SmoothJazz.com Top 100 Album Chart
THE WORLD'S ONLY SMOOTH JAZZ ALBUM CHART - FORMERLY THE GAVIN REPORTThis chart is valid for this week only if there is a new chart published next Monday.
Monday, May 25, 2020
Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 20 - May 25, 2020 #jazz
Sunday, May 24, 2020
A Memorial Day Worth Remembering
Andy Rooney On How Memorial Day Should Be Celebrated
The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney.
"There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity - war. The goal of war is to cause death to other people."Tomorrow is Memorial Day, the day we have set aside to honor by remembering all the Americans who have died fighting for the thing we like the most about our America: the freedom we have to live as we please.
No official day to remember is adequate for something like that. It's too formal. It gets to be just another day on the calendar. No one would know from Memorial Day that Richie M., who was shot through the forehead coming onto Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, wore different color socks on each foot because he thought it brought him good luck.
No one would remember on Memorial Day that Eddie G. had promised to marry Julie W. the day after he got home from the war, but didn’t marry Julie because he never came home from the war. Eddie was shot dead on an un-American desert island, Iwo Jima.
For too many Americans, Memorial Day has become just another day off. There's only so much time any of us can spend remembering those we loved who have died, but the men, boys really, who died in our wars deserve at least a few moments of reflection during which we consider what they did for us.
They died.
We use the phrase "gave their lives," but they didn’t give their lives. Their lives were taken from them.
There is more bravery at war than in peace, and it seems wrong that we have so often saved this virtue to use for our least noble activity - war. The goal of war is to cause death to other people.
Because I was in the Army during World War II, I have more to remember on Memorial Day than most of you. I had good friends who were killed.
Charley Wood wrote poetry in high school. He was killed when his Piper Cub was shot down while he was flying as a spotter for the artillery.
Bob O'Connor went down in flames in his B17.
Obie Slingerland and I were best friends and co-captains of our high school football team. Obie was killed on the deck of the Saratoga when a bomb that hadn’t dropped exploded as he landed.
I won’t think of them anymore tomorrow, Memorial Day than I think of them any other day of my life.
Remembering doesn’t do the remembered any good, of course. It's for ourselves, the living. I wish we could dedicate Memorial Day, not to the memory of those who have died at war, but to the idea of saving the lives of the young people who are going to die in the future if we don’t find some new way - some new religion maybe - that takes war out of our lives.
That would be a Memorial Day worth celebrating.
Written By Andy Rooney © MMV, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This segment was originally broadcast on May 29, 2005.
Saturday, May 23, 2020
Singer-songwriter Cat Levan finally indulges her "Double Life" #jazz
Singer-songwriter Cat Levan finally indulges her “Double Life”
Produced by Billboard chart-topper Steve Oliver, she drops her debut album on May 29 and will celebrate that evening with an album release cocktail party via Zoom
“I’ve done a lot of different things throughout my life and experienced success in a variety of areas, but music has been a constant presence dating back to my family household while growing up. ‘Double Life’ speaks to the dreams we hold tight to our chest and never let anyone know about. The artist who has a rich inner musical world but lives a life of logic and order that never reveals the depth of her inner world. It's a double life, but in a good way,” said Levan whose sister is Juno Awards-nominated singer-songwriter Melanie Chartrand.
As a lyricist, Levan is a storyteller who writes about love, loneliness, connection and uncertainty, which suits the inherently vulnerable qualities of her ethereal voice. After opening the disc with the upbeat dance-pop title track that is bolstered by tribal percussion beats, “What’s Been Going Down” pours a smooth cosmopolitan cocktail of jazz and pop. The downtempo “Keep Moving” was the first song penned for the album.
“It's about a time in my life when I was stuck in an awful place. My mother had died, and I had just left a relationship and moved back to Vancouver. I was really down, feeling very alone, not seeing a future that I liked. Every day, I would get up and try to push myself to do something that would move me forward. I was sleepwalking through life with a constant ache in my chest,” admitted Levan who plans to film a couple of videos to accompany the album release.
Levan found singing “December Road” helped her let go of the heartache. It is a stark and poignant piano ballad about accepting love and loss. She loves how the soulful and sensual “Something’s Gotta Give” exposes the seedy side of life.
“It makes me feel like I'm walking down the street late at night, peeking into steamy bars and witnessing shady deals. It’s fascinating seeing the colorful underside of the streets.”
The haunting “The Way I Feel” was written and recorded by Gordon Lightfoot and Levan’s version exquisitely captures the pain and reality of love. A joyous slice of sunshine, “Baba Doo” is a wordless contemporary jazz dance set to the rhythm of life.
“Waiting for the Right Time” moves at the deliberate, tension-filled pace of a prowl. “This is a song with two stories. One is a story of an assassin stalking her prey, waiting for the moment to strike. The other story talks about how we hide our darker side in a relationship. We’re always looking to see if it’s safe to reveal our weaknesses. If we show who we are, will it push them away? It’s all a test to see how much we are accepted exactly as we are.”
Layers of percussion drive the snappy groove of “Diving Deep,” Levan’s first track ever sung in vocalese, one of Oliver’s hallmarks. “When we wrote this song, I had no idea what vocalese was. Steve introduced me to it and asked me to be open to this new style of singing. We wrote and recorded the song the same day, so I was trying to adjust, but my voice was tired and a little unhappy with me. There were a few notes that I was struggling with and Steve recorded me grumbling about them. When we were playing back the rough track, he left my comments in and it made me laugh so we kept them as an inside joke.”
Levan calls “Coming Home” a companion piece to “Double Life.” It is about the achingly deep connection between romantic soulmates. The album closes with a bonus track, the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves,” that leaves lovelorn listeners remembering the sweet and seductive memories of summer love.
To help launch “Double Life,” Levan will host a CD release party via Zoom on May 29 at 7pm PT/10pm ET that will include a live performance. General admission tickets ($15.00) include a signed CD while the VIP ticket package ($35.00) consists of a signed CD, bottle of wine, special party favor and a live Q&A with the artists. Tickets can be purchased at https://bit.ly/3cOR36L.
The “Double Life” album contains the following songs:
“Double Life”
“What’s Been Going Down”
“Keep Moving”
“December Road”
“Something’s Gotta Give”
“The Way I Feel”
“Baba Doo”
“Waiting for the Right Time”
“Diving Deep”
“Coming Home”
“Autumn Leaves” (bonus track)
For more information, please visit https://catlevan.com.
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Monday, May 18, 2020
Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 20 - May 18, 2020 #jazz
SmoothJazz.com Top 100 Album Chart
THE WORLD'S ONLY SMOOTH JAZZ ALBUM CHART - FORMERLY THE GAVIN REPORTThis chart is valid for this week only if there is a new chart published next Monday.
Friday, May 15, 2020
It's Tracye Eileen's "Time" #jazz
“Somehow Someway” R&B/jazz singer Tracye Eileen (https://www.tracyeeileen.com) is determined to proceed with her EP release plans despite the global crises. She’s spent the last decade honing her craft as a soulful singer-songwriter, preparing for and working towards this moment. Eileen views her time as now, which explains the title of her “It’s Time” EP dropping on June 12. At the top of March, just days ahead of shelter in place orders, the Chicago native flew to Los Angeles to shoot a video for the first single, “Somehow Someway,” with Emmy-winning director Ali LeRoi (“The Chris Rock Show”, “Everybody Hates Chris”). Then the pandemic hit the US full force, threatening to steal her momentum.
A confident woman who writes autobiographical songs about love and relationships set to sensual R&B grooves, Eileen is marching forward undaunted with the record that she and producer-songwriter Kendall Duffie recorded in Duffie’s Nashville studio. “Somehow Someway” is already garnering national airplay, including from SiriusXM, and Soul Tracks premiered the video (https://youtu.be/ko4e5Cp9oMo). When faced with the challenge of losing her residency at Buddy Guy’s Legends indefinitely because of social distancing guidelines, Eileen launched the intimate “Meet Me In My Parlor: A Musical Interlude with Tracye Eileen” on her Facebook and Instagram pages as a weekly platform to connect with listeners while performing casually and introducing the new material.
“It’s Time” consists of three new songs written by Eileen and Duffie – “Somehow Someway,” “Now That We’re Here” and “Sweeter With Time” – as well as two versions of one of the first songs Eileen ever wrote, “Why Did I Say Yes,” an empowering tune celebrating independence penned after her divorce. Eileen’s soothing sound spotlights her expressive voice, sharing personal stories illuminated by lush melodies, neo soul nuances, breezy jazz cadences and classic R&B beats. While she did not originally plan it this way, the track sequence of the EP allows her stories about personal growth and change to unfold in natural order.
Monday, May 11, 2020
Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 20 - May 11, 2020 #jazz
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This chart is valid for this week only if there is a new chart published next Monday.
Thursday, May 07, 2020
Keyboardist Jakob Magnusson drops a jazz-funk set from “High North” on Friday #jazz
The Icelandic artist teams up with GRAMMY winner Paul Brown for a new EP
Observing the global pandemic from his relatively unscathed northern perch in Iceland, keyboardist Jakob Magnusson follows developments on the virus and its economic impact closely. With less than a dozen deaths directly attributed to coronavirus in this Nordic nation, the jazz-funk artist is focused on dropping his “High North” EP on Friday on the Woodward Avenue Records label. As some astute observers believe that Iceland is in one of the strongest positions to recover and rebound swiftly from the worldwide challenges, Magnusson exudes a sense of national pride, which inspired the title to the five song-set he wrote with two-time GRAMMY-winning producer-guitarist Paul Brown.
"Indeed, the title ‘High North’ refers to my Icelandic origins. I come from what used to be considered the outskirts of the habitable world. Iceland used to be seen as a very remote, cold little island somewhere between Moscow and Washington, but thanks to international aviation, telecommunications and social media, it is now more and more seen as the most ideal and desirable location in the whole world. Living here gives you a different set of values and the musical life in Iceland has for years been blessed by free musical education for all, the presence of American radio and television networks, and some great American musicians and producers like Paul Brown who have been coming here for years to play and produce local talent. I´ve certainly benefitted from this," said Magnusson, who has also released recordings under the name Jack Magnet.
“High North” was created as an international collaboration between the Reykjavik-based Magnusson and the Los Angeles-based Brown utilizing musicians from both countries. Flugelhorn player Snorri Sigurdsson, trumpeter Ari Bragi Karason and vocalist Ragnhildur Gisladottir are among the Icelandic musicians contributing to the collection with most of the grooves anchored by the Icelandic rhythm section formed by bassist Johann Asmundsson and drummer Thor Thorvaldsson.
"We were lucky to have one of the world´s foremost bass players here to lay the foundations with us, jazz-funk maverick Johann Asmundsson, who has provided some of the key elements to the sound of renowned groove-jazzers Mezzoforte,” said Magnusson, who went on to reveal the inspiration for the EP opener, “Karlsson’s Arrival,” a toss around the musical horn that affords each player the moment to shine by offering clever retorts in response to Magnusson’s deft keyboard calls.
“One of the songs on the EP is aptly named ‘Karlsson´s Arrival’ due to the fact that Mezzoforte guitarist Fridrik Karlsson volunteered to come to the studio and lend his magic guitar touch to some of the tracks together with his longtime American friend, Paul Brown, with whom he has frequently performed in Iceland and London.”
Among the other American players are horn men Greg Vail and Lee Thornburg, percussionist Lenny Castro, keyboardist-drummer-songwriter Lew Laing, and Billboard chart-topping saxophonist Jeff Ryan, who was featured soloing on the EP’s “Hook, Line & Sinker,” which dropped in 2018, Ryan’s breakthrough year. Cowriting the energizing jam with Magnusson and Brown was British hitmaker Chris Standring.
Serviced to radio and set to begin collecting playlist adds on Monday (May 11) is “Caption This,” a retro cool vibe that opens with a slick 1970s guitar riff from Brown that churns away in the background as Magnusson dispenses soulful keyboards throughout the cut. While citing the song’s message, Magnusson offers the track as a state of the union on the future of the contemporary jazz-funk genre.
"‘Caption This’ refers to playing within certain musical concepts and commenting on them with our own rather personal musical phrasings - mostly short and sharp. It means creating your own musical phrases as a response to a given musical setting. In this case, we are referring to the rephrasing and repositioning of a friendly retrospective genre that now may have been granted a new lease on life.”
Magnusson & Company playfully embark on the quirky “Reykjavik Romp.” One of the most interesting EP credits is credited to Thor Thorvaldsson and Einar Scheving on the haunting “Next To You,” an atmospheric number showcasing Magnusson’s nimble keyboard explorations.
"We spice up our rhythms with local human elements like Polar Beat. The Icelandic Polar Beat involves some mouth & body percussion,” Magnusson explains.
Magnusson is considered one of Iceland’s most original musical exports and a Rhodes keyboard master. He has amassed a versatile body of recordings that include collaborations with jazz royalty (Stanley Clarke, Freddie Hubbard, Tom Scott and Richard Elliot) as well as pop superstars (Elton John and Phil Collins). A dynamic multimedia personality who served as a celebrity judge on “Iceland’s Got Talent,” Magnusson starred in and produced Iceland’s biggest box office success, “Með allt á hreinu (On Top).” For more information, please visit Magnusson on Facebook and Instagram or visit http://woodwardavenuerecords.com/.
“High North” contains the following songs:
“Karlsson’s Arrival”
“Hook, Line & Sinker”
“Caption This”
“Reykjavik Romp”
“Next To You”
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Monday, May 04, 2020
Smooth Jazz Chart - Weekly Top 20 - May 4, 2020 #jazz
SmoothJazz.com Top 100 Album Chart
THE WORLD'S ONLY SMOOTH JAZZ ALBUM CHART - FORMERLY THE GAVIN REPORTThis chart is valid for this week only if there is a new chart published next Monday.