Breaking Rank in the Jazz World : Records: Fourplay’s music is high on the charts, but the group seems misplaced in contemporary category.

For better or worse, the best-selling jazz albums these days are generally listed under a heading called Contemporary Jazz with the top rungs on that musical ladder filled with such stellar names as Kenny G, John Tesh and a band called Fourplay.

Wait a minute. Can this be the Fourplay that includes pianist Bob James, guitarist Lee Ritenour, bassist Nathan East and drummer Harvey Mason? The same James who once accompanied Sarah Vaughan and had a brief flirtation with the jazz avant-garde? The Ritenour who recently recorded a bunch of Wes Montgomery tunes? And East and Mason--rhythm players who have been first call for everyone from Michael Jackson to Donald Byrd?

In the same grouping with Kenny G and John Tesh?

The very same. Which probably says a lot more about the catchall, grab-bag characteristics of the Contemporary Jazz chart selection process than it does about Fourplay’s credibility as a jazz ensemble. They’re happy to be in the house, but they’re not fond of the neighborhood.

“What make things difficult for us semantically,” James said, “is that there are a lot of instrumental artists who have been placed in the jazz category who aren’t comfortable being there. John Tesh may be one. I think Kenny G definitely is. And there are others, as well, who think of themselves as popular musicians who don’t have the history or the passion of jazz artists.

“Well, in my case,” he continued, “I do have a passion for jazz, and that’s how I would differentiate myself and Fourplay from those other names. If the records we make merit being on a chart, I’m happy that they’re on a jazz chart, because I think of Fourplay collectively as jazz artists. And if that differentiates us from other instrumental artists who may have just been put there for lack of a better place to put them, then I’d like to be differentiated that way.”

Semantics aside, Fourplay has been one of the rare pleasant surprises to emerge from the electronics-laden, pop-driven, so-called “contemporary jazz” of the ‘70s and ‘80s. (The quartet’s punning, double-entendre name was fashioned by James, whose sometimes dry intellectualism fails to disguise a wry and whimsical sense of humor.)

Saturday night Fourplay performs at the Pantages Theatre, and the group’s third album, “Elixir” (Warner Bros.), has recently been released. Within a week after it arrived in August, the CD hit the top of the contemporary jazz charts, and lately has been jousting with Kenny G for the No. 1 spot.

The band’s prominence on the contemporary jazz chart listings, however, has not enhanced its musical viability in the minds of some observers. Contemporary jazz, after all, has been a category that usually has been associated with lightweight, instrumental pop fluff rather than meaningful improvisational creativity.

To their credit, the members of Fourplay, individually and collectively, have mined a few nuggets of real gold from the synthetic environs of the contemporary jazz style. True, their music overflows with the easily accessible rhythmic grooves, catchy melodies, floating harmonies and atmospheric timbres identified with the commercial Wave music labeled contemporary jazz. But it also is firmly grounded upon a structure of first-rate improvising from James and Ritenour, and an urgent swing from Mason and East.

“We’re a lot more organic than the drum machine and synthesizer contemporary jazz bands,” East said. “And we’re a performance group, not a backup band with a saxophone player or a keyboardist or a guitarist out front.”

But Fourplay has gotten heat from jazz critics, many of whom continue to lean on James, in particular, intimating that his participation in Fourplay represents an abandonment of the jazz mainstream. This despite the fact that over the past two decades he has released more than a dozen of his own pop-oriented albums (all currently in reissue on Warner Bros.) that contain very little of his early, bop-based playing.

“If they want to criticize us for what we do, fine,” James said. “But what I’d like to see is more discussion of the skill and the subtlety and the craftsmanship that goes into any kind of music, rather than simply this kind of globally dismissive attitude toward an alleged style.”

James even takes his response to the criticism a step further, noting that as an artist and a jazz musician he is completely content with Fourplay’s music as an arena for personal expression.

“Within this genre,” he explained, “we try to take the same risks with our solos that we associate with the jazz idiom. We try to surprise each other, the way any jazz player will.

“And I consider the genre that Fourplay is playing in to be my straight-ahead genre. This is me, playing straight-ahead. It’s the genre in which it is the most natural for me to express my style of playing as a soloist.”

Ritenour, while underscoring his continued affection for bop-derived jazz, concurred with James, suggesting that critics would do well to listen a bit more closely to what Fourplay actually does.

“This is not the kind of band that plays music consisting of tune, solo, solo, solo, tune and out,” Ritenour added. “With us, there’s improvisation going on all the time, in the way we interact with each other, in the way a rhythm takes place, in the way a melody is played.”

Mason agreed, pointing out that Fourplay is a group in which “all of the players are intense listeners, immediate reactors and instant creators.”

How do four highly successful musicians from disparate stylistic backgrounds, with active individual careers, manage to come together so well? Especially since James lives on the East Coast, while the others are situated in California?

“With a lot of planning,” Ritenour replied. “I mean, we’ve got a bunch of busy guys here.”

Once one of L.A.’s preeminent studio players, Ritenour has backed name performers ranging from Barbra Streisand to Steely Dan, and has 25 solo albums of his own and a dozen Grammy nominations.

East and Mason have been equally prolific--much in demand in the studios and as tour musicians. East, a NARAS Most Valuable Player for four consecutive years, recorded and traveled with Eric Clapton, performing on the guitarist’s “Unplugged” album. More recently, he has been backing up singer Phil Collins.

Mason has received four first-place awards in Modern Drummers’ Studio poll, and three most valuable player trophies from NARAS. In addition to six solo albums, he has probably appeared on more gold and platinum jazz crossover albums than any drummer in the universe.

James, who finds time to supplement his musical endeavors with work as an artists and repertoire executive for Warner Bros., has performed on and produced numerous gold and platinum recordings. His current release is “Flesh and Blood,” a collaboration with his vocalist daughter, Hillary James.

Fourplay, by almost any definition, has a “good sound.” And the ultimate answer to the question of whether or not its music fits one’s own interpretation of jazz lies in the ear of the listener.

Or, as James explains, “Once, at a party, I met a woman who, when she found out I was a jazz musician, told me, ‘Oh, I just love jazz! Except when it sounds as though they’re making it up as they go along.’ ”

* Fourplay, with opening acts Vesta and Steven Kowalczyk, at the Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Saturday, 8 p.m. All seats $29. (213) 480-3232.