NEW URBAN JAZZ FORMAT

[cklw800]

If contemporary jazz keyboardist Bob Baldwin has his way, there could be a NUJ format. If I may paraphrase from the liner notes of his new CD titled "NEWURBANJAZZ.COM", he says it's the next sound in Contemporary Jazz that hopefuly will have a radio community that supports it. He says NUJ provides a place for artists who fall between the cracks of Smooth Jazz and Urban music formats. He writes that so much music has fallen into this description over the last 15 years that there is enough meaningful material to jumpstart a format within the Jazz genre that even Smooth R&B have not been able to capture.

This is why I love the CD vs. downloads. You get close to the artist's perception of their music and why he or she is doing what they're doing. It makes you love them more, like when I bought record albums all those years ago. Also within his extensive liner notes (worth buying the CD to read) he states that over the last 25 years in the business he has learned, time and again, that people from all walks of life love the type of jazz "that makes one's neck to bop and foot to tap, but also appreciate the form, style, and harmonic sophisitcation..."

Man, get this CD. Nock? Are you on it? Try "Third Wind" and "She's All That" (feat. Marion Meadows). And there's a creative tribute to the late, great Joe Zawinul titled "Joe Zawinul" that will make you smile. There's even a sweet cover of "My Cherie Amour" with Najee adding to his nice collection Stevie Wonder tribute songs.

There is so much to read on this CD and the fun is reading it while you're listening to it. Baldwin has something here that hopefully will go beyond the music itself. BOB BALDWIN..WE NEED YOU!

 

[Nock]

Man, get this CD. Nock? Are you on it?

Have not received it yet? Any idea who is promoting it?

Nock

 

[cklw800]

Not sure who's working Bob Baldwin, Nock. I bought this CD. All I know is NuGroove, Baldwin's label, is hot! I have other music on that label, including Jay Soto's latest. Heads Up, Shanachie and Peak trun out some of the best stuff that I've purchased in the last couple of years. Here's NuGroove's address from the CD:

Nu Groove Music, LLC
228 North Church Street
Moorestown, NJ 08057
thenugroove.com

An e-mail address on the CD is:
[email protected]

Maybe that will steer you in the right direction to find someone who is working it.

Funny advisory sticker on the CD. Looks like an authentic advisory sticker but it says:

FUNK ADVISORY
EXPLICIT GROOVE

Candy Dulfer, Euge Groove, Everette Harp, Darren Motamedy and Acoustic Alchemy...among by best purchases since last fall so far. I hear Jessy J is worth checking out beyond her "Tequila Moon" cut. Might be picking that one up.

I have to note an error on the Bob Baldwin CD though, and hopefully this is on just the early pressings which I probably have since I got it as soon as it came out:

Tracks 8, 9 and 10 are mislabed and read,

8. TOO LATE
9. ALL NITE
10. IT IS WHAT IT IS

The real order of the songs is:

8. IT IS WHAT IT IS
9. TOO LATE
10. ALL NITE

All other tracks are correctly listed. They may have caught this already and new copies may be correct. Two of the tracks have vocals on them plus he describes each song on the CD. That's how I caught it.

 

[AnotherCat]

Bob Baldwin talked (conned?) our local SJ station into giving him the PM drive show in fall of 2004. The station had a successful launch in March '03 and did well for the next 3 books but then the bottom fell out. I think this was due to some noticable changes that Jones Network made to their programming at that time, whether this coincided with Cheri Marquart's move to another channel or fear that BA was comin' after them. They dropped a lot of their uptempo music and CJ/Adult Alternative vocals and replaced them with more riffy moodscapes and older songs and shifted the vocal focus more to BA type pop crossovers.( They actually backed off on those vocals a year or so later ).

The station thought that having a "real musician" hosting a show would bring the ratings back up, What Bob did here was the most self indulgent, amateurish programming I have ever heard on a commercial radio station and even most noncoms. He ran totally freeform, rarely played hits or hit-sounding songs, didn't play any image artists except for his personal friends, and would do things like play a 7 minute long Chick Corea/Herbie Hancock straightahead piano duet at 5:15 pm then some Latin Fusion thing by a group nobody had heard of followed by George Clinton. Even someone with very eclectic tastes would find it totally unlistenable. If you wanted to hear Koz, White, Fourplay, Bob James, Euge Groove, Boney etc...forget that. I imagine he told them he had extensive knowlege of "jazz" which he probably does but knowing "jazz" and knowing how to program a station to win are two totally different things.

We had just launched Smoothviews and he contacted me re: writing a story on his show. I told him that if it was successful and he brought the numbers up I would do it, but just doing the show was not a story..its success would be the story. He emailed me back that ratings didn't matter, being "progressive" did. His tenure at the station, though short, was something that they never recovered from. After you scare listeners off it takes a pretty expensive and extensive marketing campaign to win them back, they didn't have the resources to do that , especially after killing potential revenue generation with those two ratings periods in the cellar. This caused the "image hit" that is making local PDs wary of even doing a Sunday AM brunch show now.

He was only really on the station for 4 months but he managed to take the whole station to below a 1 share and PM drive to about 50% of that (I alluded to numbers rather than quoting them exactly due to rules about quoting ARB numbers). When he and the station parted ways he aired all kinds of dirty laundry on his website.
Class....

 

[cklw800]

Wow, 'Cat! I didn't know that history. I figured he may have been on to something. He's being played on BA with the tune "Third Wind" and it's on R&R, so I figured he had an "in." Being eclectic, freeform, progresive or whatever isn't what it's all about. That's why Kepler calls us the afficianados. Progressive attitudes kill those of us trying to make a difference with the format. It's going to take a fine balance of guts and knowing what works and when.

The CD is real good though, not all over the place but has a nice smooth funk groove to it. I really think that carefully-programmed show for this music on an Adult R&B stations could win with a specialty program.

 

[AnotherCat]

That's why Kepler calls us the afficianados.

Yeah, at the time he called me that I was a hardcore afficianado ??? When I took over programming the music for the brunch and evening shows I pulled all the straightahead trax and everything that had extended soloing, set up a selector database and put in all the pop instrumentals. And in true jazz afficianado style I was doing 7p-1a on the Hot A/C and 7-9p was regular format, then I did the "after hours" which was targeted at pop/AC listeners and top 5 in the daypart and played hardcore jazz by Dave Koz, Warren Hill, Craig Chaquico, Candy Dulfer, The Rippingtons and such...

I don't even like straightahead jazz. I was a fusion baby though. I never met a guitar solo I didn't love...

 

[uncleDJ]

BINGO, BABY...

NuJazz has been a feature on Dish Network (Channel 962) with all sorts of soul, salsa, bossa nova, brazilian, etc. jazz that is infectious!

It's a station that would attract all sorts of folks, and one I'd love to program or work for, anytime.

-Bill Alley
JUKE BOX GOLD
[email protected]