Enter the ‘Dragon’: how José James mines a lode of ’70s lore on his latest disc

A recent interview with José James in JazzTimes begins with this quirky questionnaire.

Is vocalist, composer and multi-instrumentalist José James: 

1. An old-soul jazz guy working through the idiom of hip-hop.

2. A new-school hip-hop artist whose albums interpolate Rahsaan Roland Kirk and interpret Billie Holiday.

3. An R&B vocalist with albums released on Blue Note and Impulse! that top jazz sales charts and feature elements of Terry Collier, Quincy Jones and John Coltrane.

4. A Shaolin kung fu master.


The answer is all of the above, and then some, whether you’re listening to the warmth of his “Yesterday I Had the Blues” (2015), the Erykah Badu homage “On & On” (2023), the taut, grooving narrative “1978” (2024) or his just-released album, dedicated to New York’s loft jazz and post-punk dance club scenes, the late-’70s predilection of rock, disco and Michael Jackson that is “1978: Revenge of the Dragon” (released in May on his Rainbow Blonde label). And kung fu. Don’t forget kung fu.

Judge for yourself when James performs Feb. 6 in an SCP Jazz concert with special guest Lizz Wright in a tribute to Marvin Gaye’s seminal ’70s disc “I Want You.”

“Yes, any fight between Sonny Cheeba and Bruce Lee would be a draw,” James tells JazzTimes with a laugh, when he shares his obsessions about kung-fu cinema heroes (hence the title “Revenge of the Dragon”). But the real hero of what James does always is jazz. “When I was 14, I was listening to hip-hop and rap at a time when its producers were using a lot of jazz and R&B samples,” he says of his deep dives into the samples from Roy Ayers and Miles Davis.

The late ’70s offers a fount of inspiration for James. “I stay fascinated by that moment in time, so much within the culture — that period before the internet, before Spotify, when you had to learn things through City Pages, the Village Voice, zines or better still, cassettes, word of mouth."

Beneath it all was a sense of convergence — genres colliding, boundaries dissolving. It was a cultural crescendo, visually soundtracked by kung fu and Blaxploitation double features, according to promotional material for “Revenge of the Dragon.” James channels that restless spirit into a bold, cinematic sound that feels both timeless and radical.