Editing Jazz fusion (section)

===Davis sidemen branch out===
[[File:JohnMcLaughlin.jpg|thumb|right|[[John McLaughlin (musician)|John McLaughlin]] performs during his [[Mahavishnu Orchestra]] period]]

[[Miles Davis]] was one of the first jazz musicians to incorporate jazz fusion into his material. He also proved to be a good judge of talented sidemen. Several of the players he chose for his early fusion work went on to success in their own bands. 

Davis dropped out of music in 1975 because of problems with drugs and alcohol, but his sidemen took advantage of the creative and financial vistas that had been opened. Herbie Hancock brought elements of funk, disco, and electronic music into commercially successful albums such as ''[[Head Hunters]]'' (1973) and ''[[Feets, Don't Fail Me Now]]'' (1979). Several years after recording ''[[Miles in the Sky]]'' with Davis, guitarist [[George Benson]] became a vocalist with enough pop hits to overshadow his earlier career in jazz.<ref name="Gioia history" />

While Davis was sidelined, Chick Corea gained prominence. In the early 1970s Corea combined jazz, rock, pop, and Brazilian music in [[Return to Forever]], a band that included [[Stanley Clarke]] on bass guitar and [[Al Di Meola]] on electric guitar. Corea divided the rest of his career between acoustic and electric music, non-commercial and commercial, jazz and pop rock, with a band for each: the Akoustic Band and the Elektric Band.<ref name="Gioia history" />

Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter started the influential jazz fusion band [[Weather Report]] in December 1970.<ref name="BKGrove">{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=Grove Music Online |first=Barry |last=Kernfeld |title=Weather Report |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.45699 |url-access=subscription |access-date=29 March 2025 |language=en |date=20 January 2001 |publisher=Oxford}}</ref> They had a successful career along with major musicians like [[Alphonse Mouzon]], [[Jaco Pastorius]], [[Airto Moreira]] and [[Miroslav Vitouš]] until 1986.<ref name="BKGrove"/>

Tony Williams was a member of Davis's band since 1963. Williams reflected, "I wanted to create a different atmosphere from the one I had been in...What better way to do it than to go electric?" He left Davis to form [[the Tony Williams Lifetime]] with English guitarist John McLaughlin and organist [[Larry Young (musician)|Larry Young]]. The band combined rock intensity and loudness with jazz spontaneity. The debut album [[Emergency! (album)|''Emergency!'']] was recorded three months before ''Bitches Brew''.<ref name="OxMilkowski" /><ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.allaboutjazz.com/the-tony-williams-lifetime-emergency-tony-williams-by-trevor-maclaren.php |title=Tony Williams: The Tony Williams Lifetime: Emergency! |last=Maclaren |first=Trevor |date=November 16, 2005 |work=AllAboutJazz |access-date=August 1, 2018 }}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Nicholson|first=Stuart|editor=Mervyn Cooke, David Horn|title=The Cambridge Companion to Jazz |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KYl1_KVoSY0C&pg=PA226 |year=2010 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=978-0-521-66388-5|page=226}}</ref>

Although McLaughlin had worked with Miles Davis, he was influenced more by Jimi Hendrix and had played with English rock musicians [[Eric Clapton]] and [[Mick Jagger]] before creating the Mahavishnu Orchestra around the same time that Corea started Return to Forever. McLaughlin had been a member of Tony Williams's Lifetime. He brought to his music many of the elements that interested other musicians in the 1960s and early 1970s: counterculture, rock and roll, electronic instruments, solo virtuosity, experimentation, the blending of genres, and an interest in the exotic, such as Indian music.<ref name="Gioia history" /> He formed the [[Mahavishnu Orchestra]] with drummer [[Billy Cobham]], violinist [[Jerry Goodman]], bassist [[Rick Laird]], and keyboardist [[Jan Hammer]]. The band released its first album, ''[[The Inner Mounting Flame]]'', in 1971. Hammer pioneered the use of the [[Minimoog]] synthesizer with distortion effects. His use of the pitch bend wheel made a keyboard sound like an electric guitar. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was influenced by both psychedelic rock and [[Indian classical music]]. The band's first lineup broke up after two studio albums and one live album, but McLaughlin formed another group in 1974 under the same name with jazz violinist [[Jean-Luc Ponty]], one of the first electric violinists.

After leaving the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1975 Jean-Luc Ponty signed with [[Atlantic Records|Atlantic]] and released number of successful jazz fusion solo albums that entered top 5 of the [[Top Jazz Albums|''Billboard'' jazz charts]] in mid '70s — '80s.

During the late 1970s, [[Lee Ritenour]], [[Stuff (band)|Stuff]], George Benson, [[Spyro Gyra]], [[The Crusaders (jazz fusion group)|the Crusaders]], and [[Larry Carlton]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://rockportmusic.org/larry-carlton/|title=Larry Carlton|access-date=April 22, 2019|archive-date=April 22, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190422093005/https://rockportmusic.org/larry-carlton/|url-status=dead}}</ref> released fusion albums.