Jiro Inagaki

In the Groove is where Inagaki finally arrives at the music he was built for. The soul jazz framework of this record, groove-based, funk-inflected, and rhythmically insistent, fits his tenor playing like a glove that had been waiting for his hand. The commercial jazz-pop years were the training ground; this is what the training was for.

The band here plays with a tightness and a shared sense of purpose that his earlier commercial studio sessions rarely achieved. The rhythmic foundation is deep and consistent, Inagaki's tenor riding the groove with the ease of someone who has found the right vehicle, and the overall sound is harder and more direct than anything in his earlier catalogue.

In the Groove is the record that tells you who Inagaki actually was: not a commercial covers artist or a pop-jazz chameleon but a soul jazz musician with a strong groove sensibility and a tenor voice built for sustained intensity. Everything before this was preamble.

A Sunflower in Greece is a vocal record: bassist Akira Okazawa sings over the band, on a program that mixes Japanese songs with soul covers like "What's Going On" and "Alone Again (Naturally)," and that sets it apart from the harder funk direction of its 1973 companions.

Inagaki's tenor playing here has a different tonal quality from the funk records: warmer and more lyrical, the phrasing longer and more song-like.

A Sunflower in Greece, issued as Girisha ni Tsuite Kakareta Hon and credited to bassist Akira Okazawa with Inagaki and Soul Media as the band, is one of the more distinctive records Inagaki played on precisely because it doesn't fit neatly into any of his established modes. It's an experiment that largely succeeds, and it's the kind of record that makes you wish he had explored the hybrid territory more systematically.

The Underground Rulers, issued by Columbia in 1973 as Omerta no Okite, is a Godfather-themed record on which Inagaki and Soul Media supply the music behind a rokyoku narration. The only Discogs entry under the catalog number JDX-101 lists The Godfather on both sides, and the credits read "performance: Jiro Inagaki and Soul Media".

The instrumental that later Columbia compilations lift from the record is titled "Theme", credited to Jiro Inagaki & Soul Media. It is the only part of the session that circulates on its own, and it is most of the reason the record turns up in Japanese jazz-funk conversations at all.

Beyond that the record resists assessment. It is a narration LP built around a film theme rather than the instrumental soul-jazz date its reputation suggests, and no available source describes the music in any detail. Anyone chasing Inagaki's jazz-funk peak should start with In the Groove or Funky Stuff instead.

Funky Stuff was cut in August 1974, after the run of 1973 Columbia records, and loses nothing in the comparison. The Soul Media band returns at full strength, the rhythmic foundation is as deep and precise as on the previous record, and Inagaki's tenor playing has the relaxed authority of a musician who knows exactly where he is and how to work the space he's been given.

Where The Underground Rulers had a more concentrated, almost confrontational energy, Funky Stuff is slightly more expansive: the tunes breathe a little more, the improvisations allow for more variety of texture, and the overall feel is of a band that has learned to trust its collective judgment. The result is in some ways more sophisticated than the more purely intense predecessor.

Funky Stuff and The Underground Rulers are the two essential Inagaki records, and together they establish him as one of the most important figures in the Japanese soul jazz and funk tradition. The combination of jazz improvisation quality and groove commitment on these two records is rare in any national tradition.

Funky Best is credited to "J. Inagaki & His Friends" rather than Soul Media, and the personnel reflects the change: a studio band assembled specifically for these sessions, with Kentaro Haneda on keyboards and a largely different rhythm section from the Soul Media core, though guitarist Hiroshi Yasukawa also plays on Soul Media's Funky Stuff. The material draws on the funk vocabulary Inagaki had developed over the preceding years, arranged by Hiromasa Suzuki and Inagaki himself.

For listeners familiar with the Soul Media records, Funky Best is interesting as a parallel document: the same musical instincts channeled through different musicians, resulting in a more polished and slightly more commercially oriented product. The groove foundation is solid throughout, and Inagaki's tenor playing is characteristically direct and rhythmically assured.

Funky Best doesn't replace the Soul Media studio albums, but it captures the Nippon Columbia funk aesthetic from a different angle. For collectors, the individual Soul Media records are the priority; this stands as a worthwhile companion piece with its own distinct character.

Blockbuster is a departure from the Nippon Columbia Soul Media records: released on Eastworld (the label Toshiba EMI launched in 1978) and credited to "Jiro Inagaki & Chuck Rainey Rhythm Section," it pairs Inagaki with American session musicians including bassist Chuck Rainey, guitarist Mitch Holder, and drummer Paul Leim. The production is polished and LA-influenced, disco and fusion both audible in the arrangements.

Inagaki's tenor playing remains strong throughout, and the groove foundation is professional if less raw than the Nippon Columbia records. The American rhythm section brings a different feel: tighter, more controlled, and more obviously commercial than the Soul Media band's loose intensity. The result is a compromise between Inagaki's funk instincts and late-seventies production values.

Blockbuster is a good record from a musician who had made essential ones. The transition it documents, from the underground funk period toward a more internationally oriented approach, is a familiar story in jazz of the era, and Inagaki navigates it with more dignity than most.

Memory Lane is Inagaki's farewell to the full Soul Media period, a record that looks back as much as forward. The title is apt: this is music with a retrospective quality, more mellow than the hard funk of the mid-seventies, more sophisticated in its production than the raw early-seventies records.

The playing throughout is accomplished and warm, but the urgency of the peak period has been replaced by something more reflective. Inagaki sounds like a musician taking stock rather than pushing forward, and that mode produces different but not lesser music: more introspective, more carefully shaped, and less immediately exciting.

Memory Lane closes the most productive creative period of Inagaki's career on a note of quiet dignity. The underground funk records had established him; this one shows him at peace with that establishment, looking back at the road he'd traveled with something like satisfaction.