Soul Jazz was a continuation of the
musical mess that created hard bop, that
is the combination of the blues, gospel,
bebop, and groovin' feeling. It also
marked a shift in rhythmic sensibility
to incorporate the emerging bossa-nova
and straight eighth note feeling that
would come to dominate the 1960s.
However, swing remained a powerful
component in some soul jazz.
Les McCann was an early soul jazz
player, as evidenced by our opening
number. His along with other piano trios
become very popular in the early to
middle 1960s and heavily influenced the
sound of popular "soul" music.
George Benson mixed straight ahead
jazz and soul jazz in his early years
and we hear a lesser known piece but one
that captures the solid groove enabled
by Lonnie Smith. Bill Childs some twenty
years later recorded a soulful piece,
one that illustrates a touch of fusion
as well, and we end the second set with
Cannonball Adderley's Quintet, a band
that straddled the line between hard bop
and soul jazz for many years.
Bobby Hutcherson was not a major
player on the soul jazz scene until much
later in the 1970s. By then his sound
was a tad more fusion than soul, but
serves as a great illustration of where
the two idioms met. Booker T and the M.
G.s were predominantly an Soul or R&B
band, but their final album carried a
strong Soul Jazz tinge, and we hear them
swing it along a nice steady groove.
Ramey Lewis's and Les McCann's were two
piano trios that managed a good deal of
popularly outside of jazz circles, and
this shuffling groove is testimony to
that.
Closing out the hour we hear from the
creative soul of Eddie Harris, reeds,
keys, and voice seemingly all at once.
And our final number is one of the best
known tracks from the idiom, recorded at
a jam session at the now famous Montreux
Jazz Festival in 1969.
Soul Jazz per se waned in popularity
as fusion took over the more commercial
aspects of jazz to be followed by a
return to the classic hard bop forms
some years later. Nevertheless, soul
jazz was not just a cheap gimmickl, but
an exploration of yet another side of
the blues reinterpretted in the context
of the then present day. The
improvisation that took place on any of
these tracks is testimonal to the
"pureness" of the jazz art component,
the rich groove and fun times, reflect
the soulfulness of life.
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