"Smooth jazz" vs. Hard Bop (i.e. what is crappier)

I'm no jazz expert by ANY means, but I have a Blue Note sampler that contains Art Blakey, Kenny Burrell, Lee Morgan, etc. -- all of whom'd be considered hard bop, right? -- and it's pretty awesome, actually.

Art Blakey's Moanin' is the "well...duh" classic album but the messangers released a bunch of albums, I forget which one its on but I love the song "ping pong."

Kenny Burrell's "Midnight Blue" is the only one of his I'm really familliar with but its one of my favorites.

I've had my own backlash against "hard-bop" from time to time, but I'm never going to start appreciating smooth jazz. Art Blakey's Birdland sessions, Shorter's Blue Note albums etc. will always be classic to me. But there is a lot of boring hard bop out there, no doubt.

Well, there's plenty of rough jazz, but does that automatically not make it mainstream?

Also, is 'mainstream jazz' what currently sells the most (smooth jazz, I guess) or 'straight-ahead', i.e. people still playing hard bop?

There's plenty of other jazz being made -- for a while the "downtown" scene seemed to be gaining steam though I don't know where it's at now.

These guys were excellent musicians playing very difficult music very well, and they had taste, energy, invention (apart from the structures, of course) but they just couldn't spark my interest. Frankly I couldn't be arsed putting in the concentration required to follow the long solos through the harmonic structure. I have plenty of stuff like this in my collection, it was very much in the vein of the stuff Sonny Rollins used to do, or pre "A Love Supreme" Coltrane. I've been listening a lot to Lee Konitz's "Motion" lately and it's been a revelation (I should post on that separately). (Jordan and other drummers - have you heard Elvin Jones's playing on that album? Completely stunning - think "subtle", "tasteful" - hard to believe this is the same guy who was leaving the recording session to do the fireworks stuff with Coltrane).

This is a meandering post, sorry, but the gig made me aware of how much my appetite for anything too mainstream has worn thin - it seems I'm still happy to listen to the greats on record occasionally, but this kind of "blowing" gig no longer does it for me live, even when it's done to a really impressive standard.

One of my favorite Elvin-but-not-that-Elvin records is Gil Evans' The Individualism of Gil Evans, it's a slow-burning modernist big-band and Elvin makes it work.

This record is so great.

Getting back on track here - how is "Dis Heah" a "contrived and annoying" title?

Cuein' a Daver

in any case hard-bop rulez k thx bye

because jazz is all about sound, first. hell, all music is.

Also some CTI stuff is a bit proto-smooth jazz, and some of it is great (Freddie Hubbard's "Red Clay")

Also Bob James' acoustic trio albums are great. There's one with Brian Blade and John Pattitucci and one with Billy Kilson (from Dave Holland's group) and James Genus.

Pat Metheny Group - Still Life (Talking)

I can't be arsed to read the whole thread in detail as I'm about to fall asleep but I will say that of course the title of the thread is an obvious trap for received wisdom squares- Smooth Jazz is what is supposed to suck bigtime, so I suppose somewhere in this thread it is recuperated and the traitor is shown to be the hero in good Borgesian fashion. It seems to me that the Drummin' Men here, Hurting and Jordan (have I got that right?) have made an otm effort to think this thing through.

So sleepy. Post now, pay price tomorrow.