For many, Jazz is not the most accessible of music genres, particularly in its most traditional form, but its reach and influence is clearly evident through the years.
Listening to jazz is a one-of-a-kind experience, from its subtle undertones to fully fleshed out arrangements,across musical styles in modern music. As contemporary artists continue to perform and innovate, they learn from and helm their own iterations of the music of the greats that came before them.
But the space where it resides in today's music is through sampling most prominently in R&B and hip-hop significant fragments that range from accentuating or entirely shaping a songs sonic textures. Whether its an isolated vocals, a drum break, a chord progression placed one time, scattered multiple times, or repeated on loop, sampling jazz music is in arguably one of the most definitive style incorporated in the songwriting process.
We listed down the most sampled jazz artists according to the WhoSampled website, which houses a database of samples used in songs.
Considered as the most heavily sampled jazz artist of all time (at present: almost 800 times), Bob James is a man who wears many hats: hes a keyboardist, composer, and a record producer that is considered in the funk end of the jazz spectrum. Hip-hops formative years was influenced by James, with several of his early albums lending their sound to early producers and DJ of the time.
His song, "Take Me to the Mardi Gras" alone has been sampled at least 35 times by various hip-hop artists in different eras.
The multi-Grammy Award winning Quincy Jones has a long, prolific career in the music business, from as early as the 1950's. While hes most famously known for his work as a producer and composer for high-profile and internationally acclaimed music icons like Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra and countless film scores and theme music for TV shows, his career began in jazz bands, where he played the trumpet, french horn, piano,and served as a bandleader. He also did vocal work and used synthesizers.
His work has been unsurprisingly mined for samples by hip-hop and R&B artists, most especially his jazz-fusion track,Summer In The City, which has been sampled more than 300 times.
Cited as one of the most innovative jazz musicians whose style has redefined the jazz rhythm section sound and pioneered post-bop and more experimental forms of jazz, Herbie Hancock is also considered as one of the most influential figures in the formation of hip-hop music. He himself wrote a jazz-electro fusion hit, "Rockit", which is now considered very much ahead of its time.
As a jazz pianist and a bandleader, his work,particularly in the 1970's, have explored jazz fusion, funk, and electro styles and incorporated his classical music background. One of his most popular songs,Watermelon Man, has been sampled multiple times and Hancock's discography has been sampled at least 280 times.
Roy Ayers landing on this list makes complete sense. His rich body of work encompassed jazz, jazz-fusion, funk, acid jazz,disco, soul jazz, R&B, house, hip-hop, neo-soul, and probably many other unnamed styles. He is a vocalist, vibraphonist, percussionist, and also played the electric piano and synthesizers.
His most popular and his favorite track (as he claimed recently in a NPR Tiny Desk performance) is the 1976 neo-soul single Everybody Loves The Sunshine, which is also his most sampled track. His songs have been sampled more than 250 times.
5. Grover Washington Jr.
Considered as one of the founders of smooth jazz, saxophonist Grover Washington Jr.s jazz-funk and soul-jazz styles crossed boundaries in the evolving forms of soul music in his time. He co-wrote one of the most famous and commercially successful R&B hits of all time,Just The Two Of Us, with Bill Withers, Ralph MacDonald, and William Salter in 1991. It won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song and remained to be on radio rotation at present.
One of the most famous drum breaks in hip-hop is from the intro of his 1975 song, Hydra. His work has been sampled at least 240 times.
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