Formed 1969

Jiro Inagaki was born in Tokyo on October 3, 1933, played tenor saxophone with Frankie Sakai's band from 1954, worked through the Japanese jazz circuit with Hajime Hana and the Crazy Cats, and performed alongside George Kawaguchi and Hideo Shiraki through the 1950s and 1960s before forming Jiro Inagaki and Soul Media in 1969. The group was a dedicated jazz-rock and funk vehicle, exploring the same territory being mapped in parallel by American jazz-funk bands, with rotating lineups that included guitarist Ryo Kawasaki, pianists and arrangers Hiromasa Suzuki and Masahiko Sato, and percussionists across its decade of activity. "Head Rock" (Union Records, 1970) opened the jazz-rock phase; "In the Groove" (1973) moved toward funk; "Funky Stuff" (Nippon Columbia, 1975), written and arranged entirely by Hiromasa Suzuki, became their most collected and most reissued album, pairing Inagaki's saxophone and flute with electric piano, guitar, trombone and percussion across eight Suzuki compositions. The BBE Records J Jazz Vol. 4 compilation included Inagaki's work as part of a broader document of Nippon Columbia's jazz catalogue from 1968 to 1981. Inagaki celebrated his 90th birthday on October 3, 2023 with the release of the WaJazz Legends gold vinyl double LP compiled by Yusuke Ogawa of Universounds. He died in Tokyo on January 18, 2024, aged 90.