Jazz (We've Got)

Boom it in your jeep. Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul showed me the way.

Straight up: shout out to A Tribe Called Quest for the title of this post.

The first jazz album I ever bought was Weather Report’s Tale Spinnin’ in 1975. Bought it at the now legendary 3rd Street Jazz and Rock here in Philly where I also once went record shopping with Henry Rollins, but that’s a whole different story for another time.

I don’t know why I bought it; I guess at the time something about the cover just spoke to me, called my name.

I had no idea who any of the players in the band were, however when I got home and listened to it I fell in love with this genre of music that, at the time, music fans called “fusion.”

Look, I am not a jazz aficionado by any means. I’ll leave that to my pals who can go seriously deep (leaving me in the jazz dust) and seriously know their shit. At the time (again, 1975) none of my friends were into jazz, so I relied on a mix of reading jazz articles in Musician Magazine and Rolling Stone, and some dude who was about five years older than me who worked at 3rd Street.

For those of you not familiar, Weather Report were founded by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Throughout the band’s career they worked with a changing roster of drummers, percussionists and bassists, although the outstanding Jaco Pastorius¹ was with the band for an accomplished run as their bassist. (Note: The band on Tale Spinnin’ was Zawinul and Shorter, Alphonse Johnson on bass, Leon “Ndugu” Chancler on drums and tympani, and Alyrio Lima on percussion).

Record store dude knew his shit tho. He told me which two of the four previous Weather Report studio albums I needed to listen to (I wound up buying them all), digging even deeper into Shorter/Zawinul world, and at the same time he pointed me in the musical direction of Wayne’s solo lps and Zawinul’s work with Cannonball Adderley and (of course) Miles, opening the doors or perception to not just Miles and Herbie and Blakey and Chick and McLaughlin, but to Cobham, Coryell, Coleman, Kirk, Wes Montgomery, then on to Mingus and Monk.

The term “fusion” as a genre description has had a career of having somewhat of bad rep. Even Wynton had something to say about it, and it was not so flattering. ² Depending on how thick the lenses of your jazz glasses are, certain jazz fans (and critics) have used it to mean a “watering down” of “pure” jazz. Some of my super jazz fan friends don’t give it enough credibility because it hangs on too much electricity (as if only “acoustic” instruments can be played in jazz), and some say it “doesn’t know if it wants to be jazz or rock or jazz or soul.” Hmmm. Jazz confusion.

But isn’t that the point of fusion? The best of it merges a range of styles to create a what should be a seamless new thing, like Miles and shit. Call it Jazz rock, soul jazz, jazz funk, punk jazz, whatever, however you like your jazz music infused with a twist of lime or lemon, the mingling of genres has expanded the language of jazz, the improvisation, the composition.

I only hang with the most understanding of jazz snobs. We delight in the straight ahead jazz acts of the Blue Note/Verve/Impulse!/Riverside/ECM/CTI etc label traditionalism (although all of those labels have released genre defying “fusion” records over the years) we marvel at the jazz fusion “legends,” and to the sounds new of jazz artists drawing on various genres like Ezra Collective, Nubya Garcia, Ily, Alfa Mist, BADBADNOTGOOD, Jeff Parker, Thundercat, Esperanza Spalding, Shabaka Hutchings, Kamasi Washington and others.

These modern day fusionistas continue to advance what the 60s and 70s jazz fusion originalists created with some elements of rock, funk, R&B, hip-hop, even classical and world music.

As Kool & The Gang say, let the music take your mind. Add some jazz, and jazz fusion to your day.

1. The Life of Jaco Pastorius

2. Wynton Marsalis: Reclaiming The Jazz Tradition