Herbie ruined jazz with this album, right?
no not really
For you maybe.
But by that metric you could say that Springsteen ruined rock when he dropped Born to Run since there hasn't been a truly great rock album made since that can compare. Even The River sounds like a cash grab by comparison.
Stupid opinion
nah
not really, the writing was already on the wall by the time Head Hunters came out - sure, I would have loved to see more albums like Sextant from Herbie, but he did end up making the best jazz-funk albums of the mid-70's
a much more ominous album for the future of jazz released some 9 months before Head Hunters was Donald Byrd's Black Byrd that became the best selling Blue Note release of all time - quite a feat considering Blue Note's star studded back catalog
it's a great album in it's own right mixing new soul and r&b sounds with jazz influences, but certainly a major milestone leading into the tasteless smooth jazz of the mid-to-late 70's, I'd say
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIf6Vsphtmo
nah he did that with rockit
>>64055851
No, you're an idiot and jazz has never been "ruined"
>>64056210
in other major offenders for the smoothification of jazz before Head Hunters consider Deodato's first album on Creed Taylor's CTI Records from 1972
his funky beat+orchestration version of Also Sprach Zarathustra, then firmly entrenched in popular culture by virtue of being on the soundtrack of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, was a pretty direct forefather of disco and a big single hit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJK3eUP5Hvg
CTI went from being a reputable jazz label to putting out some terrible smooth jazz schlock - look no further than Deodato for one of the big causes of this change
is that en emoji?
>>64056433
it's a VU meter
>>64056585
damn...
Hey guys what's going on
>>64056210
Pretty sure Norah holds the record for best selling Blue Note release. Come Away With Me has sold 26 million copies. Pretty funny reading about how all these Jazzheads sperged out out Black Byrd. They sound exactly like us. Something catches on and blam! All aboard the Contrarian Train.
>>64056799
oh yeah, I meant to say "best selling Blue Note album up to then" or something to that effect - I'm sure multiple modern mainstream Blue Note releases have outsold Black Byrd by now and I wouldn't be surprised if 60's post-bop classics would have caught surprised it now, I'd assume 60's Herbie and Shorter albums are pretty steady sellers
>>64056672
Benson is really one of those good examples of how mainstream jazz just went nauseatingly smooth during the 70's - listening to his discography in chronological order is a pretty miserable experience
other examples include George Duke and James Mtume who went from playing with Miles and stuff like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwNmqy-_1Fk
to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnUUgMVd9J0 in about 10 years
>>64056366
This album really fucked me up. I picked it up at Goodwill having only heard 2001, and being a fan of it (mostly because of Phish's version... you really haven't experienced a dance party till you've been at a Phish show when they drop a big funky 2001) but the rest of the album is really really bad... smooth jazz schlock doesn't begin to describe it. No funk at all. I was pretty disappointed.
>>64056928
That album is probs the best smooth jazz album ever released. Which isn't saying much but if you can get over how cheesy it is...
do you know what, nah it's still actually not that great but it's like the Love Supreme of smooth jazz.
>>64056672
Ugh.
I don't want to call him a sell out, but damn.
Body Talk and Bad Benson are so good though.
>>64056961
it's somewhat amusing that the track that caused disco is easily the most exciting track on the album - the last track September 13 is not completely terrible, though
the album in general kind of feels to me like Deodato heard Airto's Free and decided to make a really boring version of it and Free itself was Airto's somewhat pale attempt at making something like the first Return to Forever -album (while having access to not only the entire Return to Forever band, but also Keith Jarrett and Ron Carter and many others)
Free is not bad, but considering what Airto had to work with it should have been much better
That's kind of the story of CTI Records as a whole for me - a lot of promise and potential ending up in mostly disappointments
>>64056996
I don't know man - I'd rather even take something really cheesy like Grover Washington Jr.'s Winelight instead
in all seriousness, my pick for best smooth jazz album of all time is Bob James' One and I can't think of anything I'd primarily classify as smooth jazz comes even close - how could all those people who sampled Nautilus be wrong after all?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BP1_1DpeBE
>>64057301
I haven't heard it. I can't promise I'll get to it soon but I'll throw it in the backlog.
I remember a year or two ago /jazz/ organised a nothing but jazz January and I was yearning for some Stevie Wonder halfway the month and I listened to Breezin' and there's one of the tracks on that with a vocalist who does a damn good impersonation of him and I was delighted.
Bit of an odd reason to like an album but I've unusually fond feelings for it because I've got that memory of it you know?
>>64056299
This. This is the shittiest album ever that destroyed the genre.
>>64057301
is Heads smooth or fusion? love that album, one of my favorites of all time
