Jazz Articles

Bob Baldwin: NewUrbanJazz.com

by Jeff Winbush
July 8, 2009

NewUrbanJazz.com isn't just a clever album title, it's a web address and marketing tool where keyboardist Bob Baldwin streams jazz online for listeners looking for their contemporary jazz fix. Baldwin's site joins other Internet sites and satellite radio as replacements for terrestrial radio stations in San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia and other cities that have abandoned the smooth jazz format.As the smooth jazz format seems to be reliant on 20-year-old Sade songs and waiting for the next Kenny ...

Freestyle Fellowship: Temptations

by AAJ Staff
November 1, 2001

Although this is just their third album in 10 years, the Freestyle Fellowship wields an almost mythological power over MCs and hip-hop fans in L.A. and beyond. Their recorded output has hinted at their importance and relevance, rather than chronicled it. Temptations adds nothing more to any attempted unraveling of this urban mythology; rather it muddies the waters further. Lacking the improvisational jazz energy of Inner City Griots , Temptations comes off as more cynical, the members reveling in their ...

Charles Fambrough: Upright Citizen

by AAJ Staff
December 1, 1997

This album has got to be the find of the year by my good friend and fellow soul mate MaryJo Rathbun who is the Traffic Manager at the leading Smooth Jazz station in Providence, USA, namely WKCD 107.7 FM. This is one of the stunning albums which appear out of thin air every once and a while à la Urban Knights or Daniel Ho and Kileaue's ' Tropical Pleasures ' sets.

The list of stars is impressive for an artists ...