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JOE SAMPLE, GERALD ALBRIGHT, AND LALAH HATHAWAY. An evening of jazz on the R & B side, Thursday night at Westbury Music Fair. The three artists were also to perform at the Apollo Theater Friday night.
CALL IT CROSSOVER jazz, call it quiet storm soul, call it yuppie nod-out music - in most cases, the recordings that make it to the Contemporary Jazz charts make blandness a virtue.
The slicker the sound, the more innocuous the arrangement, the larger the triumph. The real star of a radio station like CD-101, which hosted the Westbury show, is the pristine digital sound of the discs, not necessarily what's in what used to be known as the grooves.
Putting an interesting spin on musical style that worships the generic was the challenge faced by the three...