Jazz fusion is a popular music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock began to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll.
Charles Robert Watts was an English musician who was the drummer of the Rolling Stones from 1963 until his death in 2021.
John McLaughlin, also known as Mahavishnu, is an English guitarist, bandleader, and composer. A pioneer of jazz fusion, his music combines elements of jazz with rock, world music, Western classical music, flamenco, and blues. After contributing to several key British groups of the early 1960s, McLaughlin made Extrapolation, his first album as a bandleader, in 1969. He then moved to the U.S., where he played with drummer Tony Williams's group Lifetime and then with Miles Davis on his electric jazz fusion albums In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, and On the Corner. His 1970s electric band, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, performed a technically virtuosic and complex style of music that fused electric jazz and rock with Indian influences.
Bernard "Buddy" Rich was an American jazz drummer, songwriter, conductor, and bandleader. He is considered one of the most influential drummers of all time.
Joseph Albert Morello was an American jazz drummer best known for serving as the drummer for pianist Dave Brubeck, as part of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, from 1957 to 1972, including during the quartet's "classic lineup" from 1958 to 1968, which also included alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and bassist Eugene Wright. Morello's facility for playing unusual time signatures and rhythms enabled that group to record a series of albums that explored them. The most notable of these was the first in the series, the 1959 album Time Out, which contained the hit songs "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk". In fact, "Take Five", the album's biggest hit was specifically written by Desmond as a way to showcase Morello's ability to play in 5
4 time.
Tony Oxley was an English free improvising drummer and electronic musician.
Louie Bellson, often seen in sources as Louis Bellson, although he himself preferred the spelling Louie, was an American jazz drummer. He was a composer, arranger, bandleader, and jazz educator, and is credited with pioneering the use of two bass drums.
Leonard White III is an American jazz fusion drummer who was a member of the band Return to Forever led by Chick Corea in the 1970s. White has been called "one of the founding fathers of jazz fusion".
Scott Henderson is an American jazz fusion and blues guitarist best known for his work with the band Tribal Tech. He was born in West Palm Beach and raised in Lake Worth Beach.
Stephen Kendall Gadd is an American drummer, percussionist, and session musician. Gadd is one of the best-known and most highly regarded session and studio drummers in the industry, recognized by his induction into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1984. Gadd's performances on Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" (1976) and "Late in the Evening", Herbie Mann's "Hi-jack" (1975) and Steely Dan's "Aja" (1977) are examples of his style. He has worked with other popular musicians from many genres including Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, Chick Corea, Chuck Mangione, Eric Clapton and Michel Petrucciani.
Steve Smith and Vital Information is an American jazz fusion group led by drummer Steve Smith.
Baron Browne was an American bass guitarist.
Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club is a jazz club that has operated in Soho, London, since 1959.
Bernard Lee "Pretty" Purdie is an American drummer, and an influential R&B, soul and funk musician. He is known for his precise musical time-keeping and his signature use of triplets against a half-time backbeat: the "Purdie Shuffle." He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2013.
Steve Marcus was an American jazz saxophonist.
Bob Moses is an American jazz drummer.
Mark Samuel Soskin is an American jazz pianist based in New York City.
Walt Weiskopf is an American jazz saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, author and educator. He has released sixteen albums as a leader, and performed on countless other albums as a sideman. He has collaborated with artists such as Buddy Rich, Frank Sinatra and Steely Dan.
Robert Avel Holz is an American drummer and composer. Holz was born in Syracuse, New York and resides in Los Angeles, California. He played with jazz guitarist Larry Coryell's trio between 2015 and 2017 appearing at major venues such as Blues Alley in Washington, D.C.; and, has led his own groups: Bob Holz and A Vision Forward, and Bob Holz Band.
