
Jazz-rock fusion would get a well-deserved bad name in the Seventies for its self-indulgent noodling, but that wasn’t how it started. Inspired by the visionary work of James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, and Sly Stone, Miles Davis began incorporating funk grooves and electronic instruments into his music — first with the languid, contemplative In A Silent Way (still so cool that it was recently sampled by Diddy), and then on the double-LP monster Bitches Brew. Many called Miles a sell-out, but such critics obviously didn’t listen to the album’s complex, hypnotic cauldron of sound. Virtually every major fusion star played on Brew — Chick Corea, John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter — but even the best of them seldom matched its depth and intensity.