Jazz fusion
Jazz fusion is a popular 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 and basses, amplifiers, and keyboard instruments that were popular in rock began 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, in a similar fashion to progressive rock. 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 can employ 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 acoustic piano and double bass, and more likely to use electric guitars, electric pianos, organs, 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. 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.
History
Origins
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". AllMusic states that "until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate", although the Daevid Allen Trio which later became the Soft Machine formed in 1963, while the jazz label Verve released the influential debut album, Freak Out!, by artist and composer Frank Zappa in 1966.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." In 1966, he started the band the Free Spirits with Bob Moses on drums and recorded the band's first album, Out of Sight and Sound, released in 1967. That same year, DownBeat began to report on rock music. After the Free Spirits, Coryell was part of a quartet led by vibraphonist Gary Burton, releasing the album Duster with its rock guitar influence. Burton produced the album Tomorrow Never Knows for Count's Jam Band, which included Coryell, Mike Nock, and Steve Marcus, all of them former students at Berklee College in Boston.
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. Lloyd adopted the trappings of the California psychedelic rock scene by playing at the rock venue the Fillmore West, wearing colorful clothes, and giving his albums titles like Dream Weaver and Forest Flower, which were bestselling jazz albums in 1967. Flautist Jeremy Steig experimented with jazz in his band Jeremy & the Satyrs with vibraphonist Mike Mainieri. Rahsaan Roland Kirk performed with Jimi Hendrix at Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London.
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. Axelrod said Davis had played the album before conceiving Bitches Brew.
Miles Davis plugs in
wrote in his autobiography that in 1968 he had been listening to Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, and Sly and the Family Stone. As members of Davis' band, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock played electric piano on Filles de Kilimanjaro. Davis's 1969 album In a Silent Way is considered his first fusion album. 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. 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". 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.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. Music critic Kevin Fellezs commented that some members of the jazz community regarded rock music as less sophisticated and more commercial than jazz. Over the next two years, the aloof Davis recorded more often, worked with many sidemen, appeared on television, and performed at rock venues. Just as quickly, Davis tested the loyalty of rock fans by continuing to experiment with rock, funk, and electronic treatments. His producer, Teo Macero, inserted previously recorded material into the Jack Johnson soundtrack, Live-Evil, and On the Corner. Jack Johnson has been cited as "the purest electric jazz record ever made" and "one of the most remarkable jazz rock discs of the era".
Davis sidemen branch out
was one of the first jazz musicians to incorporate jazz fusion into his material. He also proved to be a good judge of talented sidemen. Several of the players he chose for his early fusion work went on to success in their own bands.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 and Feets, Don't Fail Me Now. 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.
While Davis was sidelined, Chick Corea gained prominence. In the early 1970s Corea combined jazz, rock, pop, and Brazilian music in Return to Forever, a band that included Stanley Clarke on bass guitar and Al Di Meola on electric guitar. Corea divided the rest of his career between acoustic and electric music, non-commercial and commercial, jazz and pop rock, with a band for each: the Akoustic Band and the Elektric Band.
Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter started the influential jazz fusion band Weather Report in December 1970. They had a successful career along with major musicians like Alphonse Mouzon, Jaco Pastorius, Airto Moreira and Miroslav Vitouš until 1986.
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.
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 that 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. 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 in 1974 under the same name with jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, one of the first electric violinists.
After leaving the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1975 Jean-Luc Ponty signed with Atlantic and released number of successful jazz fusion solo albums that entered top 5 of the Billboard jazz charts in mid '70s — '80s.
During the late 1970s, Lee Ritenour, Stuff, George Benson, Chuck Mangione, Spyro Gyra, the Crusaders, and Larry Carlton released fusion albums. Early 1980s, Larsen Feiten band, George Benson, Lee Ritenour, Al Jarreau, and the Clark/Duke Project gained pop hits.
Jazz rock
The term "jazz rock" is sometimes used as a synonym for "jazz fusion". The Free Spirits have sometimes been cited as the earliest jazz rock band.Jazz rock bands such as Chicago, The Ides of March, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Chase, Lighthouse, Santana, Colosseum, Soft Machine, Nucleus, Brand X, the Mothers of Invention and IF blended jazz and rock with electric instruments. Miles Davis' fusion jazz was "pure melody and tonal color", while Frank Zappa's music was more "complex" and "unpredictable". Zappa released the solo album Hot Rats in 1969. The album contained long instrumental pieces with a jazz influence. Zappa released two albums, Waka/Jawaka and The Grand Wazoo, in 1972, which were influenced by jazz. George Duke and Aynsley Dunbar played on both. 1970s band Steely Dan has been lauded by music critic Neil McCormick for their "smooth, smart jazz-rock fusion".
The jazz artists of the 1960s and 1970s had a large impact on many rock groups of that era such as Santana and Frank Zappa. They took jazz phrasing and harmony and incorporated it into modern rock music, significantly changing music history and paving the way for artists that would follow in their footsteps. Carlos Santana in particular has given much credit to Miles Davis and the influence he had on his music. While Miles Davis combined jazz with modal and rock influences, Carlos Santana combined these along with Latin rhythms and feel, shaping a whole new genre, Latin rock.
According to AllMusic, the term jazz rock "may refer to the loudest, wildest, most electrified fusion bands from the jazz camp, but most often it describes performers coming from the rock side of the equation...jazz rock first emerged during the late '60s as an attempt to fuse the visceral power of rock with the musical complexity and improvisational fireworks of jazz. Since rock often emphasized directness and simplicity over virtuosity, jazz rock generally grew out of the most artistically ambitious rock subgenres of the late '60s and early '70s: psychedelia, progressive rock, and the singer-songwriter movement."
According to jazz writer Stuart Nicholson, jazz rock paralleled free jazz by being "on the verge of creating a whole new musical language in the 1960s". He said the albums Emergency! by the Tony Williams Lifetime and Agharta by Miles Davis "suggested the potential of evolving into something that might eventually define itself as a wholly independent genre quite apart from the sound and conventions of anything that had gone before". This development was stifled by commercialism, Nicholson said, as the genre "mutated into a peculiar species of jazz-inflected pop music that eventually took up residence on FM radio" at the end of the 1970s.
In the 1970s, American fusion was being combined in the U.K. with progressive rock and psychedelic music. Bands who were part of this movement included Brand X, Bruford, and Nucleus. Throughout Europe and the world this movement grew due to the efforts of Magma in France, Passport in Germany, guitarist Jan Akkerman of the Netherlands, Terje Rypdal in Norway, Jukka Tolonen of Finland, and the Japanese guitarists Ryo Kawasaki and Kazumi Watanabe.