Back to the old school

Hometown hero Tim Cunningham headlines Smooth Jazz Fête

The return of a hometown musical hero, mellifluous saxophone master Tim Cunningham, will add extra zest and a bit of drama to Phil Denny’s Armory Smooth Jazz Fête this weekend.

Denny, the festival’s founder and guiding spirit, was barely 15 years old when he first met Cunningham and is elated to welcome him to the event for the first time.

“He’s someone I’ve idolized over the years and always looked up to as a fellow Everett High School grad,” Denny said. “I thought, ‘God, if I could do what he’s doing, it would be awesome.’”

Denny described Cunningham’s style as “R&B, old school.”

“He has a very unique tone,” Denny said. “He’s always captivated audiences. I remember him filling the streets at the Old Town jazz festival. People crammed the streets to see him.”

Cunningham moved to St. Louis in 1994 and has been based there ever since, but he’s kept an eye on Lansing and taken special notice of the Smooth Jazz Fête, an all-day festival that draws smooth-jazz aficionados from across the country.

“It’s a great event,” Cunningham said. “It’s in its seventh year, so he must be doing something right.”

A football scholarship put Cunningham through college at Michigan State University, but music was always his first love. He passed up a free-agent contract with the Dallas Cowboys to pursue a musical career.

He picked up the saxophone in seventh grade at Walter French Junior High School, at the encouragement of band instructor Amel Eiland. Eiland, who still lives in the area and just turned 82, introduced Cunningham to the leading R&B-oriented saxophonists of the day, like Grover Washington Jr. and David Sanborn.

“I loved those two guys, even though I started out playing bebop stuff,” Cunningham said. “I listened to John Coltrane, but it wasn’t something I wanted to pursue as a jazz musician. I always found myself turning back to contemporary jazz.”

In the mid-1970s, Cunningham played in the jazz band at Everett. Eiland moved to Everett at the same time and continued to encourage him.

In the 1980s, when Cunningham was defining his own saxophone sound, mainstream jazz seemed to be splintering into mutually antagonistic camps. Traditionalists, rock-fusion rebels and avant-garde fire breathers fought over dwindling, niche audiences, leaving a big opening for a more laid-back, crowd-pleasing, R&B-based “smooth” jazz style to blossom.

“Guys like Najee, Gerald Albright and Kirk Whalum started coming out,” Cunningham said, naming three smooth-jazz saxophone icons. “I thought, ‘That’s something I’d love to do.’”

Washington Jr. is still the leading inspiration for Cunningham’s “R&B jazz,” a term he prefers over “smooth.”

“I only saw him once, at the Wharton Center,” Cunningham said. “He died on my birthday in 1999.”

Cunningham made demos and sent them to several labels, but he got no reply.

“They didn’t even say, ‘We can’t use them,’” he recalled.

He kept up a consistent schedule of performances, including gigs at the old Tango’s club in downtown Lansing, and raised his profile by moving to Chicago in 1992.

From 1994 to 1999, he was the opening act at the Cincinnati Jazz Festival. In 1994, with the support of pioneering recording industry executive Sylvia Rhone, later the first Black woman to head a major label, Cunningham signed with Atlantic Records.

Jumping out of the gate, he recruited top-name bandmates like pianist Brian Culbertson and singer Will Downing to play on his first album, “Right Turn Only,” in 1996. A single from the album, “This Is the Life,” climbed the national charts and got international airplay.

Since then, Cunningham has recorded several best-selling albums, including a live set in 2012 and his most recent album, “Freedom,” in 2022.

Along the way, he’s put together a multi-faceted musical life, supplementing his income with a day job as an insurance adjuster.

He also worked as a composer and performer in various TV series and films, including three episodes of the 1993 series “The Untouchables.”

In the St. Louis area, Cunningham plays a wide variety of venues, from jazz clubs to wineries to private events, with periodic visits to places like Benton Harbor’s Lake Breeze Music Festival, where he played in mid-July, and Syracuse, New York, where he’s playing for the first time this fall.

It’s the perfect balance for Cunningham, a rooted family man who’s been married for 32 years with three children and has no interest in the year-round touring grind.

“Self-employed musicians don’t get benefits, unless you’re Darryl Jones, playing bass for $80,000 a week on tour with the Rolling Stones,” he said. “In and out of hotels, you’re playing the same solos every night — it’s not for me.”

Cunningham is bringing a band of St. Louis colleagues to Lansing, including keyboard man Darius Savage and drummer J Alex Bruce.

Saturday’s slate of performers all fit under the big umbrella of smooth jazz, but Denny likes to program a mix of instruments, styles and regional flavors. He’s playing a strong pair with the duo of Baltimore guitarist Kevin Jackson and Florida trumpeter Rob Zinn.

“Rob blends a lot of old-school sounds, from Chuck Mangione to Herb Alpert, and there’s an appealing pop undertone to his music,” Denny said.

Versatile Detroit vocalist Angela Davis is a familiar mainstay of Motown and soul tribute groups and a recognizable face at high-profile events such as Detroit Tigers games, where she belts out the national anthem with summery gusto, and the Thanksgiving Day parade.

“She brings a lot of soul, a lot of power,” Denny said.

Of course, Denny himself is among Saturday’s featured artists, and this year’s event finds him in a confident, relaxed mode. He’s working on a new record, honing his songwriting and producing skills and enjoying becoming a grandfather for the first time.

To put some fire under the proceedings, he’s bringing out a secret weapon in guitarist JJ Sansaverino, a virtuoso graduate of Berklee College of Music.

Sansaverino is a busy Billboard-charting artist with wide-ranging touring experience, including 20 years of touring with reggae icon Maxi Priest.

“He’s charismatic and a great musician, just a ball of energy,” Denny said. “Whenever I do these shows, I think, ‘Who’s the cannon? Who’s the fireball?’ That’s JJ.”