Section from chapter 1969: New Horizons   [ return to introduction ]

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By Mervyn Cooke • 325 illustrations,
82 in full color • 256 pages • 8-1/2 x 8-1/2"
Cloth • ISBN 0-7892-0399-5 • U.S. $45.00
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Miles Davis at Tanglewood, 18 August 1970. Compare his attire to the conventional dress of his earlier career (• p. 146). [ view larger image ] (Corbis-Bettmann)
Birth of Fusion

Although the 1960s brought many exciting innovations in jazz, the decade also saw one of its greatest crises as a new generation of young listeners were seduced away by the mass appeal of the blossoming pop and rock industry. Jazz had grown increasingly respectable since the 1940s, and could no longer represent the heady spirit of rebellion it had championed in bygone years. Once a music associated with sex, illicit alcohol and (later) drugs, jazz now seemed almost squeaky clean. (Significantly, rock rapidly succeeded jazz not only as a more popular music but also as the core of the escalating 1960s drug scene.)

Much worse, or so it seemed at the time, jazz was becoming increasingly characterized by an esoteric intellectualism guaranteed to alienate even its most devoted adherents. The gritty, avant-garde experiments perpetrated by the likes of Ornette Coleman (• p. 150), Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler (• p. 164) never achieved the global popularity of the catchy numbers the Beatles manufactured with such tuneful ease. Even jazz stars of the magnitude of Miles Davis and John Coltrane (• p. 160) found themselves performing to half-empty venues in the mid-1960s.

The solution, which remains controversial among jazz aficionados, was a classic case of "if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em." The Columbia label, concerned that Miles Davis’s album sales were dwindling, boldly suggested that they cash in on the rock craze. Davis accordingly produced two albums in 1969 that launched a new concept of jazz-rock fusion: In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. The latter went on to distinguish itself as one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time, thus vindicating Columbia’s policy--at least in commercial terms. The new music unashamedly borrowed two prominent features from rock: a bias toward electronic and amplified sounds (principally electric bass guitar with electric piano and/or synthesizers), and non-swinging rhythmic patterns characterized by emphatic backbeats. The traditional walking bass disappeared, replaced by syncopated bass riffs that could be repeated at length.

Later developments in fusion (and other crossover ventures) were made by a clutch of talented sidemen who participated in Davis’s 1969 recordings. These included keyboard players Chick Corea (• p. 178), Herbie Hancock (• p. 201) and Joe Zawinul (• p. 174), drummer Tony Williams (• p. 157) and British guitarist John McLaughlin (• p. 179).