I remember Miles' encouraging Herbie Hancock to do his thing back in the '80s, telling him that the reason for recordings was to put out what was already done. So, he told him to do something new and ignore the complaints from people like Wynton Marsalis who didn't appreciate great artists doing commercial music. That's not why I asked if jazz was dead, though.

The reason that I asked is because nobody is listing songs by newer artists as their "favorite jazz tracks". That leads me to believe that either nobody is listening to modern jazz or nobody likes what they're hearing. From a personal standpoint, the last jazz station went off air in central Ohio a few years ago and they were caught up in playing "smooth jazz" that was more often than not, something that you could listen to in the background, but not something that made you perk up when any particular songs or artists came on.

I used to dig early Kenny G, Najee, and George Howard music, which straddled jazz and pop in their composition, so I'm not totally against - as your friend's dad called it, "jazz lite". It's just that much of what I heard before I stopped listening was too lite.

I'd love to hear today's version of George Benson, Grover Washington, or Stanley Clarke, who were yesterday's predecessors to Wes Montgomery, John Coltrane [[yeah, I said it), and Charles Mingus. I just don't know where I'm going to find the resource that permits me to find out who they are. My days of buying 3 to 5 albums every pay day to take my chances on something are about 25 years in the past.