Raison d'être

With the arrival of the new year of 2024, I made a conscious decision to continue to explore a recent interest and enjoyment of the progressive rock sub-genre known as Jazz-Rock Fusion; I was going to go further, to make a commitment to a "deep dive" into the world and history of Jazz-Rock Fusion. Before this decision, I had in my possession only a few albums from the sub-genre: some Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra, a lot of Jean-Luc Ponty, Al Di Meola, and Bob James, as well as a few from the likes of Freddy Hubbard, Ronnie Laws, Jeff Beck, Area, Santana, SBB, Weather Report, and other Italian one-offs (Dedalus, Cervello, and Picchio Dal Pozzo). Little did I realize that this project was to include the discovery and hearing of hundreds of artists and albums that would be completely new to me. Who knew there was such amazing Jazz-Rock Fusion coming out of Sweden, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Turkmenistan[!], Poland, Belgium, Germany, and France at the same time as those coming from the UK, USA and Canada? [All of which leads me to ponder the serious question of: Why are we all so Anglo-centric?] As I've begun to compile this growing list of albums, I've made the decision to segregate my "compendium" into several collected parts. In this chapter I am including the "masterpieces" from the first and second "waves" of Jazz-Rock Fusion; I am not including any albums made after 1976 because I wanted to stay true to the initial phases of Jazz-Rock Fusion: the ones that included so much experimentation and more adherence to the often-more-complex and -less-melodic spirit of jazz music. Explicit in this decision is my own choice to create a delineation between the first "waves" of Jazz-Rock Fusion from a later, more gentle, smooth, and commercially-inclined forms of jazz fusion music. 

The Initial "Waves" of Jazz-Rock Fusion Music. What I call the "First Wave" of Jazz-Rock Fusion is intended to represent the era in which the true pioneers of jazz fusion did their experimental forays into fusing elements of newly burgeoning electronic technologies with their beloved jazz music. This would include artists like Miles Davis, Maynard Ferguson, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, Gary Burton, Larry Coryell, Don Ellis, Herbie Mann, John McLaughlin, Larry Young, Joe Zawinul, Miroslav Vitous, Miles Davis, Chicago, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Parliament, John Mayall, Alexis Korner, Graham Bond, Neil Ardley, Joe Hiseman with Colosseum, Brian Auger, Ian Carr with Nucleus, as well as Frank Zappa and a young Allan Holdsworth. 

The "Second Wave" of Jazz-Rock Fusion is the period that saw the pioneers make the leap to create the power fusion super groups: the Mahavishnu Orchestra (both incarnations), Return To Forever, Eleventh House, the Canterbury Style artists like Egg, The Soft Machine, and Hatfield And The North. This was also the period in which imitators and strong-willed leaders began to develop their own versions of jazz-rock and classical fusions, like Paul Winter and his collaborator/ bandmates, Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi, Weather Report, Freddie Hubbard, Bob James, Oregon, and Manfred Eicher's ECM label's stable. 

The "Third Wave" of Jazz-Rock Fusion is the phase in which the styles of the pioneers and super groups got codified and copied. Here imitators multiplied geometrically across borders and oceans while many of the pioneers--who were already moving with great excitement and adaptability within the rapidly-expanding world of electronics and special effects--began to fall into the exploration and incorporation of funk and R&B influences and more dance- and pop-oriented commodities. 

The "Fourth Wave" saw the smoothing and watering down of the jazz elements of the artists' music into more radio- and sales-friendly products. The power of the record companies (and the almighty Dollar) pressured and tempted artists into making more listener-friendly music in order to increase sales and, of course, profits. (Sadly, these profits were made mostly by the record companies, not the artists.) Thus we have the advent of Easy Listening, Adult Contemporary, Smooth Jazz, and even Disco, what has become known as "Yacht Rock," New Age, and "Elevator Music"--often with their bands of seasoned jazz and classically-trained musicians covering popular hit songs with short and/or extended jazzed-up instrumentals, medleys, remixes, or dance versions. Thus, younger, up-and-coming artists had at their beck and call many jazz-, pop-, and rock-related musical avenues to choose from in order to express their visions, ideas, and skills. 

This capitalist profits-driven "Fourth Wave" of Jazz-Rock Fusion seemed to have had its start early in the 1970s but only took firm roots with the commercial success of songs like Blood Sweat and Tears' "Spinning Wheel" (1969 and 1972))," Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It is?" and "Beginnings" (1969 and 1971), Isaac Hayes' "Shaft" (1971), Dutch band Focus' "Hocus Pocus" (1972), Eumir Deodato's "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (1973), Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra's "Love's Theme" (1974), Scotland's Average White Band's "Pick Up the Pieces" (1975), guitarist George Benson's "This Masquerade" from his monster album, Breezin', in 1976, trumpeters Bill Conti and Maynard Ferguson's separate releases of "Gonna Fly Now," [originally from Conti's Rocky soundtrack (1976)], and, of course, Weather Report's "Birdland" (1977) as well as large-selling albums like Deodato's Prelude (1973), Herbie Hancock's Headhunters (1974), Keith Jarrett's The Köln Concert (1975), Benson's Breezin' (1976) and Steely Dan's Aja in 1977.