1970s
Between 1969 and 1972 the world of rock seemed to be facing a bitter spell of bad karma. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison and Duane Allman died. The Beatles broke up. In Altamont, California, four people died and hundreds were wounded at a Rolling Stones concert. It was billed the worst disaster of the rock age. In New York and San Fransisco"Fillmore East" and "Fillmore West" - centres of rock music - closed down forever. Suddenly no new groups or individual artists were dominating the scene. And Don McLean wrote the closing hymn of the rock age. For weeks, American Pie, which had the sad refrain about the 'day that music died', stayed at the top of the charts. Meanwhile, the new music that integrated jazz and rock, happened in exact parallel to these events.
While the extremes of jazz held sway in the fifties and sixties (taking jazz closer to the realm of art rather than entertainment) there was another picture being painted away from the watchful gaze of the media.
Ray Charles's gospel-like music of the 50s demonstrated the closeness of blues and hard bop, as did the music of pianist Horace Silver. Hammond organists like Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff were half-way between jazz and rhythm and blues, and saxophonme player Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson was still as bluesy as a guitar player.
In Britian, funky jazz could be heard as skilled blues musicians from the skiffle 'jugband' boom drew on jazz for inspiration. This, as far back as the late 50s. John McLaughlin made his breakthrough in the driving rhythm and blues band led by the late Graham Bond. British rhythm and bluesmen like Cream's Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker learned their magic while on the London jazz scene.
In the cool jazz scene, Stan Getz collaborated with Brazillian musicians to spark the seductive bossa nova craze. Fusion existed long before it became a genre.
By 1965, young rock fans were beginning to look at jazz as something outdated. Their parents had jazz. They wanted something new. Sales declined for anything to do with jazz. Even Miles Davis noticed this shift - and if he did, for sure other jazz musicians felt the shift's pinch. But it wasn't just a matter of survival that moved jazz musicians to the new rock.
Many of them still loved jazz. Only now the sounds were so much more attractive. The Moog synthesizer was in use by jazz improvisers in the mid sixties. Ray Charles's glittering electric piano sounds attracted jazz keyboardists like Herbie Hancock. Guitarists now had the howl and feedback of Jimi Hendrix. The upright bass player could now go electric with a bass guitar.
Jazz-rock or fusion as the music was now being called, grew literally by the day, and marketing gurus advised the dropping of the word 'jazz' as it was bad for business.
Bluesy bands like Blood, Sweat and Tears and Chicago featured horn lineups and jazzy licks. Vibes player Gary Burton, who pioneered the technique of bending notes on his instrument like a blues guitarist, began to play a mix of jazz and country blues in the late sixties introducing creative young guitarists like Larry Coryell, Pat Metheny and John Scofield. Another vibe player Roy Ayers fused catchy music with Afrocentric funk. Saxophonist Yusef Lateef who had long drawn on music from other cultures also explored funk as did the brothers Randy and Mike Brecker. Professor Donald Byrd at the University of Southern California collaborated with students like Larry and Fonce Mizell taking street funk to the discos with Black Byrd and Places and Spaces.
Not for the first time, the convert who became the most charismatic preacher of a new gospel to jazz musicians in this period was Miles Davis.
The band the trumpeter was now leading comprised Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams and Ron Carter. Together they had stretched jazz to the limits of freedom compatible with structure and pulse. Davis now studied Hendrix and Sly Stone. And in typical fashion spliced the solo resources of his sensational band into an electric music that still had space, drama and surprise but increasingly used electronic effects to paint active backdrops as Gil Evans had done before with a conventional orchestra.
In a Silent Way and Filles de Kilimanjaro began a change for Miles Davis which led to the best selling Bitches Brew, the breakthough for fusion jazz, in 1970. Davis was the first to reach a balanced and musically satisfying integration of jazz and rock. In fact, he was the catalyst of fusion, not just because of his own records, but because many of the '70's important musicians emerged from his groups.
Wayne Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul formed Weather Report. Pianist Chick Corea set up Return to Forever, a Latin-influenced band that eventually grew closer to hard rock in the 70s. Miles Davis's young drummer Tony Williams put together the abstract Lifetime with John McLaughlin and Cream's Jack Bruce. A cooler, more romantic fusion came with Pat Methney. Gil Evans, who masterminded Birth of the Cool in the late 40s, produced some thrilling fusion sessions and even arranged some Jimi Hendrix songs for full scale orchestra. Some fusion stars wound up all the way into pop - like George Benson, one of the finest improvisers since Wes Montgomery.
Like swing of the 30s, fusion eventually suffered from its own self-importance, dependence on technical effects and gimmicks, and repetitive formulae that cramped improvisation.
But fusion permanently transformed jazz. And all inhibitions about what jazz could appropriate as its own finally disappeared.
