1980s in jazz

Jazz by decade
Miles Davis (pictured in 1984), whose 1970s fusion music helped lead to the development of smooth jazz in the 1980s.

In the 1980s in jazz, the jazz community shrank dramatically and split. A mainly older audience retained an interest in traditional and straight-ahead jazz styles. Wynton Marsalis strove to create music within what he believed was the tradition, creating extensions of small and large forms initially pioneered by such artists as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called pop fusion or "smooth jazz" became successful and garnered significant radio airplay. Smooth jazz saxophonists include Grover Washington Jr., Kenny G, Kirk Whalum, Boney James, and David Sanborn. Smooth jazz received frequent airplay with more straight-ahead jazz in "quiet storm" time slots at radio stations in urban markets across the U.S., helping to establish or bolster the careers of vocalists including Al Jarreau, Anita Baker, Chaka Khan, and Sade. In this same time period Chaka Khan released Echoes of an Era, which featured Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, and Lenny White. She also released the song "And the Melody Still Lingers On (Night in Tunisia)" with Dizzy Gillespie reviving the solo break from "Night in Tunisia".