The Very Best of Smooth Jazz - UCJ

Finally with The Very Best Of Smooth Jazz, I've discovered exactly what they mean. This is an album pitched squarely at people who have heard one or two tracks accompanying television adverts and want to hear more of the same. Even the track listing admits as much, with its "as heard on" subtitles.

This means that vast swathes of this double-CD collection are filled with the sort of music that, if you heard in a lift, would make you get out and walk up fourteen storeys just to avoid. For every genuine classic - Ella Fitzgerald's performance is, of course, utterly brilliant - there are at least half a dozen songs which aren't even jazz, but are in fact quasi-jazz MotR easy-listening rubbish. It's unfortunate that Amazon won't allow reviewers to use obscenities because a nice earthy metaphor for excrement would come in quite handy for describing some of the tracks here.

I'd go so far as to say that even the likes of Louis Armstrong's song included here, better known as a Bond theme tune, isn't real jazz either. To include one of the world's greatest ever jazz musicians but to select a non-jazz track is very disappointing but effortlessly sums up the publisher's intentions.

My recommendation, and Amazon makes this spectacularly easy to achieve, is that you avoid this album and instead, dip in to the jazz section and find a couple of albums that reviewers recommend whole-heartedly. There is plenty of really good "smooth jazz" waiting to be discovered but it would be absolutely tragic if anyone heard this particular album and came to the conclusion that it is anywhere near the best that the genre has to offer.


AMAZING!   November 20, 2003
 4 out of 9 found this review helpful

This album is one of my all-time favourites! A great mixture of some of the best, most relaxing and classic jazz tunes around. Read the track list and you'll see what I mean...