Holiday Jazz 2002: Too much merry, not enough soul

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.12.02

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene since the late 1990s, with lengthy columns that just keep growing.]


Kenny G has a lot to answer for.

Until he came along and turned “smooth jazz” into a legitimate music store category, seasonal holiday jazz was restricted to folks with authentic jazz chops, who really knew their way around a keyboard, sax, trumpet or set of drums. Releases were few and far between, and fans were grateful for a season that brought two or three great albums.

All that changed in the 1990s, when what my father contemptuously dismisses as “elevator jazz” infiltrated the genre. Suddenly, inventive arrangements and finger-snappin’ solos were replaced by background strings, mawkish choruses and percussion licks so monotonous that they sounded like just what they were, in many cases: computer-generated white noise.

And it got much worse in 1994, when Kenny G released Miracles: The Holiday Album, which sold untold millions and paved the way for an avalanche of smooth jazz that all but buried the category.

In fairness, not all smooth jazz is garbage, just as all “pure jazz” isn’t automatically superior. There’s a time and place for improvisational jazz that gets weird for the sheer sake of artistic license, but I’d argue that holiday songs probably aren’t the proper venue for such wild experimentation. The best holiday jazz should retain enough of the central melody to be recognized, while allowing various soloists an opportunity to strut their stuff.

Sadly, straight-ahead Christmas jazz compilations are few and far between this 2002 holiday season ... although we do have yet another release by the redoubtable Kenny G (about which, more in a bit). Meanwhile, fans will be tempted by quite a few smooth jazz productions, some of which ... well ... leave much to be desired.

Let’s begin with young trumpeter Chris Botti’s December (Columbia CK 86864), an album with a serious identity crisis. Half the cuts feature only Botti and some core sidemen, and a few of these are a treat: A septet arrangement of “Little Drummer Boy” is lively and fun, while a quintet arrangement of “Let It Snow” is by far the album’s best cut. Botti and his friends also deliver nice readings of “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” and “Winter Wonderland.”

On the other hand, “The Christmas Song” (which opens the album) and several other cuts are drenched in so many strings that I’m inclined to believe Botti gets a kickback on the sale of catgut and nylon. Worse still are two cuts — “Perfect Day” and “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — on which the young trumpet player sings. (Memo to Mr. Botti: Keep your lips wrapped around your trumpet.) All this fluff does nothing but detract from the core musicians struggling to be heard beneath these overproduced tracks, each so overwrought that all life and spontaneity have been sucked away.

So: Does one purchase an album for just five or six engaging cuts? That’s your call.

Holiday Jazz 2001: ’Tis the season to swing

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.13.01

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene since the late 1990s, with lengthy columns that just keep growing.]


As the song goes, Christmas time is here.

Which means it’s also time for my annual survey of Christmas jazz releases, at one time an insignificant subgenre that has blossomed into a retail-driven growth industry (now true of Christmas music in general, rather than jazz in particular).

And, as always, quantity is no substitute for quality ... but I’ll happily admit that this year’s new releases outpace what I found in 2000.

That said, the first new release that hit my CD player this season also is one of the most disappointing: Making Spirits Bright (GRP 314 549 839-2), a compilation collection produced by Lee Ritenour and Bud Harner. Expectations were high, because GRP’s three-disc Christmas Collection set, released between 1988 and 1993, remains a standard by which holiday jazz compilations can be measured. Alas, Making Spirits Bright doesn’t belong in that company; somebody seems to have mistaken the GRP label for Windham Hill. Too many otherwise nice instrumentals are drowned out by chanting choruses, monotonous (and canned) percussion, gimmicky electronic sound effects and a veritable tsunami of strings.

Yes, you’ll find two genuinely nice tracks: Joe Sample’s solo piano rendition of “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” and Diana Krall’s “Jingle Bells” ... but the latter already has been released on her own Christmas EP, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.

Every time another cut threatens to become pleasant — say, Marc Antoine’s guitar interpretation of “What Child Is This?” — it’s destroyed by overwrought background twaddle.

Making Spirits Bright should be fine for those who find Kenny G too challenging; despite this disc’s presence in the jazz bins, it’s anything but jazz.

Holiday Jazz 2000: ’Tis the season to be wary

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.14.00

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene since the late 1990s, with lengthy columns that just keep growing.]


I got word, a month back, that music labels would be considerably more cautious with holiday releases this year, because sales were “flat” in 1999. No surprise, really; after enjoying a level of modest popularity and producing smallish — but reliable — profits for several decades, seasonal releases exploded in 1998 and ’99. Everybody had to release a holiday album, and of course many didn’t find the listeners they deserved.

That’s what happens when the market gets flooded: We all drown, artist and fan alike.

This year’s seasonal music releases are fewer and further between, and that’s particularly true of holiday jazz, where a couple of labels have adopted the tactic employed by the U.S. Postal Service, which simply recycled last year’s reindeer stamps.

Thus, Concord has resurrected two 1997 releases, spruced ’em up with new cover art and new titles, and released them anew.

I call that pretty damn sneaky.

In fairness, both are worth adding to your library; just make sure you don’t already own them.

Piano fans can’t do better than Dave McKenna’s Christmas Party: Holiday Piano Spiked with Swing (Concord CCD 4923-2, previously issued as Christmas Ivory, CCD-4772-2), an ambitious, one-man collection of superb solo work: blues, stride, swing rag and anything else the then-67-year-old acoustic phenomenon set his mind to. It’s a grand series of cuts by a guy who knows he doesn’t need to impress listeners with needless flash; his renditions of “Silver Bells’’ and “Silent Night,’’ in particular, are poignant in their quiet clarity.

But this isn’t a sedate album by any means; McKenna swings and boogies his way through plenty of up-tempo covers of everything from “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” to “Sleigh Ride,” while including a perky original dubbed “An Eggnog, Some Mistletoe and You.” Good stuff.

Holiday Jazz 1999: The sad homogenization of a once-lively genre

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.16.99

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — has surveyed the holiday jazz scene since the late 1990s, with lengthy columns that just keep growing.]


Something insidious happened, while I wasn’t paying attention.

The Christmas jazz racks have been invaded by Dark Forces.

When it came time once again to gather the albums for this annual round-up, I discovered, to my intense displeasure, that it’s no longer possible to have any reliable expectation of what’ll be found in the bins marked HOLIDAY MUSIC/JAZZ.

Time was, when you said “jazz,” people knew what you meant: classic big band stuff (Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Duke Ellington); swinging trios, quartets or quintets (Oscar Peterson, Cal Tjader, Marian McPartland); the “new wave” crowd (Miles Davis, John Coltrane); smooth pianists (Ellis Marsalis, Andre Previn, Vince Guaraldi); the new young Turks (Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Roberts, Joshua Redmond); and several sub-categories I’ve no more room to cite. The list goes on and on and on, but all these folks deliver a certain sort of sound that displays genuine talent, true rhythmic chops and — generally — some swing, darn it.

Unfortunately, as a result of two trends — the success of Windham Hill’s signature sound, and the revival of lounge music — “jazz” has been co-opted as an all-encompassing designation that includes everything from monotonous synth garbage to puerile schlock so far down the E-Z listening scale that even Sacramento’s KCTC, back in its “Classic Hits” days of the 1970s, might have thought twice before programming such junk.

Last year, I was overwhelmed by all the great stuff Santa made available for my holiday jazz library, from Christmas with the George Shearing Quintet to Etta James’ 12 Songs of Christmas; from McPartland’s grand solos and duets on An NPR Christmas to Rob McConnell and his Boss Brass’ simply smashing Big Band Christmas. For that matter, Diana Krall’s three-song EP, Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, displayed not only that lady’s sublime talents, but perhaps the best production values I’ve ever encountered from an album.

That was then, this is now.

I had to work hard to find even a few albums that deserve whole-hearted endorsement this year. To be sure, several others won’t embarrass you, should they be on the player when company drops by ... but you’ll need to wade through a lot of fluff and outright drivel en route to making those purchases.

Let’s start, for no particularly reason, with Fourplay and Snowbound (Warner Bros. 9 47504-2). The group consists of Bob James (keyboards), Larry Carlton (guitars), Nathan East (bass and vocals) and Harvey Mason (drums). I approached this one guardedly, remembering Carlton’s 1995 album, Christmas at My House, which while occasionally enjoyable veered too often into the realm of sickly sweet.

The verdict here is mixed. The results are enjoyable when the quartet concentrates on solid jazz, as with the up-tempo “Angels We Have Heard on High” or the slowish, finger-snapping “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” Yet these same four fellas are just as likely to waste their time — and ours — with the monotonous baseline and dumb vocal stylings of “Snowbound,” “The Christmas Song” and a cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River.”

Aside from two more good cuts — “Away in a Manger” and “ Christmas Time Is Here” — the rest of the album is eminently forgettable: too much background synth crap and la-la-la chanting. Call it humming, warbling or shading, I still hate it.

Holiday Jazz 1998: Plenty of seasonal swing

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.17.98

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — began surveying the annual holiday jazz scene in 1997.]


Say what you will about holiday madness — the glitz, the hype, the hysterical shoppers, several dozen competing productions of The Nutcracker — but there’s no denying the appeal of holiday music.

Particularly holiday jazz.

No seasonal trauma is so great that it can’t be alleviated by a warm fire, a warmer companion and a soulful interpretation of “Silent Night” or “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by the likes of Oscar Peterson or Dave Brubeck.

Those gentleman, of course, are the talents of Christmas Past: Their holiday CDs are established treasures at this point.

I’m concerned today with the talents of Christmas Present, and — as has been the case in recent years — the pickings are mighty impressive.

Time was, you couldn’t find any of this stuff until well into December, and it would be smooshed together into a single — frequently unlabeled — bin toward the back of most music stores. These days, the “Christmas Music” section appears in mid-November and often stretches for an entire row, with sub-headings for Pop, Country, Jazz, Spiritual and New Age.

Preparing for a round-up of this sort naturally demands that the dedicated listener — that would be me — pops the new releases onto the CD player several weeks before Thanksgiving, while praying that nobody else (except the patient and long-suffering spouse) notices. But I figure if the artists can record this stuff in mid-summer, as often occurs, then it’s no less bizarre for me to accelerate the season a bit by playing it a fortnight or two early.

Hey, it’s a dirty job...

Not that long ago, the albums in my holiday jazz collection could have been counted on the fingers of both hands. These days, I’m lucky if 10 fingers are enough to catalog the number of new entries per year. Jazz covers of familiar Christmas songs have become one of the music medium’s growth industries, but increased quantity does not — alas! — guarantee increased quality.

Even so, several of the 1998 releases quickly rose to the top of my must-play list, and Christmas with the George Shearing Quintet (Telarc CD-83438) immediately comes to mind. You can’t beat Shearing’s gentle touch on piano, and he’s ably assisted by Reg Schwager (guitar), Don Thompson (vibraphone), Neil Swainson (bass) and Dennis Mackrel (drums).

Shearing’s approach to these familiar tunes is playful: His rendition of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” includes a prominent “Birdland” riff, and “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” is played against the familiar 5/4 “Take Five” bass-line beat.

Not everything is ideal: Shearing’s rendition of the 17th century French carol “Noel nouvelet” is a bit slow and weird, and I could have lived without his vocal accompaniment on “It’s Christmas Time.” (Why do some of these musicians insist on singing???)

Such minor quibbles aside, this is a tasty little album. You won’t embarrass yourself with this on the player, no matter who shows up for dinner.

Holiday Jazz 1997: Santa delivers a mixed bag

By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.24.97

[Web master’s note: Northern California film critic Derrick Bang — the eldest, youngest and only son of this site’s jazz guru, Ric Bang — began surveying the annual holiday jazz scene with this column. Take note of its brevity, which resulted from space constraints that soon vanished, as the years continued. Subsequent columns threatened to devour the entire newspaper; in great contrast, this one is succinct to the point of being terse. Ah, well; we all have to start somewhere!]


It would seem that jazz artists continue to regard holiday tunes as a good bet, because quite a number of new releases have hit the bins during the past few weeks.

Piano fans can’t do better than Dave McKenna’s Christmas Ivory (Concord CCD-4772-2), an ambitious, one-man collection of superb solo work: blues, stride, swing rag and anything else the 67-year-old acoustic phenomenon sets his mind to.

It’s a grand series of cuts by a guy who knows he doesn’t need to impress listeners with needless flash; his renditions of “Silver Bells” and “Silent Night,” in particular, are poignant in their quiet clarity.

(By the way, if you like McKenna, do check out Butch Thompson’s solo piano work on Yulestride.)

Jim Brickman’s The Gift (Windham Hill 01934-11242-2) comes in somewhere near the lazy end of the piano spectrum: pleasant and undemanding instrumentals from a young talent who isn’t trying nearly as hard as he should. Brickman is becoming the Kenny G of the 88-string guitar, and the four vocals present on this collection are too sappy for words.

For my money, Brickman did much better work on 1996’s mini-CD, Christmas Memories, packaged with Windham Hill’s The Carols of Christmas.