David Sanborn - Inside (1999)

INSIDE won the 2000 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Performance.

With smooth strokes, Sanborn has painted a lovely urban jazz landscape on INSIDE. These cuts may have an easy-rolling feel, but they're surely not dental office fare. Soft, breezy vocal and alto melodies meet rough beats and mean bass lines, making for statements with a real earthiness. Sanborn and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Miller penned most of the tunes, with a couple of pop covers thrown in for funk's sake.

The opener "Corners (For Herbie)," presumably a tribute to Mr. Hancock, is a slow, groovy Fender Rhodes-laden affair, with Don Alias' colorful percussion, and glad blowing by Sanborn and guest Michael Brecker. Aretha Franklin's "Daydreaming" veers into a trippy sort of "rare groove" territory, with diva Cassandra Wilson singing over a backdrop of undulating electric piano, steel guitar and sitar. "Brother Ray" is a blues jam reminiscent of Stevie Ray Vaughan's jazzier flights. The horn passages are made lush by the double-tenor presence, swaying over Ricky Peterson's Hammond B-3 and Miller's twangy blues guitar work. With an urgent vocal performance by Sting, Bill Withers' classic "Ain't No Sunshine" takes on an almost mystical quality, with entrancing long-tone spirals and wafts of Bill Frisell's guitar.