Soul jazz is a development of jazz incorporating strong influences from blues, soul, gospel and rhythm and blues in music for small groups, often an organ trio featuring a Hammond organ.

Soul jazz is often associated with hard bop. Mark C. Gridley, writing for the All Music Guide to Jazz, explains that soul jazz more specifically refers to music with "an earthy, bluesy melodic concept" and "repetitive, dance-like rhythms…. Note that some listeners make no distinction between 'soul-jazz" and 'funky hard bop,' and many musicians don't consider 'soul-jazz' to be continuous with 'hard bop.'"Roy Carr describes soul jazz as an outgrowth of hard bop, with the terms "funk" and "soul" appearing in a jazz context as early as the mid-1950s to describe "gospel-informed, down-home, call-and-response blues." Carr also notes the acknowledged influence of Ray Charles' small group recordings (including saxophonists David "Fathead" Newman and Hank Crawford) on Horace Silver, Art Blakey, and Cannonball Adderley.

The soul – in many traditional spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions – is the incorporeal and immortal essence of a person, living thing, or object. Some religions teach that all biological organisms have souls, and others further still that even non-biological entities (such as rivers and mountains) possess souls. This latter belief is called animism.Anima mundi and the Dharmic Ātman are concepts of a "world soul." Some religious thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, attribute souls to all organisms but teach that only human souls are immortal.

Soul can function as a synonym for spirit, mind or self; scientific works, in particular, often consider 'soul' as a synonym for 'mind'^{[citation needed]}.

The Modern English word soul derived from Old English sáwol, sáwel, first attested to in the 8th century poem Beowulf v. 2820 and in the Vespasian Psalter 77.50, and is cognate with other Germanic and Baltic terms for the same idea, including Gothic saiwala, Old High German sêula, sêla, Old Saxon sêola, Old Low Franconian sêla, sîla, Old Norse sála as well as Lithuanian siela. Further etymology of the Germanic word is uncertain. A more recent suggestion connects it with a root for "binding", Germanic *sailian (OE sēlian, OHG seilen), related to the notion of being "bound" in death, and the practice of ritually binding or restraining the corpse of the deceased in the grave to prevent his or her return as a ghost.

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in black communities in the Southern United States.

It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. Its African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note. From its early development until the present day jazz has also incorporated music from American popular music.

As the music has developed and spread around the world it has drawn on many different national, regional and local musical cultures giving rise, since its early 20th century American beginnings, to many distinctive styles: New Orleans jazz dating from the early 1910s, big band swing, Kansas City jazz and Gypsy jazz from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s and on down through West Coast jazz, cool jazz, avant-garde jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz in various forms, soul jazz, jazz fusion and jazz rock, smooth jazz, jazz-funk, punk jazz, acid jazz, ethno jazz, jazz rap, cyber jazz, Indo jazz, M-Base, nu jazz, urban jazz and other ways of playing the music.

Jeff Lorber (born November 4, 1952 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American Grammy Award-nominated keyboardist, composer, and record producer.

After leading his own group, The Jeff Lorber Fusion, he went on to pioneer the smooth jazz genre.^{[citation needed]}

Many of his songs were featured on The Weather Channel's Local On The 8s segments, including appearances on the channel's compilation albums, The Weather Channel Presents: The Best of Smooth Jazz and The Weather Channel Presents: Smooth Jazz II.

In February, it was announced Jeff Lorber signed with Peak Records. Lorber's first CD for his new label is expected to hit the street on Tuesday, June 10.

He was also nominated for a Grammy for his 2007 Blue Note Records release titled, "He Had A Hat."

Jeff Lorber was born to a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Lorber started to play the piano when he was four years old and after playing in a number of R&B bands as a teen, went on to attend Berklee College of Music, where he developed his love for jazz. He moved to Vancouver, Washington in 1972.

Chuck Loeb (born Nyack, New York) is a guitarist who performs numerous styles of music, most notably jazz. Loeb's own solo projects have generally been commercially successful crossover jazz, which has "contemporary" or "smooth" jazz.

Loeb played in Stan Getz's group from 1979 for two years. In 1994 Loeb and fellow member of Stan Getz, Mitchel Forman formed the Jazz-Fusion band Metro.

His first solo album was released for Pony Canyon Records in Japan,(1989) the album called My Shining Hour. Later he produced some cd's for DMP and switched to Shanachie in 1996; Moon, the Stars, & the Setting Sun was issued in 1998; Listen followed in 1999, In A Heartbeat in early 2001 and All there is in 2002. Chuck has recently toured Spain with fellow band members drummer Josh Dion, bassist Brian Killeen and Matt King on keyboards.

As of 2010, he plays guitar for Fourplay as the replacement of Larry Carlton.