History of Jazz-Rock Fusion (part 2)

Trumpeter and composer Miles Davis had a major influence on the development of jazz fusion with his 1968 album entitled Miles in the Sky. It is the first of Davis' albums to incorporate electric instruments, with Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter playing electric piano and bass guitar. Davis furthered his explorations into the use of electric instruments on another 1968 album, Filles de Kilimanjaro, with pianist Chick Corea and bassist Dave Holland.

In 1969, Davis introduced the electric instrument approach to jazz with In a Silent Way, which can be considered Davis's first fusion album. Composed of two side-long suites edited heavily by producer Teo Macero, this quiet, static album would be equally influential upon the development of ambient music. It featured contributions from musicians who would all go on to spread the fusion evangel with their own groups in the 1970s: Shorter, Hancock, Corea, pianist Josef Zawinul, guitarist John McLaughlin, Holland, and Williams. Williams quit Davis to form his own group, The Tony Williams Lifetime. Their debut record of that year Emergency! is also cited as one of the early acclaimed fusion albums.



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History Of Jazz-Rock Fusion part 1 (The Dawn)

Until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate." However, "...as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces." Music critic Piero Scaruffi argues that "credit for "inventing" jazz-rock goes to Indiana-born white jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton, who "began to experiment with rock rhythms on The Time Machine (1966)". Burton recorded what Scaruffi calls "the first jazz-rock album, Duster" in 1967, with guitarist Larry Coryell. Scaruffi argues that Coryell is "another candidate to inventor of jazz-rock", in that the Texas-born guitarist released the jazz-rock recording Out of Sight And Sound in 1966.


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