Music I Used to Like #6: just how deaf do you need to be to not get this?

Grover Washington Jnr: “Loran’s Dance” from Reed Seed (Motown, 1978)

THERE IS NO more despised genre of music than jazz-funk, certainly as it is sniffed at by a certain kind of English music fan, who always knows what’s best for everyone, and what is worst.

Well, I am sorry to say that, as is so often the case with sweeping dismissals, this judgment is the result of very poor or lazy research. It is certainly true to say that there is no shortage of extremely grim jazz-funk, all the way from the late 1970s through to the 1990s, when the more refined kinds of hip hop made jazz-funk pretty much obsolete. And I might even be sufficiently great in spirit as to concede that the grim stuff was in the majority; a small majority.

To say that all jazz-funk is, by definition, meretricious just shows the poor quality of your listening, I’m afraid. Either you didn’t put in the yards or you’re deafer than I am, and I am very deaf (though not as a consequence of listening to too much David Sanborn).

Here’s what you need to know. Firstly, you need to understand that jazz-funk is of value only when it is both jazzy and funky (if it’s neither then it is possibly Kenny G, in which case you should step away from whatever console you’re listening to Kenny G on and pour bleach into your ears). Secondly, you should perhaps observe the general rule of thumb that, apart from the very tough end of jazz-funk eg Defunkt, there is virtually no good jazz-funk after 1978. Thirdly, you need to get to grips with the notion that jazz-funk was primarily a social music. As in the 1960s, when the compatible elements of soul/R&B conjoined with jazz to make great hangin’-out music (sometimes called ‘soul-jazz’), so it was the case in the following decade that funk loaded itself with chops and vision and gave the world Herbie Hancock’s Head Hunters.

I mention Head Hunters not only because it is perhaps the most famous jazz-funk record of them all, but also because it is simply not possible to play the thing without finding, more or less instantly, that you are hangin’ out — whether there’s anyone else in the room or not. The object of most good jazz-funk is not to radicalise but to engender a vibe. Which is another thing to look out for when trying to get your head round its circumference. The vibe. Is it a vibe you can get next to and down with? Or is it an invitation to go to sleep?

I would suggest that if it feels like the last train to Snoresville then there is every chance it came out after 1978 and has a picture on the cover of Grover Washington Jr in an expensive suit either clutching a bundle of saxophones (he played all of them and very well too) or tooting one of them wistfully into a great sky or a moody sea or a luxuriously appointed bedroom, just like Marketing told him to — anything that signified uptown black aspiration with highly polished knobs on. Grover Washington Jr, who died in 1999, was the poster boy for jazz-funk’s great evacuation. The music vacated itself, let go of the funkier aspects of its funk componentry and became ‘Smooth Jazz’.

The pivotal moment? The record upon which jazz-funk pivoted to hell? It’s called Winelight and it has about as much to do with the funk as any doorknob you’ve polished, I‘d venture to suggest. It is smo-o-o-oth moooody indoor muzak for people who need to be reminded constantly that funky was something they used to be. You will almost certainly know the hit single that warranted the suburban sophistiwife’s belief that the time is right, the time is now, the time is always wine-o’clock. Step forward Mr Smooth Soul Man Bill Withers and “Just the Two of Us.” The other one in the binary equation of course was Grover Washington Jr, whose album it really was.

All of which came as a grave blow to authentically funky people everywhere, especially those who had grown up on Washington’s chewy jazz-funk proper, as he’d brought his remarkable plurality of saxes to bear on all kinds of groove music, from straight-ahead R&B via orchestrated funky soul to the nearer reaches of electronic jazz. He was a really, really good player with a warm yet tufty tone and really, really good taste.

Let me recommend to you a small handful of the excellent (and relentlessly funky, one way or another) albums he shoved our way in the earlier stretches of the 1970s on Creed ‘CTI’ Taylor’s urban, street-savvy imprint KuDu Records: Soul Box, All the King’s Horses, A Secret Place, Feels So Good and the 1975 album that shifted him up a deck, commercially speaking, Mister Magic. It was “commercial”, for sure, but it was also rather good, especially if you were looking to hang out and engender a vibe.

The same might be said for Reed Seed, the last Grover album to groove from soup to nuts in a way that felt nutritious. It’s a little sleeker than prior efforts (you sense the forthcoming horrors of Winelight glinting in the distance) and there are some interesting arrangements that call for violin as a second lead instrument — but funky violin, if you know what I mean (“not fuckin’ Paganini, man,” as a fellow disappointed Washingtonian once asserted with great and fervent accuracy).

The cut you’ll probably have going already from the link above, “Loran’s Dance”, is the closer on Reed Seed and it expresses a melancholy farewell to all that: to proper jazz-funk that is both jazzy and funky and makes you want to hang out with people and get up a vibe. It has a pedal point bass, as I recall, anticipating one of hip hop’s great stylistic features, and its top layer is full of interesting stuff, different saxophones doing unusual things and what have you. It’s like … you know, like proper. Proper jazz-funk.

Nick Coleman is the author of three books, published in the UK, the US and Spain by Jonathan Cape / Vintage. The are ‘The Train in the night: a story of music and loss’, ‘Voices: how a great singer can change your life’ and ‘Pillow Man’, a novel.

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