This page gathers the jazz fusion bands on this site that grew up next to progressive rock: American pioneers who came out of Miles Davis’s circle, British groups who brought horns and Hammond organ into the rock clubs, a German band from Munich and the drummer who left Yes and King Crimson to lead his own group.

The short version

Jazz fusion, often called jazz rock or simply fusion, took shape in the late 1960s, when musicians began to combine jazz harmony and improvisation with the electric instruments, volume and rhythms of rock. The usual starting point is Miles Davis: “In a Silent Way” (1969) is described as his first fusion album, and “Bitches Brew” followed. Two of the bands on this page came straight out of that world. The drummer Tony Williams, in Davis’s quintet from 1964, formed The Tony Williams Lifetime in 1969, and the keyboard player Joe Zawinul and the saxophonist Wayne Shorter, who had both played on those Davis records, started Weather Report in New York in 1970. In Britain, Colosseum, Soft Machine, Nucleus and If were blending jazz and rock on electric instruments, and through the 1970s fusion and progressive rock kept crossing paths.

From Miles Davis’s studio to the rock clubs

The Tony Williams Lifetime began in 1969 as a trio: Williams on drums, the English guitarist John McLaughlin and the organist Larry Young. Their debut “Emergency!”, a double album recorded in May 1969 and released by Polydor that September, came out to a cold reception from much of the jazz audience because of its heavy rock side; it is now regarded as a fusion classic, and the histories of the genre point out that it was recorded three months before “Bitches Brew”. Jack Bruce joined on bass and vocals for “Turn It Over” in 1970, and in 1975 Williams put together a new quartet, The New Tony Williams Lifetime, with the English guitarist Allan Holdsworth. It recorded “Believe It” (1975) and “Million Dollar Legs” (1976) for Columbia.

Weather Report, founded in New York in 1970 around Zawinul, Shorter and the bassist Miroslav Vitouš, started out as a freely improvising group in which every member could take part at any moment, instead of the soloist-and-backing model of straight-ahead jazz. DownBeat’s Dan Morgenstern greeted the 1971 debut as “music beyond category”. In 1976 the bassist Jaco Pastorius joined during the sessions for “Black Market”, bringing the fretless bass and melodic bass solos to the front of the band. “Heavy Weather”, released by Columbia in March 1977, became the band’s best-selling album, and its opening track “Birdland” went on to become a jazz standard. Shorter left in February 1986, and “This Is This!” closed the catalogue that June.

Chase came at the meeting point from the other side. Led by the trumpeter Bill Chase, the American band formed in 1970 with four jazz trumpeters in its original line-up. The debut “Chase” appeared in April 1971, “Ennea” in March 1972, and “Pure Music” in 1974 kept the four-trumpet section while moving further away from rock.

The British and European side

In Britain the story started in the blues and jazz clubs. Colosseum was formed in early 1968 by the drummer Jon Hiseman and the saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith, who had played together in The Graham Bond Organisation and in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers; Dave Greenslade on organ and Tony Reeves on bass joined soon after. Their second album, “Valentyne Suite” (1969), was the first album released by Philips’s new Vertigo label, and the writer Colin Larkin named the band as the main reason for “the commercial acceptance of jazz rock in the UK”. The original group broke up in October 1971. The band came back in 1994 and has kept recording, up to “XI” in 2025.

If was formed in England in 1969 by Dick Morrissey, Dave Quincy and Terry Smith. Signed to Island in Britain and Capitol in America, the band toured the United States twice in its first year, playing the Newport Jazz Festival and the Fillmore East, and a Billboard concert review by George Knemeyer called it “unquestionably the best of the so-called jazz-rock bands”. If split in 1975 and returned with “If 5” in 2016.

On the continent, the German reference works single out Passport, the Munich group led by the saxophonist Klaus Doldinger from 1971, and in particular its albums “Cross-Collateral” (1975) and “Iguacu” (1977). Its mid-1970s line-up with Curt Cress, Wolfgang Schmid and Kristian Schultze brought it wider international recognition.

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From prog drummer to bandleader

Bill Bruford had played in Yes from 1968 to 1972 and in King Crimson from 1972 to 1974, and in 1976 he toured as Genesis’s concert drummer. In August 1977 he recorded his first solo album, “Feels Good to Me”, at Trident in London with Allan Holdsworth on guitar, Dave Stewart of Hatfield and the North on keyboards and the American bassist Jeff Berlin, with Annette Peacock singing on three tracks. The band Bruford grew out of that line-up. The same year Bruford founded U.K. with John Wetton, and Eddie Jobson and Holdsworth completed the line-up; Bruford and Holdsworth left in 1978, and Bruford took pieces developed for U.K.’s live set into his own band’s second album, “One of a Kind” (1979). John Clark replaced Holdsworth for “Gradually Going Tornado” (1980), and E.G. Records dropped the group in 1980.

The youngest band here, Tribal Tech, was formed in Los Angeles in 1984 by the guitarist Scott Henderson and the bassist Gary Willis, and is usually filed as progressive fusion. The keyboard player Scott Kinsey and the drummer Kirk Covington joined in 1993; the band stopped after “Rocket Science” in 2000 and reunited for “X” in 2012.

I explain where the term comes from and how it was used in my article What Is Jazz Fusion?, and I compare the two neighbouring traditions in Jazz Fusion vs Canterbury: What Is the Difference?

The bands in this guide

Eight bands, from the late-1960s pioneers to a Los Angeles group active into the 2010s. Each card opens the band’s page and its album guides.

Elsewhere on Prog Atlas

Several of the central fusion bands live under other scenes on this site. Mahavishnu Orchestra was formed in New York in 1971 by John McLaughlin after his time in Lifetime and in Miles Davis’s band, and Return to Forever, founded by the pianist Chick Corea in New York in 1972, is named alongside it in the histories of the genre. In London, Brand X formed in 1974 with Phil Collins on drums after first trying to recruit Bill Bruford in 1975. Nucleus, the British jazz rock band of the trumpeter Ian Carr, won first prize at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1970, and three of its players, John Marshall, Karl Jenkins and Roy Babbington, later joined Soft Machine, whose albums from “Volume Two” onward moved towards jazz fusion.

Allan Holdsworth links half of this page: he played on Soft Machine’s “Bundles”, in The New Tony Williams Lifetime, in Bruford and in UK. Bill Bruford’s earlier bands, Yes and King Crimson, are in my British section, and Dave Stewart’s path runs through Hatfield and the North and National Health before Bruford. When Colosseum split, Dave Greenslade and Tony Reeves formed Greenslade in 1972. Further afield, Perigeo was a Rome band active from 1971 that mixed jazz rock with progressive rock, and Dixie Dregs, founded by Steve Morse and Andy West in Augusta, Georgia, belonged to the 1970s fusion scene with an almost entirely wordless catalogue.

Where to start

I would start at the beginning with “Emergency!” (1969), which AllMusic’s Leo Stanley said “shattered the boundaries between jazz and rock”. Colosseum’s “Valentyne Suite” (1969) shows the British side, and AllMusic’s review hears in Greenslade’s organ solo a challenge to the early Keith Emerson. Then “The Inner Mounting Flame” (1971), the Mahavishnu Orchestra debut, the band McLaughlin formed after Lifetime. For the commercial peak, “Heavy Weather” (1977) is Weather Report’s best seller, and AllMusic’s Richard Ginell called it a “landmark album”. From Germany, “Cross-Collateral” (1975) is one of the two Passport records the German reference works name. And for the bridge back to prog, “Feels Good to Me” (1978), of which AllMusic’s Thom Jurek wrote that Bruford had never issued a more powerful solo record, followed by “One of a Kind” (1979), with the music first developed for U.K.

Related scenes

The closest neighbour is The Canterbury Scene, home of Soft Machine, Nucleus and Hatfield and the North. Bruford’s old bands and Brand X are in British Progressive Rock, Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever in American Progressive Rock, and Perigeo in Italian Progressive Rock (RPI). For the French music that mixed jazz fusion with symphonic rock, see Zeuhl.

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