Musical fusion

MUSICAL FUSION
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion[2] and progressive jazz[3]) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.

Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity. Some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a single key or a single chord with a simple, repeated melody. Others use elaborate chord progressions, unconventional time signatures, or melodies with counter-melodies. These arrangements, whether simple or complex, typically include improvised sections that can vary in length, much like in other forms of jazz.

As with jazz, jazz fusion employs brass and woodwind instruments such as trumpet and saxophone, but other instruments often substitute for these. A jazz fusion band is less likely to use piano and double bass, and more likely to use electric guitar, synthesizers, and bass guitar.

The term "jazz rock" is sometimes used as a synonym for "jazz fusion" and for music performed by late 1960s and 1970s-era rock bands that added jazz elements to their music. After a decade of popularity during the 1970s, fusion expanded its improvisatory and experimental approaches through the 1980s in parallel with the development of a radio-friendly style called smooth jazz.[4] Experimentation continued in the 1990s and 2000s. Fusion albums, even those that are made by the same group or artist, may include a variety of musical styles. Rather than being a codified musical style, fusion can be viewed as a musical tradition or approach.

When John Coltrane died in 1967, rock was the most popular music in America, and DownBeat magazine went so far as to declare in a headline that: "Jazz as We Know It Is Dead".[5]

Guitarist Larry Coryell, sometimes called the godfather of fusion, referred to a generation of musicians who had grown up on rock and roll when he said, "We loved Miles but we also loved the Rolling Stones."[6] In 1966 he started the band the Free Spirits with Bob Moses on drums and recorded the band's first album,[5] Out of Sight and Sound, in 1967. That same year DownBeat began to report on rock music.[6] After the Free Spirits, Coryell was part of a quartet led by vibraphonist Gary Burton, releasing the album Duster with its rock guitar influence.[5] Burton produced the album Tomorrow Never Knows for Count's Rock Band, which included Coryell, Mike Nock, and Steve Marcus, all of them former students at Berklee College in Boston.[5]

The pioneers of fusion emphasized exploration, energy, electricity, intensity, virtuosity, and volume. Charles Lloyd played a combination of rock and jazz at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 with a quartet that included Keith Jarrett and Jack DeJohnette.[6] Lloyd adopted the trappings of the California psychedelic rock scene by playing at the rock venue the Fillmore, wearing colorful clothes, and giving his albums titles like Dream Weaver and Forest Flower, which were bestselling jazz albums in 1967.[5] Flautist Jeremy Steig experimented with jazz in his band Jeremy & the Satyrs with vibraphonist Mike Mainieri. The jazz label Verve released the first album (Freak Out) by rock guitarist Frank Zappa in 1966.[6] Rahsaan Roland Kirk performed with Jimi Hendrix at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London.[6]

AllMusic states that "until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate".[7]

Miles Davis plugs in
As members of Miles Davis's band, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock played electric piano on Filles de Kilimanjaro. Davis wrote in his autobiography that in 1968 he had been listening to Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, and Sly and the Family Stone.[6] When Davis recorded Bitches Brew in 1969, he mostly abandoned the swing beat in favor of a rock and roll backbeat and bass guitar grooves. The album "mixed free jazz blowing by a large ensemble with electronic keyboards and guitar, plus a dense mix of percussion."[8] Davis played his trumpet like an electric guitar—plugged in to electronic effects and pedals.

By the end of the first year, Bitches Brew sold 400,000 copies, four times the average for a Miles Davis album. Over the next two years the aloof Davis recorded more often, worked with many sideman, appeared on television, and performed at rock venues. Just as quickly, Davis tested the loyalty of rock fans by continuing to experiment. His producer, Teo Macero, inserted previously recorded material into the Jack Johnson soundtrack, Live-Evil, and On the Corner.[9]

Although Bitches Brew gave him a gold record, the use of electric instruments and rock beats created consternation among some jazz critics, who accused Davis of betraying the essence of jazz.[10] Music critic Kevin Fellezs commented that some members of the jazz community regarded rock music as less sophisticated and more commercial than jazz.[11]

Davis's 1969 album In a Silent Way is considered his first fusion album.[12] Composed of two side-long improvised suites edited heavily by Teo Macero, the album was made by pioneers of jazz fusion: Corea, Hancock, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, and John McLaughlin.

A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971) has been cited as "the purest electric jazz record ever made" and "one of the most remarkable jazz rock discs of the era".[13][14]

According to music journalist Zaid Mudhaffer, the term "jazz fusion" was coined in a review of Song of Innocence by David Axelrod when it was released in 1968.[15] Axelrod said Davis had played the album before conceiving Bitches Brew.[16]

Davis sidemen branch out

John McLaughlin performs during his Mahavishnu Orchestra period

Miles Davis was one of the first Jazz musicians to incorporate Fusion into their material. His guitar player John McLaughlin branched out forming his own fusion group Mahavishnu Orchestra. Blending Indian classical music, jazz, and psychedelic rock they created a whole new style just like John McLaughlin's former band leader Miles Davis. Davis recorded many Jazz Fusion records such as In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew. He also recorded live albums during this period such as Live-Evil and Miles Davis at Fillmore, all records John McLaughlin played on.

Miles Davis dropped out of music in 1975 because of problems with drugs and alcohol, but his sidemen took advantage of the creative and financial vistas that had been opened. Herbie Hancock brought elements of funk, disco, and electronic music into commercially successful albums such as Head Hunters (1973) and Feets, Don't Fail Me Now (1979). Several years after recording Miles in the Sky with Davis, guitarist George Benson became a vocalist with enough pop hits to overshadow his earlier career in jazz.[9]

While Davis was dropping out, Corea was plugging-in. In the early 1970s Corea combined jazz, rock, pop, and Brazilian music in Return to Forever, a band which included Stanley Clarke on bass guitar and Al Di Meola on electric guitar. Corea seemed to divide the rest of his career into acoustic and electric, non-commercial and commercial, jazz and pop rock. He had a band for each: the Akoustic Band and the Elektric Band.[9]

Tony Williams was a member of Davis's band since 1963. Williams reflected, "I wanted to create a different atmosphere from the one I had been in...What better way to do it than to go electric?" He left Davis to form the Tony Williams Lifetime with English guitarist John McLaughlin and organist Larry Young. The band combined rock intensity and loudness with jazz spontaneity. The debut album Emergency! was recorded three months before Bitches Brew.[6][17][18]

Although McLaughlin had worked with Miles Davis, he was influenced more by Jimi Hendrix and had played with English rock musicians Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger before creating the Mahavishnu Orchestra around the same time that Corea started Return to Forever. McLaughlin had been a member of Tony Williams's Lifetime. He brought to his music many of the elements which interested other musicians in the 1960s and early 1970s: counterculture, rock and roll, electronic instruments, solo virtuosity, experimentation, the blending of genres, and an interest in the exotic, such as Indian music.[9]

He formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra with drummer Billy Cobham, violinist Jerry Goodman, bassist Rick Laird, and keyboardist Jan Hammer. The band released its first album, The Inner Mounting Flame, in 1971. Hammer pioneered the use of the Minimoog synthesizer with distortion effects. His use of the pitch bend wheel made a keyboard sound like an electric guitar. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was influenced by both psychedelic rock and Indian classical music. The band's first lineup broke up after two studio albums and one live album, but McLaughlin formed another group under the same name with Jean-Luc Ponty, a jazz violinist and one of the first electric violinists. During the late '70s Lee Ritenour, Stuff, George Benson, Spyro Gyra, the Crusaders, and Larry Carlton[19] released fusion albums.