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Songbird definition8/3/2023 ![]() ![]() His first single from Duotones was " What Does It Take (To Win Your Love)," a cover of a 1969 song by Junior Walker & the All-Stars with tenor sax from Kenny and a vocal by Ellis Hall. His label, Arista Records, didn't think a jazzy instrumental would have much appeal, so they had vocalists sing on the Kenny G songs they released as singles. "Songbird" was merely an album cut from Kenny G's Duotones, but he loved the song and wanted to get it out there. "If somebody calls me a jazz musician, I'm very flattered," he said. Kenny G's tack is refusing to categorize his music, which gives him some impunity from jazz critics. ![]() Overdubbed himself on Louis, what a musical chop-suey, raised his head above the parapet." Louis Armstrong)," in which Kenny G overdubbed himself over the jazz legend, was an act of "musical necrophilia." Folk-rocker Richard Thompson wrote a song in response to Pat Metheny's outspoken stance against Kenny G called "I agree with Pat Metheny." The lyrics go, "I agree with Pat Metheny, Kenny's talents are too teeny, he deserves the crap he's going to get. In another interview, Metheny stated that Kenny G's 1999 single "What a Wonderful World (feat. And now people think that that's what jazz is. There could never be music any worse than that. I mean, there's nothing more stupid than that – let's face it, it's the dumbest music there ever could possibly be in the history of human beings. "I can understand why people don't like jazz, because right now, sometimes you say the word 'jazz' and people think of some of the worst music on earth. ![]() In an interview widely discussed and publicized on YouTube, the foremost jazz guitarist Pat Metheny said that Kenny G is responsible for putting many people off jazz. Most other stylistically important conventions that make jazz what it is (the fundamental emphasis on improvisation, for instance) have been abandoned in Kenny G's soporific brand of "jazz." This seems to be the only aspect of Davis' legacy that Kenny G has followed: maximum accessibility. The conventionally accepted definition of Kenny G's music is "smooth jazz" (it has also been called "Yuppie jazz"), although some people may be uncomfortable with the similarity between the terms "smooth jazz" and "cool jazz," the post-bebop style pioneered by Miles Davis starting with the Birth of the Cool album in 1957, an attempt to blend classical and jazz influences and make bebop more accessible to the general listening public. Hated by jazz purists on account of its lack of true jazz aesthetic, "Songbird" stylistically inhabits the borderlands between jazz and elevator music. It's a purely instrumental track not easy to classify in terms of genre. Kenny Gorelick, in 1986 on the album Duotones. The single "Songbird" was first released by the saxophonist Kenny G, a.k.a. ![]()
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