ABSTRACT
Kenny G’s playing is lame ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune,noodling, wimped out, and fucked up . . .”1 These are the wordsof guitarist Pat Metheny concerning Kenny Gorelick’s choice to overdub a saxophone solo on Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World.” The overdubbing was viewed by the jazz community as a virtual desecration, tasteless, and to some, the equivalent of committing jazz necrophilia. This track, released in 1999 on a record entitled Classics in the Key of G (see figure 1), provided an opportune occasion for many within the jazz community to voice their disdain for this controversial musician, specifically, and to comment upon, in their opinion, one troubling direction contemporary jazz has taken, generally.
