Najee, Instrumental and Smooth jazz Artist
This week’s Featured Artist is a smooth jazz saxophonist andflautist, and is considered to be one of the pioneers in popularizing what is commonly known as Contemporary Jazz. He released his first album “The Smooth Side of Soul” in 2012, and since then has been a steady favorite of the smooth/contemporary jazz listening audience worldwide. Meet jazz saxophonist and flautist – Najee
Born in New York City, New York
Genre: Jazz, Smooth/Contemporary Jazz
With three platinum and five gold albums, Najee is one of the pioneers of what is commonly known as Contemporary Jazz. A combination of jazz improvisation and R&B, this genre forms a bridge from the jazz fusion of the 70s to the jazz pop of the mid-80s.
A native of Jamaica, Queens, New York, Najee shared all of his musical dreams and later, many professional gigs with his brother Fareed, a guitarist who was a year younger. Their father passed away when they were very young, but their mother encouraged a deep exposure to jazz via recordings by artists as diverse as the Miles Davis Quintet, Junior Walker and Mongo Santamaria. Najee showed an early interest in the sax but a grammar school teacher steered him towards clarinet when there were no sax chairs available in the school band.
Najee, along with his brother Fareed, attended the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with a concentrated study in performance and composition. Najee left the Conservatory after three years and moved back to New York, where he immersed himself in the club scene. One night when he was out playing straight ahead jazz, Lesette Wilson, keyboardist and musical director ofChaka Khan, who was hot at the time with her trademark hit “Ain’t Nobody” came in and loved what she heard. She called him to audition for the singer’s upcoming tour, and in no time Najee found himself on the road for a year with the legendary diva, playing alto sax and flute. Najee’s good fortune transferred toFareed’s career as well when Chaka’s longtime guitarist Tony Maiden failed to show up for a rehearsal. Fareed plugged in and was hired to play alongside Maiden for the tour.
The debut album, Najee’s Theme on which the sax man found his trademark voice on the soprano was an instant phenomenon, selling gold immediately on the road to eventual platinum on the strength of the radio hits “Sweet Love” and“Betcha Don’t Know.” Najee toured as the opening act for popular R&B singer Freddie Jackson and, with the release of the equally successful Day By Day in 1988, became a bonafide celebrity. After touring as a support act for artists like Hiroshima and Bob James, Najee became a headliner in his own right. In addition to the U.S., over the years he has toured throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.
His subsequent releases, Tokyo Blue (1991) and Just an Illusion (1992), went gold and earned him Soul Train Music Awards for Best Jazz Artist in 1991 and 1993. Following Share My World in 1994, Najee paid brilliant homage to another one of his favorite R&B influences, Stevie Wonder, on 1995’s Najee Plays Songs from the Key of Life: A Tribute to Stevie Wonder. He also stretched his straight-ahead jazz muscles on a tour and follow-up live recording (Live at the GreekTheatre, 1994) with a super-band featuring Stanley Clarke, Larry Carlton and Billy Cobham. He later signed to Verve for one album, 1998’s Morning Tenderness, which went to #1 on the contemporary jazz charts.
For Najee, the late ‘90s were marked by extraordinary international experiences, from performing at Nelson Mandela’s birthday celebration in South Africa to playing as a special guest of President Clinton at the White House at an event honoring President Jerry Rawlings of the Republic of Ghana. Over the years,Najee has worked with numerous pop legends, from Quincy Jones to PattiLabelle and Lionel Richie, but creatively and artistically, no other career highlight has quite matched his incredible association with Prince, with whom he recorded and toured for three years at the beginning of the current decade.
Najee is the recipient of many music awards including the Soul Train Music Award for Best Jazz Artist in (1991 and 1993), and he also received Grammy recognition for Najee’s Theme.
Biographical information courtesy of Gainformer.com; see link below
http://www.gainformer.com/files/Najee%20Bio.htm