Matthew Reed Baker takes over the 33 1/3 blog this week with a deep-dive into his upcoming addition to the Genre series: 1970s Jazz Fusion. Today Matthew reveals how his book on 1970s jazz fusion differs from other jazz books.
by Matthew Reed Baker
Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been building a library of books about jazz, so I am intimately familiar with how so many talented writers have tackled this rich subject.
The jazz books in my collection include broad histories of jazz, histories of specific phases or subgenres of jazz, memoirs by jazz artists, biographies of jazz artists, annals of specific phases in specific jazz artists’ careers, histories of jazz record labels, collections of interviews and articles about jazz artists, musicological tomes analyzing the art of jazz improvisation and record production, even monographs of jazz album cover art. The glory of jazz is that it’s inexhaustible.
So I’m quite thrilled to be adding to this jazz library in my own way.
I think the most important difference with this book comes from the fact that I am not a jazz musician, a jazz historian, or a jazz musicologist. And even though I have written about jazz and interviewed jazz musicians in my longtime function as an arts journalist, I would never be so presumptuous in calling myself a “jazz writer”—I’ve read too many of those talented specialists to even compare myself to them! But I do consider myself an expert jazz fan, specifically one who just enjoys the music first, then studies it second, and that’s the spirit with which I wrote this book.
Jazz gives me such pleasure, but it still has the reputation of being difficult and overly intellectual for the “regular” music fan to understand.
Even more, jazz fusion has a further negative reputation for adding a slick layer of cheese on top, as if it’s a genre that concerns itself with technical ability and commercial crossover rather than with soulful expression and sonic innovation.
I felt that my jazz book didn’t need to yield to these preconceived notions, especially since a vast amount of 1970s jazz fusion is so adventurous and yet so accessible. By celebrating the aspects of the genre that have the broadest appeal, I hope my approach will encourage readers who are curious about jazz and jazz fusion, but didn’t know where to start.
As for me, I began by writing about the people, because I firmly believe that behind every grand artistic choice is a relatable human being, and I felt that all of them were influenced by their personal backgrounds and the changing society around them, especially as so many were Black artists entering adulthood during the Civil Rights era.
But what makes my approach somewhat different here is that I also focus on their commercial success and the pop-culture repercussions of their music. Most jazz books don’t focus much on sales and popularity, but it’s a key aspect of jazz fusion’s history that it came along at a time when straight-ahead acoustic jazz was fading from view and overwhelmed by rock and soul, both as a mainstream music and as a totem of hipster counterculture.
Jazz fusion came along in the late 1960s through the 1970s, and—much to the chagrin of jazz purists—rose high in the pop charts. My book also goes further and explores how some of the biggest rock and soul musicians were so into this music, that they essentially started making jazz fusion records of their own.
Indeed, for the decade that I cover, jazz fusion was certainly the most ubiquitous subgenre of jazz—just listen to Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” or George Benson’s “Breezin’”, and then remember (or imagine) how often these instrumentals were then on Top 40 radio! Starting in the late 1980s, the era of 1970s jazz fusion blossomed again as a glorious source of samples for hip hop’s greatest, a trend that continues even today.
Lastly, I chose not to delve too technically into how many of the songs and albums were constructed. Such details are the bread and butter of the jazz books in my library, many of which break down single tunes into pages of detail, including much music theory and even transcriptions of solos and themes—all wonderful to spend time with if you’ve studied music, but hard for the layperson.
For my book, I chose instead to give a basic understanding about the instruments, technology, and production choices, then use vivid and lyrical language about how the music may make you feel.
While I know this approach is subjective, I hope my enthusiastic and imagistic descriptions will entice readers to explore these outrageously interesting albums for themselves. In the end, that’s my main goal: to get music fans to listen to this music that I love, because I think they will love it too. Think of it less as a jazz book, and more as a chance to hang out with a lot of pretty cool records.
Check out these three songs by artists who were deeply influenced by jazz fusion:
Meanwhile, here are three tunes that became so popular, you may not have known they were by well regarded jazz fusion artists:
Matthew Reed Baker
has been a writer and editor for almost three decades. He was the research and arts editor at Boston Magazine for 14 years, where he is still a contributing editor, and has written for The Boston Globe Magazine, ForbesLife, and National Journal. He lives with his wife, two children, and their cat in the Boston area and Midcoast Maine.
1970s Jazz Fusion is available to buy in bookshops and online, including at Bloomsbury.com.
