Jazz fusion
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.
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".
[8] After the Free Spirits, Coryell was part of a quartet led by vibraphonist Gary Burton, releasing the album Duster with its rock guitar influence.
[6] 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.
[8] As members of Miles Davis' band, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock played electric piano on Filles de Kilimanjaro.
[8] 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.
[13] 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.
[14][15] 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.
Davis's albums during this period, including In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live-Evil and On the Corner, featured McLaughlin.
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.
[10] Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter started very influential jazz fusion band Weather Report in 1970 and developed successful career along with major musicians like Alphonse Mouzon, Jaco Pastorius, Airto Moreira and Miroslav Vitouš until 1986.
[8][18][19] 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.
[10] He formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra with drummer Billy Cobham, violinist Jerry Goodman, bassist Rick Laird, and keyboardist Jan Hammer.
During the late 1970s, Lee Ritenour, Stuff, George Benson, Spyro Gyra, the Crusaders, and Larry Carlton[20] released fusion albums.
(1969) by the Tony Williams Lifetime and Agharta (1975) 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.
Throughout Europe and the world this movement grew due to bands like Magma in France, Passport in Germany, Time, Leb i Sol and September in Yugoslavia, and guitarists Jan Akkerman (The Netherlands), Volker Kriegel (Germany), Terje Rypdal (Norway), Jukka Tolonen (Finland), Ryo Kawasaki (Japan), and Kazumi Watanabe (Japan).
[40] Smooth jazz can be traced to at least the late 1960s, when producer Creed Taylor worked with guitarist Wes Montgomery on three popular music-oriented albums.
[citation needed] The merging of jazz and pop/rock music took a more commercial direction in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in the form of compositions with a softer sound palette that could fit comfortably in a soft rock radio playlist.
Music reviewer George Graham argues that the "so-called 'smooth jazz' sound of people like Kenny G has none of the fire and creativity that marked the best of the fusion scene during its heyday in the 1970s.
Niacin (band) was formed by rock bassist Billy Sheehan, drummer Dennis Chambers, and organist John Novello.
[45] In the same year, Sonny Sharrock, Peter Brötzmann, Bill Laswell, and Ronald Shannon Jackson recorded the first album under the name Last Exit, a blend of thrash and free jazz.
It started as a group of young African-American musicians in New York which included Steve Coleman, Greg Osby, and Gary Thomas developing a complex but grooving sound.
In 1947 the collaborations of bebop innovator Dizzy Gillespie with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments, most notably the congas and the bongos, into the East Coast jazz scene.
Some prominent examples of progressive rock mixed with elements of fusion is the music of Gong, King Crimson, Ozric Tentacles, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.
[56] The death metal band Atheist produced albums Unquestionable Presence in 1991 and Elements in 1993 containing heavily syncopated drumming, changing time signatures, instrumental parts, acoustic interludes, and Latin rhythms.
Cynic recorded a complex, unorthodox form of jazz fusion influenced experimental death metal with their 1993 album Focus.
[59] Another, more cerebral, all-instrumental progressive jazz fusion-metal band Planet X released Universe in 2000 with Tony MacAlpine, Derek Sherinian (ex-Dream Theater), and Virgil Donati (who has played with Scott Henderson from Tribal Tech).
The Mars Volta is extremely influenced by jazz fusion, using progressive, unexpected turns in the drum patterns and instrumental lines.
