cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Soul Jazz

johnkaplantech
Underground

Top Soul Jazz
https://www.pandora.com/playlist/PL:1688849954515930:157840609

Deep Soul Jazz
https://www.pandora.com/playlist/PL:1688849872959541:157840609

A few years ago, before Pandora had a Premium service where we could make our own playlists, we had genre stations. These are still going, and are often seeded by large lists of over 150 tracks. At one point, the curation pros at Pandora opened things up and had a contest where us amateur music lovers could offer our proposed lists for new genre stations. The first thing I thought of to try was Soul Jazz.

What is Soul Jazz you may ask? Well starting in the '50's, Jazz musicians started experimenting with R&B beats instead of traditional swing. Blues was always a part of the Jazz lexicon, but as jazzers incorporated urban electric blues and soul that stars the likes of B.B. King and Aretha Franklin were popularizing, it created a new sound. I've always loved this music, and have collected my favorite Soul Jazz tracks since the '70s.

That gave me a good start for my genre station list, but 150 tracks is a lot. Auditioning enough music to fill that out took longer than I thought it would, and the contest was long over by the time I was ready. But the curation team liked the results, so accepted it anyway and published it. The resulting Pandora Soul Jazz station has had as many as 400 thousand listeners, and is probably the most popular thing I've ever done.

When Pandora released the Premium service and allowed us to create playlists, I converted the original genre station track list into a Pandora playlist, and Deep Soul Jazz was born. For a long time I thought I should pick the best tracks and create a "best of" (or what I call a "Top") playlist as well, but there were so many tracks I loved I was daunted to try to cut them back. After listening to the genre station and the deep playlist on shuffle for a few years, some of the tracks have become consistent favorites and I'm ready. So Top Soul Jazz was born. If you're just trying out this music, I'd recommend the "Top" playlist. If you're already an old hand at Soul Jazz, then try the "Deep" playlist on shuffle.

Tags (3)
3 Replies

@johnkaplantech I have put together a playlist of Jazz and Blues, it is 66 songs, nothing real big. I will add it the share playlist site. Give it a look see and see what you think. Take care and stay safe.

MOHLovesAlaska

Pandora
Moderator
Moderator

@johnkaplantech Here's a quick link to the post from @MOHLovesAlaska with his Jazz playlist. 😎

Thank you Pandora for the quick link. Take care and stay safe.

MOHLovesAlaska