells an honest, heartfelt story that millions of people connect with emotionally. Wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to expose the honest, heartfelt story told by the other Kenny G (Garrett, that is) to millions of people, and a couple of hundred thousand of them were moved enough to buy his records?"

We’re entering the subjective realm here, and while I find Matt’s arguments disingenuous in the extreme, perhaps we should afford him the benefit of the doubt.  Still, in so doing, I think we can see why the Pariah and many like-minded thinkers are in such a state of dismay about the jazz record industry and the people who run it.

First, improvising melodies over chord changes is part and parcel of jazz, but not the whole story.  There’s a melodic-harmonic-rhythmic sensitivity involved that is antithetical to the cheap sentiment in Kenny G’s music.  More to the point, there is a cultural and social experience, and a spiritual worldview that is not evident in Kenny G’s arsenal of glib cliches—it’s not something you learn, but something you live.  Also, to put a finer point on it, Kenny G doesn’t generally run changes, but plays ornamental trills over simple, static vamps, and invariably plays the same solo over and over again…for a true jazz player to even play two choruses the same would be considered a sin, save for certain set bits, like Ben Webster’s on "Cottontail" or Ray Nance’s on "Take The A Train." 

And wouldn’t it be loverly if the same people who liked Kenny G also liked Kenny Garrett.  If Matt truly believes this, he needs to seriously increase his intake of distilled water.  Different audiences, different music, Matt—and nether the twain shall meet.

The origins of Kenny G’s music are not in jazz or blues or funk (like Sanborn or Grover Washington), but in the kind of pale R&B balladry and soft-core fusion that emerged in the ‘70s…most of which could safely be filed away under the heading of Quiet Storm.  Often lumped together under the heading of fusion, the music that people like A&R man George Butler popularized during his ‘70s run at United Artists (with hits such as Bobbi Humphrey’s "Harlem River Drive") was indeed instrumental music, but not jazz.  Instrumental pop or R&B is more like it, with the instrumentalist serving the role of a surrogate vocalist…a role quite antithetical to the near-shamanistic intent of a great improviser like Sonny Rollins, who can play with compelling clarity and fealty to the original melodic contours, then suddenly transmogrify his lines rhythmically and harmonically and take his listeners on a joyous, giddy trip akin to an out of body experience.  Can I hear an amen? 

You see, Matt, the people who are moved by Kenny G relate to the experience in a way that is fundamentally quite different from what people seek out in Kenny Garrett and Sonny Rollins--it's the difference between being entertained and being inspired.  In giving Kenny G. his props, we might charitably respect him for creating a light, engaging lifestyle music…heavy on the romance, hold the onions.  If we were feeling less than charitable, we might characterize it as superficial, bourgeois,  sonic wallpaper, the background music for a generation of self-satisfied, materialistic yuppies and buppies.  Pabulum.  Twaddle.  Crap!  Woah Woah music.  Celine Dion on a sucrose bender. Toni Braxton moan-an-oaning about how she hasn’t been laid--woahooooo--in three hours.  Praise the loud.   Sure is tasty.  Slap some more bbq on Miss Mahalia, so she'll brown evenly as she spins in her grave.

Good thing we’re feeling charitable. 

Finally, I can speak with quiet conviction that the audience for Kenny G. is not the audience for Kenny Garrett or Sonny Rollins, both of whom have made significant commercial strides, and both of whom have been vilified for it. From 1990-1992 I established the jazz departments at the first HMV superstores in Manhattan, and managed the 86th Street department.  I went to great lengths to educate my staff about how to backtrack in reverse chronology from the popular artists people were aware of, in order to make them steady customers and jazz acolytes.  Thus, if someone came in for a Harry Connick disc, hey, turn them on to Chet Baker, Bob Dorough, Mel Torme, Mose Allison, Bill Evans, Professor Longhair, James Booker.  You get the idea. 

Still, I wish I had a dollar for every time someone came in for Kenny G vis a vis some CD-101.9 promotion and we tried to turn them on to Stan Getz with Astrid Gilberto or Clifford Brown with strings (or even Benny G) and were told point blank, with extreme prejudice and a complete absence of irony: "I don’t like jazz."  Damn! 

Commercial jazz stations don’t play jazz, Matt.  I produced a Ginger Baker jazz trio with Bill Frisell and Charlie Haden for Atlantic back in 1994 (Going Back Home) that’s sold more than 40,000 copies worldwide without any promotion to speak of, and when I wondered why CD 101.9 wasn’t playing an easy-going, latin flavored groove tune with a melody you could hook a pick-up truck to (Bill Frisell’s "Rambler") I was told that the station’s chief programmer had dismissed it as "Too jazz."  Imagine that.  And recently, a very popular artist, whose music is sometimes played on CD 101.9, told me of a party at which he was the guest of honor.  The station director complemented him on this one particular song "…that was really great until you went into that atonal thing." Duh.  Never mind that this dork doesn’t know from true atonality (let’s assume he meant slightly jarring or unnerving, a little dissonant or perhaps "just too emotional for our audience"). Subsequently, they played the artist’s song, but excised out the offending solo.  Better living though chemistry. 

Finally, no one is denying CD 101.9’s immense commercial outreach, but any illusions I might’ve harbored about its tenuous connections to jazz were shattered during my retail experience.  When we first opened, HMV did a cross-promotion with CD 101.9 involving Strunz & Farrah, which is a sub-species of what I’d call "Flamenco Light."  Well, waves and waves of people flooded the store, and we sold a ton of product, but mainly of a commercial jazz nature…not much trad or many classic catalog items.  Then towards the end of my tenure, I was informed of another cross-promotion with CD 101.9 in which Sony/Coumbia would be putting up the not inconsequential sum of $25,000 to advertise the new Harry Connick and a Wynton Marsalis trilogy.  I told the rep that her company would be better served by putting the money into the Village Voice and the New York Times—because CD 101.9 didn’t even play Connick, let alone Wynton.  Well, in the thuggish fashion that distinguished Sony Distribution’s heavy-handed approach to retailers, my earnest attempt to save them twenty five big ones came back at me like a safe from above, and all I recall were the words ACME before I lost consciousness.  I was "hostile" to Sony.  I was "undermining" a generous promotion on their part.  I wasn’t a "team" player.  Never mind that HMV eventually went to the mattresses big time with Sony over their draconian return policies and routine over-shipments.  So, thus chastised, the campaign went through, the ads went on the air, we cut our margins down to nothing, sold a few Connicks and Marsalis albums at no profit—and little else—and the promotion laid an ostrich egg. 

In closing, a wise man once said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  Trotting out that old discredited saw about the potential jazz audiences to be garnered from commercial, jazz-flavored, instrumental pop is no substitute for creative marketing and a real commitment to the music.  Artists such as Josh Redman, Wynton Marsalis and Pat Metheny have delivered quite respectable sales figures, proving that there is indeed a market for good music, even if it is kind of, well, you know, JAZZ.  The sooner the major labels stop congratulating themselves for running affirmative action programs and begin looking for new ways to market and promote creative music, the more money and work there’ll be for the Matt Piersons and the Kenny Garretts of the world.  And less need for the likes of the Pariah and the Hitman.