20 Essential Jazz-Fusion Records Everyone Should Own

After graduating from the school of Miles Davis, drumming extraordinaire In a Silent Way). The result was a trio of headstrong visionaries who locked themselves in a room, turned the amps up, and birthed the contours of jazz-rock as we know it today. 

Williams’ serpentine drum shifts, Young’s Hammond organ fills, and McLaughlin’s Hendrix-meets-Coltrane guitar style set off a genre-defying bomb that blew up the boundary between psychedelic rock and free jazz. Listen to the trio unfurl on the highlight, “Spectrum,” which features breakneck stop-start ages, a daunting melody line, and McLaughlin’s flurry of moody guitar chording and howling . The steamy “Beyond Games” leans into Band of Gypsys-period Hendrix territory. The 13-minute epic, “Sangria for Three,” is a total proto-punk motherlode that moves from head-turning drum workouts to dissonant acid-rock explorations and back again.

Having flipped the jazz world on its head and cracked the code of progressive rock with benchmark fusion albums such as In a Silent Way, On the Corner. 

The moment you drop the needle on the album’s opening multi-part suite, you’ve dropped into a nasty sound inspired by Brown’s muscular grooves, with scores of Miles’ wah-wah trumpet phrasings, Middle Eastern percussion, tape manipulation, and abstract electronic elements. If all of that sounds overwhelming and chaotic, that’s because it is. But it’s also an astonishing marker of how far Miles Davis had gone to blur the lines between jazz, rock, and funk by the time of its release. 

With its clattering patterns, throbbing, gut-punching bass lines, and thick, densely-layered polyrhythms, On the Corner signaled the premature arrival of a new musical age. It’s no wonder electronica, avant-pop, and hip-hop musicians have constantly revered its breathless genre-defying brew.

When Jimi Hendrix died in 1970, rock music lost an irreplaceable legend. But Hendrix also left behind several worthy successors who carried on his inventive guitar virtuosity and turned it inside out. One wouldn’t come entirely from the rock world, but from the world between that of rock and jazz: John McLaughlin and his Mahavishnu Orchestra. 

The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s debut album, Rick Laird’s bass work blend together beautifully to create a superb musical mosaic that reached for transcendence. 

By the mid-’70s, the band underwent several personnel changes, which included adding power drummer No Mystery, focusing on Corea and Clarke’s classical aspirations. The result was an astonishing blend of fusion, progressive rock, and classical music, marked by eruptive solos, heady synthesizer ages, and bombastic production moves.

In the late great keyboard master Frank Zappa’s band, there’s certainly much eclecticism that flows throughout this album, which was always a key attribute in Duke’s musical wheelhouse. Some of the elements of Frank Zappa’s eccentric fusion music completely rubbed off on Duke by this point, and from what much of this album so impressively illustrates, he was expanding his palette beyond the jazz-fusion idiom. 

Extended proggy instrumentals like “Giant Child Within Us – Ego” and “That’s What She Said” are straight out of the Zappa playbook with some fiery fusion-like movements that anchor them along the way. Underneath those two highlights, Duke voyages into some funk-leaning workouts, psychedelic Brazilian fusion, smooth ambient instrumentals, and even backwoods blues music. Many listeners will be familiar with the precious gem, “Someday,” which neo-soul by just three decades.

Almost a decade after leaving the Blow By Blow. Eschewing the bluesy rock sounds of his past, Beck took the embryonic jazz-rock aspects brewing and entered the full-blown jazz-fusion scene on this album. 

Beck’s virtuosic soloing typifies this powerhouse fusion of jazz-funk and rock with nine strong tracks produced by John Abercrombie, Beck focused on a diverse palette of tones, timbres, and mood-setting licks that defined him as a true original. Unlike previous efforts, he executes flawless performances, with each track carrying its weight replete with chunky bass grooves, keyboard workouts, and perfectly executed percussive backing.

There’s nothing quite like Blue Note Records’ ’70s output. Blacks and Blues, was one of three albums she made with the production team of the Mizell Brothers. 

Known for masterfully pushing jazz-funk and soul-jazz styles into a breezy, enveloping sound that was all their own, the Mizells grew into renowned producers by the ’70s, supervising notable albums from Donald Byrd, Gary Bartz. With their signature stamp, Blacks and Blues helped put Bobbi Humphrey on the map, boasting several standouts like the soaring, streetwise funk of “Harlem River Drive,” the glorious clavinet-driven “Jasper Country Man,” the quintessential ’70s vibe of “Chicago, Damn,” and others. 

Like her other albums during this time, Blacks and Blues is a faultless encapsulation of a pivotal period in jazz-funk and deserves far more attention.

Before she leaped into the R&B world, this was then 22-year-old Before the Dawn. 

Rushen showcases her sweet voice to great effect on the bubbly party jam “Let Your Heart Be Free,” which predates her successful R&B-laden work on Elektra Records. Her breezy keyboard solos on killer cuts like “Stepping Stones,” “The Hump,” and “Yolon” are highly commendable, showcasing how much of a master Rushen was at a young age. 

Furthermore, the stellar line-up of all-star backing musicians makes this a standout, including, but not limited to Bill Summers. The album is a transitional late-70s jazz-funk gem that established the musical bonafide of a gifted talent while pointing to her star-making future.

Universally lauded as one of the all-time best bassists the world has ever known, Joni Mitchell, and Weather Report, Pastorius proved his proficiency across styles on this standout debut. 

The cover of Charlie Parker’s bebop classic “Donna Lee” sets the tone, with Pastorius somehow managing to replace an entire ensemble with his bass. He did a similar thing on the dreamy track “Continuum” and the poignant “Portrait of Tracy,” which has become his most popular composition. Elsewhere, a small army of string instrumentalists created a dense orchestral blanket to accompany the jittery fusion of the Herbie Hancock-assisted “Kuru / Speak Like a Child,” while stylistic experiments like “Opus Pocus” made for fluid showcases of proggy fusion. 

This expressive dexterity reached its apex in the hectic flow of “(Used to Be A) Cha-Cha.” At the same time, he knew when to take a backseat and let his prowess as an arranger shine, as highlighted by the elegiac “Okonkolé y Trompa” and chamber music of “Forgotten Love.”

In the late ’70s, Rhythm of Life is a first-rate sophisticated soul jazz and fusion record. 

The album made great use of emerging technology of the time, employing ARP Odyssey synth grooves over Incognito. 

At the time, the album didn’t quite reach an audience as it was too funky for jazz stations and too jazzy for soul stations. It faded into obscurity until rediscovered in the ’80s, thanks to the U.K.’s acid jazz scene. James Mason never went on to release an official follow-up to this rare classic. As renewed interest grew into the 2000s, as unreleased material surfaced.

When master saxophonist Gary Bartz recorded his 1977 classic, Music is My Sanctuary, there was divisiveness in the jazz world. Several jazz giants turned to the production team of Fonce and Larry Mizell to bring their music up to date. Longtime Gary Bartz purists were more likely outraged by the direction, while the Mizell Brothers never got the full credit due to them. 

The production of Music is My Sanctuary is distinctively Mizell territory — their plushy world of sound was always one dreamy, cohesive flow. The brass, the strings, the clavinet, the arrangements, and the short singing parts envelop Bartz, who still had a place to shine with his tight reed work while brilliantly occupying all the existing soloist moments. The result was a breezy joyride of smooth late-’70s R&B, Latin music flavors, and free jazz explorations for everyone.

Formed in 1971 and continuing until 1986, the jazz-fusion supergroup Weather Report was the brainchild of keyboard great and co-founder Heavy Weather. 

Best known for boasting the catchy crossover hit single, “Birdland,” which quickly became a jazz standard, Heavy Weather proved how refined the band’s chops became, from Zawinul’s artful synthesizer tones to Jaco Pastorius’ masterful fretless bass work and harmonics. Wayne Shorter’s golden saxophone charts add sophistication to the musical conversation as percussionists Manolo Badrena bring fire to these beautifully diverse compositions.

While it’s one of the oldest instruments in the modern world, the harp isn’t commonly associated with jazz outside of The Rubáiyát of Dorothy Ashby, is the most ambitious. 

Inspired by Persian poet Omar Khayyam, whose spiritual verses were translated and adapted in the 19th century by Edward Fitzgerald, who wrote the first rubáiyát, Ashby shredded all jazz conventions here, swinging from worldbeat explorations to soulful funk workouts on this esoteric opus. Along with its far-reaching musical scope, she ditched her harp and integrated the Japanese koto into this album’s daring pieces. The result was a trip packed with sounds and grooves that still sounds far ahead of its time today.

By the mid-’70s, bass extraordinaire and composer Children of Forever during that same time. Over his first three solo albums, he adhered closer to the meditative jazz-rock fusion of Return to Forever. 

On his fourth album, School Days, he let his hair down, spotlighting his developing bass vocabulary and taking his thunderous, rapid-paced bass licks to new heights. The album opens with its iconic title jam, driven by Clarke’s funky and catchy bass riff that, more or less, becomes the basis for the track. From there, the album veers between mellow funk modes on “Quiet Afternoon” to frenetic workouts like “Hot Sun” and “Life is Just a Game.”

In the early ’70s, Caravanserai. A majestic voyage of spiritual rock, salsa, and jazz, this opus found guitar virtuoso Carlos Santana stretching out in his fretwork while embracing spiritual matters with a decidedly mystical bent. 

From the slow atmospheric build-up of the album’s opening suite, “Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation,” to the band’s most exotic jamming on “Waves Within,” you can trace the strong hints of Funkadelic’s psych-rock funk madness telepathically communicating with Chick Corea. Then, they get spacey and earthy before spiraling into jazz exploration on cuts like “Future Primitive” and “Stone Flower.”

By the early ’70s, soul-jazz piano vet and singer Layers, is widely regarded as a groundbreaker, as McCann was one of the first to use a 32-track studio and overdub everything himself, creating an analog synth wonderland with some of the most elegant Rhodes piano work known to man. 

It’s been reported that McCann approached this recording by spontaneously playing what was in his head, using only electronic keyboards, synthesizers, and overdubbing, thus creating an orchestra of sound and ideas. It can be filed next to pioneering works by Stevie Wonder without hesitation.

When piano giant Lonnie Liston Smith jumped ship from Miles Davis’ camp to embark on a solo career in the early ‘70s, he set out into the burgeoning jazz-funk scene. Although he recorded several stellar albums throughout his career, his 1975 classic Donald Smith’s flute work and vocals. 

Hearing the classic title track is always like hearing it for the first time, with its summertime swagger and percussive funk pulse. But aside from that legendary centerpiece, this superb album is studded with nuggets — from the stunning synth washes and mournful soprano sax of David Hubbard on “Shadows” to the mellowed-out Latin flavors in “Summer Days,” which is among the most cherished gems in Smith’s catalog.