Winelight
Released
If smooth were to be defined by just one record sleeve, this would be it: a very full wine glass and saxophone bell gleaming in soft, buttery light. After making bedroom eyes with Top 40 soul across his recording career at Kudu in the 1970s, Grover paired with Bill Withers and rose all the way to Number 2 on the charts with “Just the Two Of Us,” attaining Adult Contemporary ubiquity in the process. But the other tunes here are just as smooth, from the slippery satin of the title track to “Let It Flow (For “Dr. J”)” a jazz-funk ode to the smooth of basketball himself, with Washington, Jr. switching between alto, tenor, and soprano sax with ease.