Smooth Jazz but Bland Radio Personalizing Jazz

There was a time when listening to jazz on the radio was a highly personal experience. Disc jockeys like New York City’s Symphony Sid laid down a carpet of lush-toned introductions, their tune selections--made spontaneously--flowed with the mood of the moment. Late-night sets included a plethora of ballads, the soaring high notes of John Coltrane, the blues-inflected lines of Charlie Parker, the intimate sensuousness of Miles Davis’ muted trumpet--even an occasional Frank Sinatra one-for-the-road stroll into the world of a quarter to 3three.

Morning shifts were more energetic, driven by buoyant up-tempos designed to help listeners get up and moving. It was music, in other words, that pulsed and breathed with the essence of life, presented with the sort of improvisational immediacy that is essential to jazz itself.

Random stations like that still exist today--on the Southland FM dial at 88.1, where KLON-FM remains firmly in touch with the colorful history of the music, especially when the resonant bass-baritone of veteran disc jockey Chuck Niles is introducing the selections. Around the country, similar outlets function on a local basis, almost always associated with a university, often linked to National Public Radio. Their styles and their musical choices run the gamut of jazz, their orientation as varied as their far-ranging locations, their programming llargely determined by the unpredictable, on-the-spot choices of individual disc jockeys.

But suppose you favor a different sort of jazz? Suppose your affections are focused onupon the arena that has come to be known as smooth jazz? Also referred to, with varying degrees of accuracy as new adult contemporary, (or NAC), urban, instrumental pop and even (stretching the definition to the limit) contemporary jazz, the music is a smorgasbord of ingredients, dipping liberally into blues, pop, R&B;, fusion and mainstream jazz. One of the flagship presenters of the music is the Southland’s KTWV-FM ( 94.7), or tThe Wave, a station so adept at promoting the style that it has its own label--Wave Music--for the genre.

And it is here that matters become considerably more complicated. Mainstream jazz fans pretty much know that the music they hear from a performer via recordings, radio or live performance are going to be fairly consistent. Live always has the potential for more visceral energies, but the distinctions are relatively small.

Smooth jazz compositions can be starkly dissimilar. A particularly compelling example took place two weeks ago, during KTWV’s recent “A Wave of Peace” concert at the Forum, in whereich there was a startling difference between the live performances and the music one hears--from the same artists--played over the radio airwaves.

Asked about the contrast, many musicians simply shrugged and referred vaguely to the excitement of a live performance.

Others have more forthright opinions.

“Smooth jazz ,” says singer Patti Austin, who performed impressively in the concert, “is fraught with rules and regulations at this point as to what your music must be if it is to be played on the radio,”. says singer Patti Austin, who performed impressively in thate concert. “And Tthe irony is that what gets programmed on the radio is usually the smoothest, most soul-less cut on your album.”

Why the distinction?

Largely because smooth jazz, since it first began to emerge in the ‘80s, has become one of the most successful radio music formats of the past few decades--far more successful than mainstream jazz radio. And its success can be traced to the fact that it moved quickly past the familiar, laid-back aspects of jazz radio into a gradually evolving pop music approach to programming and formatting.

What you hear on smooth jazz radio, in other words, is not the product of a knowledgeable disc jockey, using the dynamics of the time of day, the season of the year and the immediacy of his or her own emotions of the moment to create an improvised sequence of music. (Beyond traditional jazz radio, that sort of spontaneous technique has largely been relegated to the work of DJs in dance clubs.)

The majority of smooth jazz stations rely instead upon research and testing data to determine their playlists. Words such as “rotation,” “playlist,” “imaging,” “flow,” “passion points” and “strategic scheduling” are common in the smooth jazz media in the smooth jazz media.

Why? Because, as Austin so pointedly explained, it is a largely prepackaged musical environment. Like pop stations, smooth jazz outlets carefully plan their playlists. Almost without exception, music directors, not individualindividual disc jockeys, schedule songs and the sequence in which they are played. Although there are plenty of knowledgeable hosts--saxophonist Dave Koz, on KTWV’s morning with partner Pat Prescott, is a prime example--smooth jazz disc jockeys, like pop jocks, are valued most as on-air personalities.

The music that is scheduled, however, is not randomly chosen. Which raises the intriguing question of who decides what smooth jazz fans hear.

The short answer is that songs are picked by music directors. The longer, more convoluted response is that those picks are made with significant input from research organizations, primarily from Broadcast Architecture, a New Jersey-based rresearch and consulting firm.

“Out of the 47 stations that we log at our publication,” says Carol Archer, smooth jazz editor of the influential weekly Radio ∧ Records, “27twenty-seven use data from Broadcast Architecture.”

Is there a Big Brother factor at work here? Does Broadcast Architecture represent some sort of malevolent effort to control the smooth jazz airwaves?

Of course not. “What Broadcast Architecture provides ,” says Archer, “is nothing more than a highly sophisticated set of programming tools,.” Archer says.

The company, in other words, is no more directly responsible for the selections that are actually chosen by radio station music directors than the Nielsen ratings are for what stays or what goes on a television network’s schedule.

Nonetheless, the effecimpact of both organizations is obvious:; Tthey supply research data that ostensibly directs programmers to material that will generate the largest audience numbers. In the case of Broadcast Architecture, that information is even more precisely targeted by gathering research data from stations’ local communities.

Why is this so important?

Because in radio, as in television, the real transaction is not between the advertiser and the listener/viewer; it is between the advertiser and the radio station/television network. Advertisers are buying access to a certain number of listeners/viewers, often within targeted demographics. The more listeners, the higher the advertising revenue for the station.

Equally significant, smooth jazz radio stations have been remarkably effective in reaching the most commercially desirable segment of that audience--generally reaching the 20s-40s age demographic of the 20s through 40s. A vital element in that success has been the effective establishment of smooth jazz as a kind of blandly pleasant, unobtrusive soundtrack.

“I can listen to it or not listen to it,” a 40-40something writer friend told me. “It doesn’t get in the way of my thought process, and every now and then something surfaces--some melody or something--that I really enjoy.”

For some listeners--and musicians, as well--that sort of comment is a flat-out explanation of the pleasures of the pleasures of musical wallpaper. Obviously, Nno one wants to deny anyone the opportunity to use this music as a sort of calming, auditory tranquilizer. But it’s unfortunate that, in the process, the songs and performances that are used in this fashion too often are barely adequate representations of an artist’s true skills.

Take a particularly glaring (and potentially controversial) example: Kenny G’s playing has become a virtual joke to mainstream jazz fans, even though many have barely heard him play. And Tthere’s no denying that the strolls through his audiences, and his showboating use of circular breathing techniques have become excessive. But in the late ‘70s, when he was still Kenny Gorelick, he was a talented, Coltrane-influenced, young tenor saxophonist. TAnd those skills continue to drift beneath the surface, emerging occasionally in his live performances, never on his recordings.

The same can be said of players such as Koz, Rick Braun, Kirk Whalum, Everette Harp and dozens of others, along with singers such as Austin, Phil Perry, Brenda Russell and Al Jarreau, all of whom possess imaginative musical abilities not always perceptible on their recordings, and virtually never heard on smooth jazz radio.

So it’s not surprising that there is a distinct chasm between fans of mainstream jazz and smooth jazz. Most mainstream fans wouldn’t be caught dead at a Chris Botti or a Whalum concert, even though they would surely be surprised at how much they would like what they heard. And the paradox is that when they hear the most commercially oriented tracks from a Botti or a Whalum CD on KTWV, it’s not likely that they’re going to experience anything to challenge their existing prejudices.

It seems apparent that the juggernaut of smooth jazz, Wave-style radio has been far too adroit at satisfying advertisers for observers to expect anything to change in the near future. But Austin sees a small glimmer of hope in the experience she’s been having at summer festival concerts--traditionally programs that draw musically eclectic audiences.

“What I’m seeing ,” she says, “is a definite audience developing around the so-called smooth jazz banner,” she says. “And what that means to those listeners--because of what they hear in those concerts--seems to be different from what it means to the program directors on the smooth jazz radio stations. Because if you go out and do the radio cut from your album the same way, live, the audience won’t respond. They’ll head for the food stands. You have to kick it up a notch for live audiences.”

Maybe sometime soon, a radio station will take a chance on tapping into that hunger for more emotionally gripping music. Maybe by doing so, by programming from experience and instinct rather than data and research, the station will y’ll discover that the audience Austin describesd by Austin is ready to accept similar performances onver the radio, as well. And maybe that audience will expand to include some open-eared fans of mainstream jazz, ready to stretch their own definitions of America’s music.

Who knows, maybe there’s already a station somewhere out there doing all of that. WAs Lady Brett says to Jake Barnes in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” wouldn’t it be nice to think so?