Crossover Jazz

Ponty has worked with Frank Zappa and John McLaughlin, has provided brilliant violin work as a session player, and has had a terrific run as a bandleader. This [more]

Keyboardist Bob James and acoustic guitarist Earl Klugh struck gold with this session, recently reissued on CD. The formula hasn't changed much in succeeding years. Both [more]

Nine soul-jazz cuts from the Blue Note vaults from between 1967 and 1970, all previously unreleased, alternate takes, or (in one case) only released on a single, by major figures [more]

For George Benson's second CTI project, producer Creed Taylor and arranger Don Sebesky successfully place the guitarist in a Spanish-flavored setting full of flamenco flourishes, brass fanfares, moody woodwinds and such. The idea works best on

All of a sudden, George Benson became a pop superstar with this album, thanks to its least representative track. Most of Breezin' is a softer-focused variation of Benson's R&B/jazz-flavored [more]

While this two-CD set does cover a lot of the material Maynard Ferguson recorded between the mid-'50s and late '90s, it suffers from a chronological imbalance that [more]

The Essential George Benson covers 28 years and spans two discs, so it lives up to its claim of having the widest scope of all the Benson compilations that surfaced before [more]

Though it includes just one track originally released on Blue Note (Kenny Dorham's "Afrodisia"), Latino Blue is a superb collection of Latin jazz spanning the late '50s to the late [more]

The second of Benson's John Hammond-produced albums is far and away the superior of the pair, mixing down-to-basics, straight-ahead jazz with soul-drenched grooving. Suddenly [more]

Barely into her twenties and, on this, her third album, Patrice Rushen's music spoke volumes for her talent and the growth she would endure as a music virtuoso. This album is not [more]

Altoist David Sanborn has long been one of the leaders of what could be called rhythm & jazz (R&B-oriented jazz). His debut for Warner Brothers was a major commercial success and helped [more]

Ramsey Lewis is not only thriving in his golden years, but continues to refine his approach within the tried-and-true piano-bass-drums trio format. [more]

Smooth Jazz Hits collects 12 laid-back, smooth tracks released on the Concord label from Chuck Loeb, Najee, and Boney James, alongside Kenny G's "Tango," Paul Brown's, "Ol' Skoolin'" and Norman Brown's

Great Britain's BGO imprint (an acronym for "Beat Goes On") puts together a pair of well-known full-length titles from the ubiquitous George Duke. In this two-disc set [more]