Collection: Jiro Inagaki

Jiro Inagaki started his career playing tenor saxophone with comedy actor Frankie Sakai's band in 1954, moved through Hajime Hana and the Crazy Cats, worked alongside George Kawaguchi and Hideo Shiraki through the 1950s and 1960s, and formed Jiro Inagaki and Soul Media in 1969 as a dedicated vehicle for jazz-rock. The name tells you the direction: a band built around groove and rhythmic energy, exploring the same jazz-funk territory that was being mapped in New York and Los Angeles at exactly the same moment, in parallel rather than in imitation. The group's rotating lineup through the 1970s included guitarists Ryo Kawasaki and Hiroshi Yasukawa, pianists and arrangers Hiromasa Suzuki and Masahiko Sato, and percussionists across multiple configurations. "Head Rock" (Union Records, 1970) opened the decade; "In the Groove" (1973) moved further toward funk; "Funky Stuff" (Nippon Columbia, 1975), written and arranged entirely by Hiromasa Suzuki, is the album the rest of the world eventually found. Suzuki's arrangements sit the saxophone over electric piano, guitar, bass, trombone and drums in a configuration that makes the music feel simultaneously of its time and entirely unplaceable in any national jazz tradition. He celebrated his 90th birthday in October 2023 with the release of the WaJazz Legends gold vinyl double LP compiled by Universounds' Yusuke Ogawa, died on January 18, 2024, and left behind one of the most collected catalogues in Japanese jazz.