Talk:Bob James (musician)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of WikiProject Jazz, set up to organize and expand entries on Jazz and related subgenres, as well as other related subjects. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit the article attached to this page (see Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ for more information).

Music Portal

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] (If you rated the article, please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
	This article is supported by WikiProject Musicians, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed biographical guide to musicians and musical groups on Wikipedia.

An appropriate infobox needs to be added to this article, or the current infobox needs to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.

[edit] Pop Jazz?

This is currently in the article

"Though he has recorded a couple of straight jazz albums, most of his recordings contain "pop-jazz" which is a type of instrumental pop music"

I think the term 'pop-jazz' is incorrect, it is not a real music sub-genre. There are a million of these labels (smooth jazz, lite jazz, jazz funk, jazz rock, jazz fusion, etc), but pop-jazz is just made up. Bob James didn't play 'instrumental pop music' even if he did instrumental version of pop songs, jazz people have played jazz covers of pop songs for years, it's part of jazz. The Bad Plus cover bands like Nirvana and Rush, Wes Montgomery and George Benson have done Beatles covers, and they're not just playing 'instrumental pop music.' Instumental pop music is songs like Wipeout! by the Surfaris or Rumble by Link Wray. The fact that James worked w/ jazz musicians and recorded for a jazz label means he was a jazz musician, his music was jazz. If he plays 'instrumental pop' then so do Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock.

I'm going to have to remove that line, because it just doesn't work. The person who wrote this article obviously has a very rigid idea of what classifies as 'Jazz', I actually deleted a line that read: "Listeners who are looking for challenging jazz rather than background music will be dissapointed with James later work" Not all jazz has to follow the same standards and not all of it has to be 'challenging' to be real jazz.

And what is 'straight jazz?' I'm taking that line out too, because what's straight? acoustic jazz? If that's what you mean, then it works, but straight jazz, like pop jazz, is made up and not in popular usage in music circles.