Fourplay's story starts in 1990, when keyboardist Bob James reunited with session drummer Harvey Mason during the recording of James's Grand Piano Canyon, with guitarist Lee Ritenour and bassist Nathan East also on the session. Rather than credit the record to James alone, the four decided to form a band as equal partners. Fourplay's self-titled 1991 debut spent an unprecedented 33 weeks at No. 1 on Billboard's Contemporary Jazz Albums chart, and the original lineup held together for three albums, including 1994's Elixir, before Ritenour left in 1997 and was replaced by Larry Carlton, who stayed with the group for the next twelve years; guitarist Chuck Loeb later took the chair before the band went on indefinite hiatus. Over three decades the band released 13 studio albums and picked up multiple Grammy nominations for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Bob James, Lee Ritenour, and Nathan East are each profiled in full elsewhere on this project: Bob James, Lee Ritenour, Nathan East.

Drummer Harvey Mason, the one founding member without his own spotlight here, was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1947 and began formal drum lessons at seven, later studying performance, composition, arranging, and percussion at both Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory. He was the original drummer for Herbie Hancock's Headhunters and co-composed "Chameleon," the hit off Hancock's 1973 Head Hunters, one of the most influential and widely sampled tracks in jazz-funk history, a credit that earned Mason his own nickname, "Chameleon." Beyond Fourplay and Hancock, his session discography runs past 1,300 credits, spanning Barbra Streisand, James Brown, Beyoncé, Christina Aguilera, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Björk, Carlos Santana, Michael Jackson, and the London Symphony Orchestra.

Fourplay's sound, built on Bob James's smooth electric-keyboard textures, Nathan East's melodic bass, and a rotating guitar chair, became one of the most commercially successful templates in smooth jazz, four A-list session musicians choosing to operate as a genuine band rather than a leader-and-sidemen arrangement.