November 2001

Late Night
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By Marshall Bowden

If you grew up listening to jazz music in the 1970s, you certainly couldn’t escape the electrified jazz of the period, a style that became known (and later reviled) as fusion. Chances are that the music caught hold of you partially because you couldn’t have grown up at that time without listening to some rock and pop music as well. Fusion seemed to promise that music with the rhythmic basis and electronic arsenal of rock and the musical complexity and artistry of jazz could be successful artistically as well as popular. Sure, a lot of it became self-indulgent and boring, just as a lot of rock music that ventured into the area became boring (some of those Jeff Beck albums that were so well-loved then are, well, boring now). But the best and most original music of the genre had value because the musicians behind it were established jazz musicians who had paid their dues playing challenging bop and post-bop music. If you watched Ken Burns’ Jazz (the year’s almost over, so I have to get my licks in now), you know what short shrift the musicians of the 1960s and 70s received. Not only was this oversight misguided and revisionist, it ignored a core period of jazz history, because the musicians who came up during the 1960s were able to transcend the commercial limitations that had been imposed on the jazz genre and infused popular music with more genuine jazz inflection than had been done at any time since the swing era.

Let’s review briefly. Miles Davis, inspired by the funk-rock of bands like Sly and the Family Stone (not to mention their popularity), edged ever closer to infusing his music with the electronic sounds of rock music. On Filles de Kilimanjaro Herbie Hancock used electric piano, and the process continued and expanded on In a Silent Way, Davis’ 1969 release. On Silent Way, Davis used multiple keyboards for the first time—Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock on electric piano plus Joe Zawinul on organ. He also used bassist Dave Holland and guitarist John McLaughlin, both of whom played important roles on the revolutionary Bitches Brew album. These musicians learned much from Davis’ first experiments in electric jazz, and they carried it over into their own careers.

Hancock, with his Mwandishi band, recorded a couple of albums (Crossings & Sextant) that were future primitive. The recordings utilized electronic keyboards, but they also featured an African vibe and the free improvisation of the more avant-garde side of 1960s jazz. With Headhunters, though, Hancock took off in a completely different direction. The complex compositions that had always been his hallmark were abandoned in favor of slow-burn grooves and simple, funky melodies. Paul Jackson, Harvey Mason, and Bill Summers (lately of Los Hombres Calientes) made up a funk rhythm section over which Hancock’s synthesizers bubbled and splashed, counterpointed by the work of Bennie Maupin, the only horn player on the sessions. Headhunters was, in many ways, the album Davis had been unable to make. Despite the thick, swirling cauldron of electronic sounds he orchestrated, Miles was never quite able to abandon the complexities of his earlier jazz work. Hancock stripped it down and went right for the booty—quite successfully too, as the album became one of the first jazz albums to be certified gold. He was less successful at reproducing the concept, though, and subsequent albums were not as winning either artistically or in terms of sales. By the end of the 70s he was again working in a more straightforward post-bop vein with his V.S.O.P. quintet, but in 1983 he was back on the charts with a new album, Future Shock, featuring the enormous hit “Rockit”. Hancock collaborated with Bill Laswell on this album, and “Rockit” benefited mightily from the groundbreaking Godley & CrÚme video that represented the track on MTV—a video that didn’t feature Hancock at all. It’s easy to argue that Hancock was pandering by producing a facile album of hip-hop/dance/electronica for the younger generation, but there are two things wrong with this argument. First, since when has pandering to popular tastes been any guarantee of success for a jazz musician? Second, unlike Miles, Hancock and the rest of the Davis protégées have continued to perform in more traditional, acoustic jazz settings that clearly demonstrate their complete mastery of the form. Hancock is at least as restless with regard to trying out new styles as Miles was, but unlike Miles, he doesn’t abandon everything else in favor of the new style. By 1996, when he recorded the decidedly traditional New Standard album featuring renditions of popular songs like “Norwegian Wood”, “Love Is Stronger Than Pride”, and “Thieves in the Temple”, it sold much better than such a recording would have a decade earlier.

Similar patterns have emerged with other Davis alumni. Chick Corea, whose first Return to Forever group (featuring Flora Purim and Airto) was as light as Davis’ electric work was ponderous, went into a much heavier rock sound on later RTF albums. Bassist Stanley Clarke and guitarist Al Dimeola were very attuned to the rock potential of their instruments, and by the time of albums such as Romantic Warrior it was pretty hard to tell RTF from progressive rock bands like King Crimson or Brand X, save for the vocals. Corea also kept in touch with his jazz roots, recording solo piano albums, Latin-influenced compositions, and straightforward jazz combo work such as Origins and the new trio work. Joe Zawinul, best known for his groundbreaking work with Weather Report (along with saxophonist, composer and Davis alumnus Wayne Shorter), continues to do interesting work, as does John McLaughlin, who not only opened new vistas on jazz and rock with his Mavahishnu Orchestra, but also made explicit the implicit connection between the improvisational forms of modern jazz and classical Indian music with his group Shakti.

These musicians not only found their way onto the popular music charts at various times, they also infiltrated public consciousness in other ways, such as movie soundtrack work. Through such work, the sounds of real jazz have been filtered into popular music in ways that previous generations of jazz musicians could only dream about. Thanks to the work of Steely Dan, the average listener finds no more weirdness in raised ninths or diminished chords than in the flatted seventh that has been acceptable in popular music at least since Gershwin. Not only that, but amazing musicians like Lou Marini, Chris Potter, and Jim Pugh can be heard playing solos and ensemble work that aren’t out of place in more straightforward jazz outfits like Dave Holland’s (where Potter plays as well). These guys all contribute to Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature, which won last year’s Grammy award for Album of the Year.

At the same time that Miles’ colleagues were dispersing and establishing their considerable influence on music outside the jazz mainstream, rock musicians were experimenting as well, intrigued by the more accessible nature of the electronic jazz they were hearing. Joni Mitchell was already interested in jazz by the early 70s. Unfortunately, her initial stabs were backed by Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, an overly slick aggregation of studio musicians without the solid jazz background of Miles’ men. Though she had hits with her material from this time, the musical accompaniment was often shallow compared to the weight of her lyrics and beauty of her melodies. In 1976, Mitchell recorded Hejira with guitarist Larry Carlton (who first worked with her on Court and Spark) and Weather Report bassist Jaco Pastorius. For the first time, her free-flowing verse and nontraditional song structures were supported by musicians equal to the challenge, and the influence of jazz in Mitchell’s musical vision became clear. Her next album, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter brought in Pastorius’ bandmate Wayne Shorter, who has continued to work off and on with the singer ever since.

In the 80s, fusion gave way to a style that became known as “smooth jazz”. Smooth jazz took elements of early electric jazz and fusion—the electric instruments, the focus on the beat, simple melodies, and non-challenging harmonic structures—and took the edge off by turning down the volume and limiting the amount of true improvisation that took place. Musicians like Larry Carlton and Pat Metheny were supposedly the inspiration for the smooth jazz movement, but their musical output demonstrates real chops and command of a huge variety of styles that younger “smooth” artists, from Kenny G to Candy Dulfer, simply do not possess. Smooth jazz was instrumental music for people who didn’t want the music to intrude on whatever they were doing while it was on. Though it was popular for a time, and continues to be in some quarters, it is gratifying to see that it has generally faded from view as listeners have recognized it not as a legitimate musical style, but as a product created by record company marketing departments. There are those who felt the same way about the original class of electric jazz/fusion artists, but the mere fact that most of them continue to play in a variety of styles today, long after the concept of “fusion” is a memory, demonstrates that they are not, and never were, representatives of any particular style or genre of music. They are musicians, plain and simple.