With the wonderful LaLa Land scheduled to be on television this Christmas thoughts have turned to jazz and how to define it. In the movie the John Legend character has a heated debate with his Ryan Gosling counterpart on the merits of jazz in the modern age. The fact is trying to describe what jazz (or in our case smooth jazz) really is and what it means to us is a question not always easy to answer and one that forms the motivation for this occasional feature unremarkably called ‘What’s Smooth Jazz?’
Designed to illustrate some of the most definitive examples of the genre, this latest track perhaps demonstrates better than any other the broad church from which smooth jazz draws its influences. In addition, it spotlights a remarkable artist who’s music is, in itself, sometimes difficult to categorize. That artist is Michael Franks and the song is ‘On My Way Home To You’.