Morning Tenderness

Morning Tenderness

Track Listings

1. Not a Day Goes By

2. Sapphire

3. Window of Change

4. All the Things (Your Man Won't Do)

5. Just for You - Ty Causey, Najee

6. Room to Breathe

7. Morning Tenderness

8. Indian Summer

9. Second Time Around

10. Spirals

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Jerome Najee Rasheed has used a combination of soprano and tenor saxophones, flute, keyboards, and more to become one of the success stories of smooth-jazz radio. Fittingly, his fifth major recording, Morning Tenderness, is a buttery-soft assortment of R&B-flavored lite jazz intended to meld quickly and easily into the ears. For fans of smooth jazz and its more urban-influenced predecessor, the Quiet Storm, you may be hard-pressed to find a more agreeable, easy-on-the-ears collection of soft soul and gentle saxophone than on this carefully crafted recording. Smooth-jazz artists typically focus on one of two themes, seduction or relaxation, and, as the title suggests, this 10-track collection serves as a soundtrack for slow Sunday mornings and breakfast-in-bed contentment--music for days when you're riding down Easy Street on cruise control. Najee's admiration for Stevie Wonder is evident in several tracks, particularly "Indian Summer" and the flute-based "Just for You." Seven of the album's tracks feature breathy background vocals as Najee strategically shuffles moods, instruments, and textures. "Room to Breathe," where Najee delivers huskier tones and more soulful playing, is the album's most attractive cut. --Terry Wood

From Jazziz
Beginning with his 1987 debut album and continuing through 1995's well-received tribute to Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life, Najee's R&B-flavored brand of smooth jazz has been a staple of the genre. It's captured the ears of an audience he fondly (and slyly) calls "the maturing hip-hop culture getting their first American Express Card." The soprano sax has become Najee's trademark, and his facility with its range and timbre in the service of smooth grooves and pop melodies has earned him a handful of gold albums and widespread status as the funkier brother of soprano-sax icon Kenny G. So it's no surprise that seven tunes on Najee's Verve Forecast debut, Morning Tenderness, feature him on soprano or that the album's cover shows him smiling and embracing that particular horn.

But Najee's soprano work and his smooth-jazz status are just part of his artistic story. In fact, he found his first voice on tenor sax and flute. And for those who've cared to take notice, he's shown his bebop roots in various ways - a tour with Stanley Clarke, Larry Carlton, and Billy Cobham (which led to the recording Live at the Greek Theater); a recent traditional-jazz date with Quincy Jones; even the fact that he opens many a concert with John Coltrane's "Giant Steps."

"I have always had an equal affinity for both bebop and contemporary jazz," Najee says, "and I have been very inspired by musician friends who also straddle both styles, like Stanley and Billy. I see no problem with finding avenues to express both sides and take fans of one style along for the duration."

When Najee and his brother (and career-long co-producer) Fareed were at the New England Conservatory of Music in the late 1970s, Fareed urged him to try a duet with Najee on soprano and Fareed on guitar. "I picked it up and did the duet, and, slowly but surely, I realized the soprano was an effective way to communicate certain emotions I wasn't getting on the other instruments," he recalls. "In 1986, when it came time to do a demo for a solo project, it occurred to me that soprano was the voice of the day, the most popular choice to use with the kind of R&B-flavored songs I was working on. My earliest professional gigs ranged from big-band music to soul ensembles, and I thought blending soul music and jazz would be the best option."

Taking into account the Wonder tribute and a several-year delay involving a label shift from EMI to Verve, Morning Tenderness is Najee's first project of original tunes in nearly five years. Despite a few tunes on which he plays tenor and flute, his focus is on the appealing attributes that launched and then sustained his success to date: light funk melodies and suave ballads, grooves ranging from slow and seductive to bouncy and danceable, and a keen ability to modulate the soprano from high-pitched cries to lower-toned declarations. Over the low-key, simmering bass throb of "All the Things (Your Man Won't Do)" and the gentler "Second Time Around," for instance, Najee introduces melodic statements in a lower register, and then, without warning, draws upon his sharp improvisational instincts to honk out a flurry of higher tones as if emphasizing his point. On poignant, reflective tunes like "Not a Day Goes By" and "Sapphire," Najee displays his longtime trademark of wrapping his sax melodies around shadowy background vocal choruses to form playful conversations that give way to meditative improvisations, again drawing upon the bop influence. The percolating tune "Room to Breathe," one of the album's most memorable, features Najee's flute work near the end. He then devotes the entire brooding title cut to the soft graces of the instrument.

"When I was in high school growing up in Queens, I took the flute so seriously that I sought out study with masters like Harold Jones from the New York Philharmonic and Jimmy Heath. The Stevie record was a great opportunity to bring that to the forefront, but here I'm back to the style that made all my success possible. As long as I am being honest with myself and loyal to the fans that have supported me, I feel I'm striking the perfect balance."

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Jazz Music: Morning Tenderness

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