The commercial woes of jazz and classical stem from the same three R's: retail, radio and reissues. Pressed for floor space and anxious to sell just the hits, most music retailers -- excluding the book chains -- have cut back or simply eliminated their jazz and classical sections. "The mall stores are all carrying less jazz, and the mass merchants like Wal-Mart, Target and Circuit City don't carry any," reports Evered.

Not a good sign considering that more and more shoppers buy music at the mass merchants. According to the RIAA's survey, 45 percent of consumers last bought CDs at "record stores" (down from 70 percent in 1990), while 38 percent (up twofold since 1990) bought CDs at "other stores," such as Target and Wal-Mart.

The fact is, neither jazz nor classical can compete in the mainstream sales game. For instance, a recent top-five entry on Billboard's Top Jazz Albums chart, guitarist Charlie Hunter's self-titled release, sold 900 copies in one week, according to SoundScan. By comparison, a top-five entry on Billboard's overall album chart, rapper Busta Rhymes' "Anarchy," sold 167,000 copies in one week.

Worse, some of today's bestselling jazz titles are quickie compilations ("Jazz From When You're Alone"; "Jazz for Peaceful Moments") that sell for just $7 or $8. The result, says one major-label jazz V.P.: "We don't have a prayer competing in the retail section. We're the lowest rung on the ladder. We mean nothing to them."

The same disappearing floor act is evident on the classical side. "It's abysmal," says Marc Offenbach, vice president of sales for Sony Classical. "There are 25,000 music stores in the U.S., and maybe 3,000 carry classical music. That's down from 9,000 stores just five or 10 years ago."

The picture is equally bleak on commercial radio, where traditional jazz outlets are essentially extinct. What are left are smooth jazz stations, offering up lots of light, George Benson and Dave Koz at-work listening pleasure. "It's really instrumental pop music that's called jazz, with the term 'jazz' merely used as a marketing ploy. It all sounds like cookie-cutter stuff," complains one label exec.

Nonetheless, the format enjoyed a nice ride during the '90s, peaking in 1997 with 92 stations nationwide, according to the M Street Journal, which tracks radio formats. Then, when ownership restrictions were eased, consolidation swept across the radio spectrum, with broadcast conglomerates buying up hundreds of stations and looking for the surest way to pay back their Wall Street debt. The result since 1997 has been 50 more Top-40 stations, 102 more adult contemporary stations, 74 more classic-rock stations, 36 more sports-talk stations and 20 fewer jazz stations.

Since so few commercial classical stations remain (they make up less than 0.4 percent of all AM and FM for-profit outlets), it's hard to say if the format ever peaked. But certainly there are fewer interested broadcasters. The reason is simple: advertising. Despite the fact that classical stations often boast a more educated and affluent (albeit smaller) audience, they have a dreadful time converting their audience into ad revenue. According to Duncan's America Radio Report, the format even trails R&B when it comes to getting its fair share of ad dollars in a market. (Jazz, it tuns out, doesn't do much better than classical in this regard.)

There are exceptions among classical radio stations. Robust WGMS in Washington, D.C., consistently ranks among the market's top five most-listened-to stations, and does it with a populist touch. "A hardcore classical fan would say ours is a dumbed-down classical product. But that person can't be our target," explains station president Kari Johnson Winston. "Our goal is to be a mass-appeal radio station. We play the hits."

Meanwhile, WGMS's sister classical station, KDFC in San Francisco, hit No. 2 in that market not long ago. Both are owned by Bonneville International, which is telling. "It's not a public company, so they don't have to show ungodly gains to Wall Street," says Robert Unmacht, editor of the M Street Journal.

Another problem for jazz and classical as they search for economic meaning among hit-hungry major labels is that they're coming off a miniboom courtesy of the CD's arrival in the mid-'80s. At a time when pop titles were scarce, both classical and jazz releases were plentiful as labels emptied their vaults -- and early CD adopters ate them up. "In those days, people came in and they knew nothing about classical music or jazz, but wanted digital recordings with a dynamic range so they could test their speakers," remembers Tower's Kvidera.

With nothing but packaging costs to cover, reissues became label favorites. Look at the 1959 Miles Davis jazz classic "Kind of Blue," reissued -- yet again -- by Columbia in 1997. Three years later, the title still sells 5,000 copies each week -- blockbuster numbers for jazz. And it recently passed the 1.5 million mark.

Talk about an evergreen.

There are only a handful of "Kind of Blue's" in the jazz and classical vaults. Still, hooked on the idea, record companies couldn't stop churning out remastered CDs. "They created this reissue Frankenstein monster," says one label player.

Then two things happened: First, most of those early adopters stopped rebuilding their CD libraries with the classics. "How many different sets of Mozart can you have?" asks Borders' Cosimano. "They need new stars."

Second, the flood of reissued works now takes money out of the mouths of young classical and jazz acts looking for a break. "Say some guy has recreational dough in [his] pocket -- he's sort of interested in jazz and he's confronted at the store with a Thelonious Monk reissue vs. some new record from a kid from the Bay Area. It's a no-brainer where he's going to spend his money," says a jazz industry veteran, who, like many others, is trying to keep his sense of humor while battling the hostile marketplace. "The joke we tell is, 'Jazz is not dead. It's just over.'"

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