Street Life

Smooooooth.

Title track is just wonderful. Bought the album years ago as a result of this being a single. Rest of the album was a bit of a shock initially, but it remains a great listen.

4

“Street Life” by The Crusaders starts with a truly great title track—but unfortunately loses some of its momentum afterward. With well-crafted mainstream jazz (and that’s exactly what this is), there’s always the risk that it will become too smooth. Unfortunately, here the line into elevator music is crossed several times; only “Carnival Of The Night” manages to consistently avoid this. It’s entirely possible that the overall impression was different in 1979, but today you get the feeling that you’ve heard it all before.
That’s not to say, by the way, that “Street Life” isn’t a good album—it’s just very generic in large parts.

i didn't know street life was that long

This feels like a record that my dad could have owned during his jazz phase in the 80s. "Street Life" (the song) sounds like it was somebody's magnum opus, and then they added some instrumentals to fill out a whole album.

The opening track with the vocals is great; quite happy to listen to eleven minutes of that. But the rest is pretty unmemorable.

It’s been a long time since I last listened to the Crusaders. When I heard “Street Life”, it immediately reminded me of “Jacky Brown”, even though I was already familiar with the track. I think the sound is great, even if it’s not really part of my daily playlist. But who knows? 4/5

OK instrumental.

3/5. The 11 minute opener “Street Life” is an absolute banger and what elevates this up to a 3 for me, love the vocals on it, love the solos, just an overall killer start. Then the rest of the album is unfortunately just kinda okay. Mostly a series of jazz-funk jams that you won’t have a bad time with, but that also don’t end up leaving much of a lasting impression.

Jazz fusion sounds like a video game loading screen - pleasant and predictable, always returning to the main chorus/motif prior to looping before slowly fading out. Without the fadeout, the songs could loop indefinitely.
...
That being said I do appreciate some good jazz fusion, and while I prefer Casiopea to this, this wasn't bad by any means. 3/5

Competent jazz. I dig it while cooking. I’d never heard of it.

Street Life is such a great song. The whole album is very cool jazz with kind of a pop flair. It also makes me think of Quentin Tarantino.

Opening track : "oh, yes. I know this one. Pretty smooth and funky"

The remainder : endless brass orchestra noodling.

This was pretty cool. Chill instrumental album, kinda funky, kinda jazzy, very 70s.

This is pleasant! Good energy, fun instrumentation. I dunno about an 11 minute song, but I guess that's jazz for you.

Highlight: 'My Lady'

Lowlight: 'Night Faces' (a fine song in itself, but sounds like the hold music of my medical center, thus mildly traumatizing)

At first glance, I wasn't sure who The Crusaders were. But noticing the album title, and looking a little deeper, I realized that "Street Life," the title track, was re-recorded by guest vocalist Randy Crawford a few years later. I saw her name on the Cincinnati Music Walk of Fame two years ago, and I consider the track a genuine bop, be it in its sped-up remake or the slowed-down, sprawling jazzy arrangement of the original. With that said, how does the rest of Street Life, the album, sound?

Well, it's intriguing because this was a jazz fusion group whose improvisations leaned towards smooth R&B and disco, at a time when the latter genre was declining in popularity. It's certainly pleasant to listen to, with some catchy melodies centered around Wilton Felder's eclectic saxophone playing. In fact, Wilton pulled double duty by laying down the bass lines for half the tracks, Joe Sample had some nice little keyboard solos in between, and the session musicians did a decent enough job providing some guitar flourishes and other light instrumental passages. That said, between the slower tempos and the minimal presence of the percussion, I can comfortably put this album in the same camp as Steely Dan. It's an easy listen in the moment, but I do prefer more challenging jazz-fusion music.

I still dug Street Life as a nice record to have on in the background, but not much more than that. It was cool that they launched Randy's career, though.

Easy listening jazzy funk.
I wouldn't say this is "jazz" as it has been described. It all sounds pretty preplanned to me. It's funk with long solos.
Great foot tapping chill-out music.

I suspect how much I enjoy this record is simply a reflection of how much I enjoy Jazz-Funk Fusion. I'm not mad about that genre, in fact it sounds like hold music to me, so am not really one to judge its success. I can say that I preferred the opening track thanks to its R&B vocals which nicely brings together the sound of the band, who without the vocalist wander off into all sorts of blind alleys.

I was completely unfamiliar with The Crusaders.

This is pretty nice and smooth, but not great, not terrible. I think I liked the first track the least. It's kind of a shame that it's the title track, apparently the single, and also has the most plays.

Updated jazz sound for the 70s quiet storm/R&B vibes. Each song sounded very similar to each other.

Well, I love sax so I enjoyed this. Wish there was a bit more to it on the whole. Had some great moments but never really felt like it came to a point of impact.