^^^^^Probably this...

 

I'm no expert, but I do not know of any earlier instance of a rock band recording a jazz song (unless we count Broadway tunes).  Dunno, I don't recall the name, there was some band in the mid-60's, maybe The Buckinghams, that covered Cannonball Adderly's (brother of Nat)  Mercy Mercy Mercy (written by Joe Zawinul).  Not sure if this would pre-date Butterfield's Work Song.

 

I guess the point being that there were a number of rock/blues bands doing jazz songs long before ya woulda thought.

 

   

 

However, there may be little - if any - recorded evidence of the first jazz/rock fusion that probably took place in the underground and club circuit as early as 1965-66. I mean, had Soft Machine used a distorted guitar back then, I guess that would be jazz/rock.

 

Now you know why I don't like labels ... and who started what ...

 

I actually think that Stravinsky may have had a hand in all this ... but then, it's hard to think that Benjamin Britten and some other composers out there were not aware of the effect of popular music and in particular specific instruments were already having on music in general ... I would think that Stravinsky would have seen a jazz club in his time and realized ... that instrument is blowing out the instrumentation ... and then end up in his pad and created a "Firebird Suite" ... which originally was considered hellinsh on many an orchestra player and too difficult. ...

 

The jazz folks in America, and the ones that could not make it here that parked themselves in Europe, more than likely were the folks that got this started ... and that's not to take away anything from Sun Ra or Miles Davis or Larry Coryell ... but the writing was already on the wall by the time that Miles Davis was able to do his thing ... and he KNEW IT ... and that is probably why he was able to do what he did and get away with it, and now it's considered progressive even by any standards and the majority of "jazz" today still is not as free as what Miles did! Or Sun Ra!

 

I tend to think that by the time that Larry Coryell and Frank Zappa get around, it is more about the music being electric than anything else ... most of Miles was still "accoustic" ... and as the electric guitar took shape and got better known and the effects that were being used at the time, helped develop the next genre.

 

Though rarely discussed here, but very visible in Europe is the fact that there are music schools that actually did a lot of experiments ... to help foster some new idioms ... and one of the most famous examples is Agitation Free ... who actually had a grant to do some of the work they ended up doing, and much of it was trying to expand western musical concepts in jazz and rock to see how they matched up with eastern music.

 

And there is a relevant fact here ... there is a slight parallel that can be brought from the eastern musics in ragas -- where the idea is to bring out the inner expression, and some of the earlier jazz expressions that were being recorded ... which were NOT songs, and were longer by design ... and this is where Miles and Sun Ra come from and are so important ... and then one can expand that ... two inches ... when it became electric ... and the rest is history and right there ...

 

I think the first time I remember the term "fusion" used was around Chick Corea, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Frank Zappa (although most did not like him because he was good at lifting the finger if he had to!) (... and he was a better and learned musician than most of them anyway !!!! ) ... and then what I call the New York scene, of which Coryell is a part ... and I'm sure that the clubs in there were quite advanced compared to the rest of the country.

 

But we have to take it easy ... when asking these questions, since the only difference in the majority of all these musics is the amplification and a pedal ... that if you took that away would sound just like Miles or SunRa ... and that is the part of the classical/academic view that is hurting the ability for us to elevate more than half of the music we love into a realm ... that doesn't exist per se (prog) ... when the main thing to note is the electricity behind it!

 

And this is my main concern here ,... when no one can spend time showing how progressive folks like Incredible String Band were, or Tangerin Dream ... when compared to a lot of others ... but again, you take the electricity out, and ISB survives .. others don't ... but they are not KC! or ELP! ... see the problem?

 

Compositionally, though they surpass the majority of the well known names in prog!

 

But there is a rather difficult thing here ... academia doesn't like "improvisation" and the true fact is that ALL music comes from some form of improvised design and most composer's ability to identify their feeling with a note or two ... that is now ... considered not valid within a jazz/rock context ... and a lot of it has to do with the fact that some of it is composed ... and I tend to think that is bunk, since it is all about a feeling and who is to say that Mozart has a feeling and Eric doesn't? Or vice versa ... and later, we can transcrive their music ... but you can not transcrive quite that accurately that few precious moments of a guitar duet with Gregg Allman, which are the part in music that academia/classical music has issues with it ... and the history of music, you will notice does not show us big names of players ... almost all of the names are the composers ... which is like saying that a virtuosi does not a music make ... and that is the hard part for an exercise like this ... but it is a good one and you and I and others here on this board need to do a significantly better job to ensure that this is seen and appreciated.

 

And you can see how rock/jazz/fusion/electronics have blown out the equation to smithereens ... and now the virtuosity is clearly seen all around, instead of being "hidden" and only particular to one person ...

King Crimson, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Jean Luc Ponty and others all borrowed heavily from this formula of the 1930's! 

Now, if only Django had access to Bob Fripp's Les Paul and pedalboard!    

 

 

 

 

Both albums had predecessors, but these are the ones that put the genre on the musical map.