SMOOTH JAZZ USA

SHOW UPDATE

Issue Number: 259
Date: March 11, 2008

HOST: STEVE BAUER
steve@jazznotes.net

On the Web:
http://www.jazznotes.net

* Archives of Shows
* Read my Blog!
* Call the Smooth Jazz Comment Line
206.333.0257.
* Listen to live streaming of my other smooth jazz shows

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ON THE SHOW THIS WEEK!

Just music barely.

Last Thursday evening, a power surge managed to get past my UPS
units and has wiped out two of my computers, one is my broadcast
PC.

The show will be on, but I will be using a Laptop. Thus my music
library will be very limited and many normal features may not be
available.

Ultra Jazz Radio is on the air now and will remain on until the
conclusion of the show.

This week, I am pleased to again be able to air an episode of the
Frank Truth Podcast. More on starting your own Sinatra collection.
It will air immediately after the show at 9 p.m. central, 10 p.m.
eastern.

And yes, even though the clocks changed, the local airing time of
the show did not change.

To listen to Ultra Jazz Radio and our show, click on the listen to
Smooth Jazz USA link on the web page.

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THE SUNDAY JAZZ BRUNCH ON B98-FM
I invite you to join me each sunday from 10 a.m. to 12 noon on B98-
FM (97.9 Mhz in Wichita, Kansas) for the Sunday Jazz Brunch. This
show will feature the best in smooth jazz, traditional jazz, new
age music and more; plus I'll have smooth jazz news and artists
features as well. To listen, go to: http://www.jazznotes.net for
a link that will bring up the stream right away. B98 now has
smooth jazz on the air on one of the new HD Digital radio stations.
B98 HD.2 Smooth Jazz is now playing the best in smooth jazz, 24X7
and it's commercial free. To listen, go to the B98 home page or
pick up one of the new HD Digital radios from an electronic store
or online vendor. If you would like to receive a weekly update
about the Brunch, I invite you to join the Sunday Jazz Brunch e-
mail Announce list. Just send a blank e-mail message to:
b98smoothjazz@jazznotes.net. That's all you have to do!

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SMOOTH JAZZ CHART
For the week ending:March 7, 2008.

#1 Paul Hardcastle - Lucky Star (4th week)

#2 Kenny G - Sax-o-Loco

#3 Eric Marienthal - Blue Water

#4 Euge Groove - Mr. Groove

#5 Boney James -Let It Go

We use charts that are compiled by Radio and Records, a trade
publication. Rankings are based on airplay on U.S. radio stations.

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SMOOTH JAZZ NEWS

Here's just some of the stories that will be heard in Smooth Jazz
News this week:

* Jeff Kashiwa and the Sax Pack to release album and announce
new tour.

* Philippe Saisse moves from NY to L.A.

* David Benoit to release new album titled "Heroes."

* "Lucky Star," from Hardcastle hits #1.

* Jason Miles working on new tribute CD to Grover Washington,
Jr.

Other news!

On Radio: Smooth jazz has a home in Seattle
But for KWJZ-FM, it's still a struggle
By
BILL VIRGIN
P-I REPORTER
New York and Washington, D.C., have both lost their smooth-jazz
stations in recent weeks, leading a radio-industry Web site to
wonder if it's "time to sound a death knell for the format."
Not that it's in trouble everywhere, Tom Webster writes on The
Infinite Dial. In two markets in particular, smooth jazz is not
only far from dead, "it is dominant." One of those markets is
Seattle -- in the form of KWJZ-FM/ 98.9. KWJZ-FM has been a
consistent top 10 ratings and rankings performer, according to
Arbitron data. Among listeners 12 and older, KWJZ ranked sixth in
fall, fourth in summer, among commercial stations in the market
But, says KWJZ program director Carol Handley, "we're having all
the same conversations and struggles as other stations" in the
format.
One advantage KWJZ has is that it's part of a privately held
company, Sandusky, making it less susceptible to the pressures to
cut spending to satisfy Wall Street, a trend now sweeping many
publicly traded radio companies. In fact, KWJZ just started a new
television advertising campaign.
Interestingly, those ads still use the word smooth -- as in "smooth
out," the implication being that the station is an antidote to a
hectic world. But neither they nor the new logo uses "jazz." The
saxophone in the old logo has been replaced by a highly stylized
suggestion of a sax.
That reflects the tricky problem of positioning and definition that
smooth jazz has had. It wasn't traditional jazz, as might be heard
on KPLU-FM/88.5. It wasn't soft rock or adult contemporary,
although KWJZ has long played vocal pieces performed by artists
better known in those genres than in the jazz world. Still, there
was a core of artists, especially instrumentalists, who were
readily identifiable as smooth jazz -- Kenny G, David Sanborn, Jeff
Lorber. Five years ago, "there was so much good music we were
tripping over ourselves," Handley says. The problem with the music
now, she adds, is that "there's less of it." Major record labels,
facing cost-cutting pressures of their own, are bailing out of
smooth jazz. What music is coming out isn't always ideal for
keeping a smooth-jazz station viable. One such trend was a rash of
cover versions of 1970s music, from Motown and soul to singer-
songwriter tunes.
"Everyone got into this cover thing," Handley says. "We tried to
sidestep it unless it was too good to ignore." The problem wasn't
the original material, she adds, but versions that "sound too
Muzaky" and were virtual note-for-note copies. In addition,
"artists don't want to be labeled" by a specific genre, she says.
"If they don't think of themselves as smooth jazz," they don't send
their material to stations such as KWJZ.
That means a lot more digging for material that will keep the
station's playlist fresh. That includes going back to that wealth
of music a few years ago to see what might have been overlooked at
the time. It also means looking for newer artists, from Corinne
Bailey Rae to John Legend, Queen Latifah, Moby and Massive Attack,
to add to the library and attract younger listeners "so it's not
their parents' station." KWJZ has been doing some variation of
smooth jazz for 15 years and Handley believes it will continue to
do so.
"There's a lot of viable music to do what we do," she says. But she
also makes this prediction about the genre: "It won't be called
smooth jazz, of that you can be sure."

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For additional smooth jazz news, listen to Smooth Jazz U.S.A.
Special thanks to the "SmartJock" news service for providing a
majority of our smooth jazz news heard during the show.
(http://www.smartjock.com)

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Jazz artists rewarded for Smooth moves

Peter White, making his first trip to Canada in 10 years, is joined
on stage by Warren Hill and his sax last night during the Canadian
Smooth Jazz Awards at the Living Arts Centre.
By: Chris Clay
March 8, 2008 11:58 AM -
It was a night filled with good music and good times when the 2008
edition of the Canadian Smooth Jazz Awards happened last Friday at
the Living Arts Centre. Mississauga singer Chris Smith was
nominated in the Male Vocalist of the Year category and was up
against with big-name acts such as Michael Buble, Gregory Charles
and Alfie Zappacosta. Smith suffered no shame in losing to eventual
winner Buble. The evening featured performances by saxophonist
Richard Elliot, who was nominated in the International
Instrumentalist of the Year category but lost to Peter White, who
also performed. There were also performances by Finnish vocalist
Janita, Zappacosta, Carol Welsman, Brian Hughes and Darren Rahn.
The list of winners include:
• Randy Crawford - International Vocal
• Diana Krall - Female Vocalist
• Jesse Cook - Guitarist of the Year
• Allistair Elliott - Wind Instrumentalist of the Year
• Kristian Alexandrov - Keyboardist/Pianist of the Year
• Carol Welsman - Album of the Year
• Michael Buble/Alan Chan/Amy Foster-Gillies - Best Original
Composition Alexander Zonjic returned for another year as emcee and
also won the Broadcaster of the Year award.
There was also a presentation of the 2008 George Benson Lifetime
Achievement Award to guitarist Lee Ritenour.
Local musician Robert Tardik kept the crowd going at the after-
party in the RBC Theatre, providing the musical entertainment with
a backing band.
For more information, visit
www.canadiansmoothjazzawards.com

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Editors Note: Read my Blog for my latest rants about the people
that are doing their best to kill this great music we love. They
just can't stand it when something they want to promote is not
making it, so they attack something else to make them look good.

SB

Smooth Jazz: Gentle Into That Good Night?
As the Genre Declines, Stations Switch To New Formats in D.C. and
Nationwide Kenny G, who epitomizes what people love and hate about
smooth jazz, says: "I play songs people want to hear."
By
Marc Fisher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 9, 2008; Page M05
Born in focus groups conducted in windowless conference rooms,
named by a radio station consultant, derided by critics, smooth
jazz vanished from Washington's FM radio dial as the month began.
It was 14 years old.
Actually, it was a listener who uttered the phrase that a
consultant used to sum up this fusion of instrumental music styles.
At a focus group held in Chicago
by Broadcast Architecture, the firm that first sold radio stations
on the new format in the early 1990s, a woman who was asked to
describe the songs being tested blurted out "smooth jazz."
What she was describing was a jazzlike sound without the jazz
essential of improvisation, a melody-driven, generally instrumental
set of songs played primarily on instruments used in jazz. But even
that fungible definition fell apart as smooth jazz spread to about
200 radio stations, including Washington's WJZW (105.9 FM), which
switched to a 1960s-heavy rock oldies format. In recent years,
smooth jazz came to mean not only saxmen Kenny G and Dave Koz but
even singers
Norah Jones
,
India.Arie
and Sting.
Despite hoots and catcalls from fans of straight-ahead jazz and
yawns from pop and rock lovers, smooth jazz was a rare kind of
success -- a genre of music created not so much by the artists and
the record industry as by radio programmers who identified a style,
found an audience and inspired musicians to make the product. As
far back as the 1970s, the jazz fusion movement's lighter hits,
from artists such as Bob James, George Benson and Spyro Gyra, won
airplay not only on the handful of jazz stations around the country
but on light rock and easy-listening stations. Chuck Mangione's
"Feels So Good" from 1977 was probably the first smooth jazz hit,
even if the genre didn't yet exist.
It wasn't until 1987, when a
Los Angeles
station became the first major outlet to devote itself to the
music of David Sanborn
, the Rippingtons and Al Jarreau, that a financial incentive
developed for instrumentalists to write and record music that would
serve as the aural wallpaper that this new format sought.
Radio programmers looking for a way to serve office workers and
stressed-out commuters built a recipe including ingredients from
fusion jazz, light R&B, pop balladeers and a few straight-jazz
artists who followed guitarist Benson's lead toward less
intellectually challenging, more melodic numbers.
From the start, critics hated the stuff, dismissing it as the
elevator music of the '90s. Michael B¿rub¿, a cultural critic at
Penn State University
, defined the genre as "a form of musical waterskiing over the
groove." But smooth jazz stations generally did well, winning an
audience that was unusual for radio -- racially mixed, crossing
boundaries of age, geography and income level. It took until 2000
before the Grammy Awards added a pop instrumental album category to
recognize smooth jazz stars, and the format's artists could never
get away from having to defend themselves against the idea that
they had sold out. "I play songs people want to hear," saxophonist
Kenny G told the Denver Post
in a typical defense. "Critics don't bother me because I know I
have integrity. . . . The jazz purists should be looking at me and
saying 'thank you.' I've brought people into buying instrumental
music. Maybe they'll open up and find an old Sonny Rollins or
Charlie Parker record after that."
Other artists tried a different tack, denying that they fit the
label. "We're not smooth jazz," trumpeter Chris Botti told the
Boston Globe
, even as he acknowledged that his music was not about "playing in
a little tiny club and it sounds like a math test," but rather
"playing big venues and it's pleasing." The format was all about
pleasant melodies, whether it's Kenny G's songful instrumentals or
the soft vocals of an Anita Baker or Sade. For a good chunk of the
'90s, the major force propelling CD sales of the music was the
Weather Channel
, which used smooth jazz as the background sound during its local
weathercasts. But smooth jazz has hit rough waters.
New York City
's CD101.9, for many years the nation's most popular smooth jazz
station, died last month, replaced by a rock format.
Philadelphia
's smooth jazz outlet switched to a rhythmic hits format featuring
everything from Alicia Keys
and
Beyonc
¿ to
Frankie Valli
and
Bon Jovi
.
In Washington, WJZW's ratings had remained steady at the bottom of
the market's top 10 stations -- a bit up over the past couple of
years, but not enough to satisfy executives looking for a more
profitable format.
In cities where the format is still thriving, such as Chicago, more
adventuresome programmers are mixing some more traditional jazz
into the playlist. Pianist and DJ Ramsey Lewis, who hosts a
syndicated show heard on many smooth jazz stations, now blends some
Oscar Peterson
and
Bud Powell
in with the format's R&B and light jazz regulars.
In markets where radio companies killed off smooth jazz because of
drooping ratings, listeners have often demanded a return of the
music. That has happened in Milwaukee
, Philadelphia and already in Washington, where both WASH (97.1 FM)
and WJZW have announced plans to include smooth jazz on one of
their HD channels, which require the purchase of a digital radio.
Both satellite radio services, XM and Sirius, also have smooth jazz
channels.
That may not be enough to calm the legions of agitated fans who
have been calling the offices of WJZW's owner,
Citadel Broadcasting
, but in the radio industry, listeners' desire for relaxing
background music is not a priority these days. With sales of
advertising spots in sharp decline, programmers and advertisers
alike are looking for listeners who will be paying close attention,
and that means music that's front and center, not light and breezy.

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