Smooth Jazz

Like its polar opposite, heavy metal, smooth jazz is the Rodney Dangerfield of pop music: it don't get no respect. Hey, who cares? Let the self-appointed trendoids wind themselves up about the Next Big Thing while you chill with some Kenny G ("Songbird") and a touch of Spyro Gyra ("Morning Dance"). Sophisticated.

The sax in smooth jazz has always been about that other three-letter word that starts with s and ends with x: try listening to Gerald Albright's "In the Mood" without resisting the urge to slip into something more comfortable. Here, we also feature some of the genre's many other textures, from guitar to keyboards to trumpet.

By now, you've taken the art of chilling to a near Zen-like state, but you sense something more awaits out there. You're right. Here it is, in the shape of Canadian-born Brian Hughes, who infuses smooth jazz with Latin spice on "Son y Lola," and guitarist Chieli Minucci, whose incredible fretwork on "Kickin' It Hard" is a pure joy.

When it first began to take shape in the '80s, smooth jazz embraced those musicians who wanted to reclaim both melody and harmony as the essential building blocks of song structure. With roots more in Guaraldi and Brubeck's terrain than in Coltrane and Davis', the genre dominated the field to the degree that the jazz chart ultimately split into traditional and contemporary categories. Here, we give you a long, deep, relaxing sample of its finest practitioners. Aural velvet.