Continuing our look at the generation of jazz artists that came after Miles Davis, John Coltrane, etc. we’ve got (by request, if I recall correctly)…
Return to Forever
Return to Forever was a jazz fusion band of the 1970’s, with varying composition but consistently with Chick Corea on keyboards and Stanley Clarke on bass. The initial band, in 1971-2, played Latin-tinged jazz with Flora Purim’s vocals, and recorded a self-titled album. Several of the original members were from Stan Getz’s band (hence the Latin influence; Getz was famous as a Bossa Nova pioneer in the US), and first performed at the Village Vanguard in New York in November 1971. The band toured Japan and recorded a second album, Light as a Feather, in London.
By 1973 the band had became a quartet playing rock-influenced jazz, a composition that was maintained – with changes in guitarists and drummers from time to time – through 1976, a period of almost constant touring and studio recording. The band won a 1975 Grammy award for Best Jazz Performance by a Group, for the album No Mystery. This was followed by Romantic Warrior, a concept album on medieval themes. Released in March 1976, it became the band’s third consecutive Top 40 hit and went on to become its biggest seller, eventually earning a gold record. But with its completion, Corea again changed stylistic direction and disbanded the lineup. In 1976 the band added a horn section and Corea’s wife, Gayle Moran, on vocals, but only recorded one album, Musicmagic, before splitting up. The core quartet of Corea, Clarke, Al DiMeola on guitar and Lenny White on drums reunited on stage in 1983, but the only recorded work from this group is the track “Compadres” on Corea’s Touchstone album.
Like Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever was a group formed by an alumnus of Miles Davis’ late-’60s bands with the intention of further exploring the possibilities of the jazz-rock hybrid (jazz fusion) style Davis pioneered on albums like Bitches Brew. At the time, this was seen as not only a creative new direction for jazz, but also as a way of attracting the kinds of large audiences enjoyed by rock musicians.
As noted by William Ruhlmann: “In its time, [Return to Forever] rose and fell according to the popular and critical response to jazz fusion in general, gaining accolades and healthy sales early on, but suffering from the backlash that all progressive jazz endured after the 1970s, when musical trends turned conservative and the remnants of jazz-rock mutated into smooth contemporary jazz. Also, it has fallen between stools in terms of music criticism, with hidebound jazz critics dismissing it as too much like rock music, while rock critics think of it as a jazz group. As such, there is a tendency to undervalue the band’s real musical accomplishments, which however, remain available to be heard on the records.”
Band Members
Note – For most of the members of these bands, the Return to Forever period represents only a short period in their overall careers. For instance, the Chick Corea website lists albums from 1966 through 2006, so if you’re interested in any of these artists, realize there’s lots more to explore; this is just a point of entry.
1972: Chick Corea (keyboards), Flora Purim (vocals), Joe Farrell (saxophone), Stanley Clarke (bass) and Airto Moreira (percussion)
1973-76: Chick Corea (keyboards), Bill Connors, then Earl Klugh, then Al DiMeola (guitar), Stanley Clarke (bass) Steve Gadd, then Lenny White (drums), and Mingo Lewis (percussion)
- Chick Corea (keyboards), Gayle Moran (vocals, keyboard), Joe Farrell (saxophone), John Thomas, James Tinsley (trumpet) Jim Pugh, Harold Garrett, Ron Moss (trombone), Stanley Clarke (bass) and Gerry Brown (drums)
- Chick Corea (keyboards), Al DiMeola (guitar), Stanley Clarke (bass) Lenny White (drums)
Discography (with band members as noted above)
Studio albums
- Return to Forever (1972, ECM) (Corea/Clarke/Purim/Farrell/Moreira)
- Light as a Feather (1972, Polydor) (Corea/Clarke/Purim/Farrell/Moreira)
- Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy (1973, Polydor) (Corea/Clarke/Connors/White)
- Where Have I Known You Before (1974, Polydor) (Corea/Clarke/DiMeola/White)
- No Mystery (1975, Polydor) (Corea/Clarke/DiMeola/White)
- Romantic Warrior (1976, Columbia) (Corea/Clarke/DiMeola/White)
- Musicmagic (1977, Columbia) (Corea/Clarke/Moran/Farrell/Pugh/Thomas/Tinsley/Garrett/Brown)
Live release
– RTF Live (1977) (Corea/Clarke/Moran/Farrell/Pugh/Thomas/Tinsley/Garrett/Moss/Brown)
Collections
- Best of Return to Forever (1980)
- Return To The Seventh Galaxy: The Anthology (1996, covers years 1973-1975)
- This Is Jazz, Vol. 12 (1996, covers only last two albums)
Some thoughts about jazz:
“…the essence of this music, this ‘way of making music’, is not simply protest. Its essence is something far more elemental: an elan vital, a forceful vitality, an explosive creative energy as breathtaking as that of any true art, that may be felt even in the saddest of blues. Its effect is cathartic… But of course, when the lives of individuals and communities are controlled by powers that themselves remain uncontrolled–slavers, czars, fuhrers, first secretaries, marshals, generals and generalissimos, ideologists of dictatorships at either end of the spectrum–then creative energy becomes a protest… That’s the way it is…Totalitarian ideologists don’t like real life (other people’s) because it cannot be totally controlled; they loathe art, the product of a yearning for life, because that, too, evades control–if controlled and legislated, it perishes. But before it perishes–or when it finds refuge in some kind of samizdat underground–art, willy-nilly, becomes protest. Popular art, like jazz, becomes mass protest.”
~ Josef Skvorecky, “Red Music” (from the introduction to his novella, The Bass Saxophone)
Musicians in the fifties were the very epitome of everything cool. Just the presence of Miles Davis and John Coltrane lowered the earth’s average temperature by 2.4 degrees (in contrast, the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines only lowered the earth’s average temperature by 1.36 degrees, and didn’t swing anywhere near as hard). ~ Genius Guide to Jazz, April 2001
Regarding jam sessions: “Jazz musicians are the only workers I can think of who are willing to put in a full shift for pay and then go somewhere else and continue to work for free.” ~ George Carlin
“He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice.” ~ Albert Einstein
“The Jazz Diet will make you thinner, taller, smarter, richer, happier, hipper, leaner, meaner, keener, more attractive to members of every sex, and able to do those newspaper cryptoquote puzzles in one go.”
~ Genius Guide to Jazz, February 2005
“The main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe.” ~ John Coltrane
Conversation starters
Sometimes it seems that artists on the borderlines between genres are seen as pioneers, other times they’re rejected as “neither fish nor fowl.” Any thoughts on why you think that is? Do you know of any cases of groups pushing the limits of genres that deserve greater attention than they’ve gotten and which we should be on the lookout for?
