We love Jazz: Gene Stevens Favourite Jazz-Pop-Rock-Hybrids!

Nov 02, 2018

By Gene Stevens

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During this past year, we’ve featured an on-going series on various music genres. We’ve explored, and celebrated, swing and retro-swing, soul, doo-wop, surf and rockabilly, country cross-overs, Broadway songs, folk-rock and hard rock, and The Great American Songbook too.

This week, let’s dive into the exciting and multi-varied ‘jazz-pop-rock hybrid’. Jazz music has been around for over a century – born in New Orleans, and matured in places like Kansas City, St.Louis, Chicago and New York. By the 1930s, it was ‘the popular music’ of its day – in the form of big band swing. As pop music evolved, the blues got rhythm, and rockabilly sprang from country, to blend together as rock’n’roll. And jazz also evolved into be-bop and improvisational experimenting.

But all along there were landmark songs that fused jazz and whatever kind of ‘pop’ music was current, to create fascinating hybrids that I’ll call ‘jazz-pop-rock crossovers’. Many of these songs were huge pop hits that make for a fascinating hour that’ll sweep us through the decades from ‘Satchmo’ in the 1930s and Brubeck in the early 60s, to Chicago, George Benson and Chuck Mangione in the 70s.

In the next hour we’ll tip the hat to Canadians who also blended jazz with pop and rock, then bring out the birthday cake for two of our greatest superstars – Bryan Adams and Joni Mitchell – both celebrating birthdays next week.

I hope you’ll join me for another great show packed with variety – this Sunday from 2:00 to 4:30 with ‘Vintage Favourites’. Cheers.

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