There are political sentiments in the lyrics on this album but they are at odds with the good-time music. This is a pretty sweet album cover though it initially looks more like an angry protest album rather than the groovy party platter that is found within its sleeves. When I want some guilt free Smooth Jazz in my life one of the first platters I reach for is Red, Black & Green by Roy Ayers Ubiquity. Both are quality bossa novas that feature fractured, percussive vibraphone solos from Ayers but one will get you dirty looks from your kids and excluded from the general dating pool while one is still being played in urban haberdasheries and wine bars.

To understand the difference between the Jazz Roy Ayers and the Pop Roy Ayers check out his extended live jam of Burt Bacharach’s lovely “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head” and then compare it to the funkier, bass-heavy studio version he cut the previous year. The king of Acid Jazz may well be Ayers, a vibraphonist and bandleader who tempered his post-bop bonafides with mainstream instincts and a real feel for funk and soul.

The Big Four are probably George Benson, Grover Washington, Jr, Ramsey Lewis, and Roy Ayers. The pioneers of Smooth Jazz were all serious boppers who needed to survive, even thrive, in the 1970s but did so in ways that sounded, and felt, right. That has kind of morphed into the more electronic nu jazz of today. Basically, the early 1970s jazz-soul-funk-Latin roots of Acid Jazz were also the birth of Smooth Jazz. Over in the UK they came up with the term Acid Jazz to get away with listening to something cooler. I think Smooth Jazz radio survives in Atlanta. The format quickly died out when it was largely replaced in the industry by downtempo and chilled out ambient electronica. It ruled as a radio format, tied to Quiet Storm, from the early 1980s through to the early 2000s. Smooth Jazz started as Fusion and Crossover jazz in the 1970s when different cuts of it were played on jazz, R&B, and early FM rock radio stations. To get around this fact people change what it is called. Everybody hates Smooth Jazz but everybody wants some of it in their lives.

Roy ayers albums covers