I don't think Kenny is crap, although I might use that term as short hand in conversation at times. He and his band are skilled musicians, just that the music is way too bland and shallow for my tastes. Kenny's stuff is all about twee romance - like one of those dime a dozen rom coms.
That's why WAWW was used - because it's the same thing, just as twee as the G Man. So it was an apt choice, just that the jazz community looked at his efforts in symbolic terms. The only thing that lame song had going for it was Satchmo's wonderful gravel, along with the kind of sentiment that we all feel when the rose coloured glasses are on.
Really, it's not smooth jazz so much as smooth fusion, anyway. It's a close cousin to some of the blander music of Pat, Larry Carlton, Stan Getz etc.
That's the whole thing. It's not whether or not it's good music. It is whether or not it's jazz.
What are the implications of expecting jazz musicians to sell 5,000,000 copies every time they put out an album. Well, it is going to delude the genre because most of these artists do not sell like that and they never did.
The question is What is jazz and Who gets to define it? Of course ultimately that has to be defined by the artists not by a label head telling you to play your music over Louie Armstrong. I know the three of us are in agreement on that from your recent posts. Should have brought in the Henry Cow earlier Polly.
People get caught up in the jazz snob bias, or in other words, jazz was a popular music and now jazz snobs look down on popular music or else they argue that you really can't have an objective opinion about music because everyone listens to what they love. But as Stan said, oh once or twice in these threads, those people usually do not have any investment in the music. I was more eloquent and said those people were talking crap. "You can take the boy out of Brooklyn . . .but . . . If you go down that road, you'd have to ask why jazz guys like Bird, Monk and Evans didn't write more popular ditties. Well, Evans wrote Waltz for Debbie. Beautiful tune. Never reached the top 20. Listen to the Johnny Hartmann version. Tony Bennett also recorded it with Evans.
People believe jazz is not popular because jazzers are biased against popular music; but I gave two examples of jazz players, Brad Meldhau Wonderwall and Joshua Redman The Crunge who have worked with popular tunes. People could seek that out if they really want to hear current popular standards done by jazz musicians?
Doesn't get anymore pop than any of this.
There's Jazzentine cover of Nothing Else Matters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jscBpOUl7FY
or Casandra Wilson's cover of Last Train to Clarksvlle or .(or Time After Time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySVWeao57m8 )
Vanessa Rubin Sting's It's Probably Me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLfO...A2E3A080&playnext_from=PL&playnext=2&index=16
Diana Krall Temptation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NdJFmyLmMo
Kurt Ehrling Undun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Bk35_f4yI
Gretchen Parlato Bjork Come to Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPIrK6a_YMs
Kevin Mahogony I'm Walkin'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjgncJouwoQ&feature=relate
From the pop side . .and listen to those musicians.