2008 Grammy Award Nominations: A to Recognizing Jazz Musical Influences

It May Be a Torch-Pass from 1991's "Back on the Block" to 2007's "Back to Black"

Most people would have assumed that the Grammy Awards were going to keep nominations as hip as possible from now on--especially after some of the trends of recent ceremonies awarding more Hip-Hop, Rap and Mainstream Pop. Sure, NARAS went through their phase there for a while in the 90's of showering most of the major awards on Tony Bennett (who the camera goes to in the front row every year to gauge from his reactions just how bad or good the show is), Natalie Cole and various other standards or jazz singers who managed to cross over into the mainstream categories. It also caused a lot of derision (or just plain division) among the academy voters who probably don't exactly love jazz, realize it only makes up 1% of all CD sales in the world and personally think it doesn't belong in the mainstream. But then they probably get flummoxed when jazz idioms start creeping into the mainstream music world.

I've written a couple of articles here in 2007 about how jazz chord progressions have been re-discovered by just about every pop and rock performer/writer who finally realized that near-infinite chord change possibilities in a song are better than three. Just in the last few years, you're starting to hear more complex harmony and arrangements in the Top 40--with groups such as Maroon 5 leading the way to some extent. Not that this hasn't happened before. Ever since Fusion happened via way of Miles Davis in the late 60's--the Pop/Rock/Jazz worlds collided into an interesting mix. Chicago was probably one of the most popular groups in the early 70's to use obvious jazz chords in the Popular Top 40. After that, Sting and The Police used the same elements in dozens of hits. Sting seemed to set the pace as he continued to use complex harmonies in his tunes through the 80's and 90's--and still does.