Early jobs included being a member of the Earle Parsons Dance Band (c. 1952–55) which played various engagements around the Marshall area.

During the summer of 1955, at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri, James played for dancing and occasional jam sessions with the Bob Falkenhainer Quartet on the Governor McClurg Excursion Boat in the evenings.

At age 16, a solo engagement followed in the summer when James traveled with good friend Ben Swinger to Colorado and ended up with a job in the piano bar at the Steads Ranch resort in Estes Park.

In 1962, his band entered the Notre Dame Collegiate Jazz Festival, where the judges included Henry Mancini and Quincy Jones.

[1] In the 1970s, James worked on albums by Gabor Szabo, Milt Jackson, Stanley Turrentine, Grover Washington, Jr. (notably on Mister Magic), and Maynard Ferguson.

[6] The album was notable for adapting classical music to a modern-day scene, e.g. "In The Garden" was based on Pachelbel's Canon in D and "Night on Bald Mountain" was a cover of Modest Mussorgsky's composition of the same name.

Immediately thereafter, he cut a disco version of the Theme to Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a 45 of which was included with the soundtrack LP, and recorded the album Touchdown (Tappan Zee, 1978).

[11] He would record albums for Warner Bros. (which also reissued Bob James' CTI and Tappan Zee/Columbia back catalog in the mid-1990s) for the next seventeen years.

James was looking for a bass player while recording the album Grand Piano Canyon (Warner Bros., 1990) with drummer Harvey Mason and guitarist Lee Ritenour.

's "Peter Piper", the Beastie Boys' "Hold it Now, Hit it", Missy Elliott's "Work It", will.i.am's "I Got it from My Mama", "This Is Me (Urban Remix)" by Dream, "I Want You" by Common, and "Take It Back" by Wu-Tang Clan.

His 1980 song "Snowbird Fantasy" was sampled by French house musician and Le Knight Club member Eric Chedeville, also Known as "Rico the Wizard", in his 2009 single "Spell of Love", which was remixed later by DJ Sneak.

The track "Tappan Zee", named after the bridge over a wide section of the Hudson River that James regularly crossed on his way to the studio,[15] was sampled in Arrested Development's "People Everyday (Metamorphis Remix)".

In the past, James has stated that he had "a lot of respect" for the creative process of hip hop production, only being unhappy when his music was plagiarized or illegally sampled.

With Patti Austin With Chet Baker With George Benson With Ron Carter With Hank Crawford With Maynard Ferguson With Michael Franks With Eric Gale With Jeff Golub and Avenue Blue With Quincy Jones With Hubert Laws With Harvey Mason With Ralph MacDonald With Idris Muhammad With Doc Powell With Lee Ritenour With Gabor Szabo With Stanley Turrentine With Grover Washington Jr. With Kirk Whalum With John Zorn