GURU | “JAZZMATAZZ, Vol. 1” | 25 years later

Though Jazzmatazz represents one of the very first full-fledged attempts to fuse rap and jazz, jazz has been adding flavor and elegance to rap ever since the first rap deejays began cutting and scratching up in the Bronx in the early and mid-’70s. Grandmaster Flash remembers mixing “Bob James, James Brown, Donald Byrd, Roy Ayers to John Davis & the Monster Orchestra” back in the days before there were rap records. As time’s gone on, jazz has remained a consistent part of the mix. Herbie Hancock, in collaboration with the Bronx’s own D. ST, scored a Grammy Award-winning hit with “Rockit” in 1983. Run-DMC built “Peter Piper” on the percussion break from Bob James’s “Mardi Gras” in 1986, by which time James’s recording had acquired the status of a classic rap break beat. LL Cool J’s “Goin’ Back to Cali” was sexified by growly Dixieland trumpet in 1987. Stetsasonic’s “Talkin’ All That Jazz” sampled some cool acoustic bass off of a Lonnie Liston Smith record in 1988. The “acid jazz” scene took off in England in the late Eighties, producing the Brand New Heavies and Ronny Jordan (represented here on “No Time To Play”) and other friends, and influencing Canadian imports the Dream Warriors, who not only fitted slamming new beats to antique Quincy Jones TV themes (as on 1990’s “My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Thing”), but actually recorded with Slim Gaillard before he died.

Of course, your typical jazz purist might insist that that was what killed him. No matter that the “hip hop is the child of be-bop” theory has been endorsed by no less an authority than Max Roach, nor that Quincy Jones mixed jazz and rap on 1989’s Back on the Block, nor that Miles Davis’s last album, Doo Bop, was cut in collaboration with rapper Easy Mo Be (nor much more recently, that the title to Miles’ Birth of the Cool was bitten to good effect by Digable Planets for their “Rebirth of Slick”). A neo-conservative jazz musician like trombonist Delfeayo Marsalis will sail straight on ahead and beat up on rap for its “vulgarity,” insist that “every element in rap is derived from jazz,” unfavorably compare rap’s greatest practitioners to Shakespeare, Mozart, Louis Armstrong, and Charlie Parker (not stopping for a moment to acknowledge the shock and horror a Euro-classical purist would feel to see Parker deified alongside Mozart), and rhetorically wonder: “What rap has the emotional fortitude to draw any American to tears through its honesty?”

Amusingly enough, Delfeayo’s own brother, Branford, might be able to provide him with a number of answers. Branford first collaborated with Guru, the producer and rapper of Jazzmatazz, on “Jazz Thing,” which was recorded by Gang Starr (comprised of Guru and DJ Premier) for the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s Mo Better Blues in 1989. He’s performed live onstage with Gang Starr several times since then, and collaborates again with Guru on this album’s “Transit Ride.”

But the jazz-rap synthesis has never been troubling for Keith Elam, aka Guru. Claiming that he’s always been in search of “an alternative to James Brown samples,” and that jazz’s “mellow tracks, along with the hard rap beat, go hand-in-glove with my voice,” the Brooklyn-based rapper built a sample of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia” into “Words I Manifest,” his very first single in 1988. As a youngster in Boston, Keith had been introduced to jazz by his godfather, who would “take me and my whole posse and sit us down in front of these big speakers and make us listen to jazz.” Sonny Rollins, Errol Garner, Mingus, Monk, Miles, Betty Carter, the big bands. Growing up in the ’70s, Keith absorbed the pop-jazz of Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, Ronnie Laws, Grover Washington, Ramsey Lewis, and Herbie Hancock.

Even given his longstanding affection for jazz, Keith proceeded with caution when presented with the opportunity to make Jazzmatazz, a full-length jazz-rap experiment. “I was leery. It had to be done right,” he says. “My main concern was to maintain my street credibility and to represent the hardcore rap crowd because they’ve got me to where I am now.” As it turned out, making the album was “a very spiritual thing. It was so easy, as if it was meant to be.” Already familiar with the music of all of the artists, Keith followed the same basic method with everyone. He’d record the basic rhythm track, choose a title, have the jazzman come in and solo, and write his lyrics in studio as the instrumentalist played. “Doin’ the tracks with the older guys was like doin’ a track with my father: They accepted me and I accepted them.”

Track by track, Keith’s collaborators include:

Donald Byrd: Born in Detroit in 1932, the trumpeter and educator started out as a pure be-bop virtuoso, debuting in New York with the original lineup of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers at the age of 23, in December of 1955, and going on to play and/or record with Max Roach, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, and Thelonious Monk. He began recording for Blue Note as a leader in the early ’60s and, on the strength of records like Black Byrd (which became the largest-selling title in Blue Note history) and through the production of albums for the Blackbyrds—comprised of former Howard University Students of his—helped to found the jazz fusion movement in the early ’70s. By the close of the ’70s, he had more than 40 albums to his credit.

N’dea Davenport: Atlanta-born N’dea rose to prominence as the voice of England’s Brand New Heavies. She and Keith go back together to the early Eighties in Atlanta, when she was attending Clark University and Keith was at Morehouse College.

Branford Marsalis: The saxophonist and composer began branching out of his jazz background when he joined Sting’s band in 1985. Currently, he gets nightly national exposure as the bandleader for the “Tonight Show” with Jay Leno. Branford’s latest album is called I Heard You Twice The First Time. His next album may be done in collaboration with DJ Premier, Guru’s partner in Gang Starr. “The thing I like about hip-hop—if it’s good music—is that it has that really hard sound,” he says. “Whether you like it or hate it, it’s music that forces you to choose.”

Ronny Jordan: The top jazz guitarist in England is of Jamaican extraction, a student of American jazzmen Wes Montgomery, Grant Green and Wilbert Longmire. His 1991 version of the Miles Davis classic, “So What,” was a huge pop smash and spearheaded the acid-jazz movement, a fusion of jazz, hip-hop and ’70s funk. His latest album, The Antidote, was well reviewed in The Source, which said: “No, it’s not hip-hop, but it’s hip-hop influenced – it’s contemporary jazz at its best and no hip-hopper can or will ever come close.” His next album includes one track produced by Guru.

Lonnie Liston Smith: Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1940, the ace keyboardist/composer/band leader recorded with Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Miles Davis and other giants of jazz before busting out on his own as one of the premier jazz-pop fusion stylists of the ’70s.

Roy Ayers: Born in Los Angeles, the vibraphonist played as a young man with all of the great figures of the L.A. jazz scene—including Teddy Edwards and Chico Hamilton—before he was taken under the wing of flutist/band leader Herbie Mann. His popular ’70s records as the leader of the fusion-oriented Ubiquity continue to influence the hip-hop generation today. (The Guru grew up loving Ayers’s “Runnin’ Away.”) He’s said: “I’m into some of everything. I play R & B, jazz, pop, bossa nova, blues, Latin. My music is a combination of many different musics.”

MC Solaar: The largest-selling French-language rapper, 23-year-old Solaar was born in Senegal and lives in Paris, where he is poised, according to England’s Hip-Hop Connection, “to be one of the first French rappers to cut in on the world stage.” He says, “I want to make the music more intellectual, not just boom boom bap and a hardcore rap. I have the attitude cool.” His appearance on Jazzmatazz returns a favor; Guru produced a track for him last year. “It was the first time someone important had told us, “It’s not bad. In fact, it’s good!,” he recalls. “The guy from the land of rap music likes us! We were proud inside.”

Courtney Pine: The blazing, young London-based saxophonist has been favorably compared to his particular heroes, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, which is high praise indeed. He has recorded six albums of his own for the Antilles label, and recorded as well with Branford and Ellis Marsalis and for Soul II Soul.

Carleen Anderson: As the daughter of James Brown alumni Bobby Byrd and Vicki Anderson, and the sister of a keyboardist who plays with Maceo Parker’s Roots Revisited, it might be said that Carleen was born into the music. The former featured vocalist of England’s Young Disciples, she’s now signed as a solo artist to Virgin Records.

Jazzmatazz, then, is designed to please partisans on both sides of the jazz-rap divide. “It’s ‘jeep-ready’,” Keith swears. “I tested it in the jeep and the beats are there.” The young experimenter smiles, adding. “But at the same time, I can give this to my father and my godfather and I know they’re gonna feel it.”

—By Bill Adler

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Guru Special Thanks:

You can pre-order the deluxe edition of Jazzmatazz on Urban Legends now.

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