Smooth jazz is a commercially oriented, crossover jazz which came to prominence in the 1980s, displacing the more venturesome jazz fusion from which it emerged. It avoids the improvisational “risk-taking” of jazz fusion, emphasizing melodic form. Much of the music was initially “a combination of jazz with easy-listening pop music and lightweight R&B”.
The genre arose in the mid-1970s in the United States as “smooth radio”, and was not termed “smooth jazz” until the 1980s. The earliest smooth jazz music appearing in the 1970s includes the 1975 album Touch by saxophonist John Klemmer, the song “Breezin'” as performed by guitarist George Benson in 1976, the 1977 instrumental composition “Feels So Good” by flugelhorn player Chuck Mangione, and jazz fusion group Spyro Gyra’s instrumental “Morning Dance”, released in 1979.
Smooth jazz grew in popularity in the 1980s as Anita Baker, Sade, Al Jarreau and Grover Washington released multiple hit songs.
The smooth jazz genre began to decline at the end of the 1980s in a backlash exemplified by critical complaints about what many critics saw as the “bland” sound of top-selling saxophonist Kenny G, whose popularity peaked with his 1992 album Breathless.