Jazz rock is, like the name implies, a mix of jazz and rock. However, it tends to not have so much of the incredible musicianship and diversity as fusion. It's almost mainstream, in a way. Bands like Steely Dan and Chicago.

 

Jazz fusion is much more progressive. It frequently showcases individual ability and fusion compositions are much more elaborate and complex than those of jazz rock. When I think fusion, I think of Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return To Forever.

 

completely agree!!

 

i cant really add too much, mostly because a lot of times i have trouble drawing the line between jazz rock, jazz fusion, and non rock-influenced jazz. 

Jazz fusion: blend of jazz with other different styles

 

Jazz rock: music on the boundaries between jazz and rock (Brand X, Alan Holdsworth, Headhunters, Chick Corea, some Miles Davis, Machine and the Synergic Sluts, etc)

 

Progressive Jazz Rock: most innovative and risky music on the basis of jazz rock (Mahavishnu Orchestra, Magma, some King Crimson, Soft Machine, French TV, and so on)

 

About right but hair-splitting - simply those bands pigeon-holed in "jazz-rock" and "progressive jazz-rock" are interchangeable. [IMHO Allan Holdsworth being the most innovative, therefore progressive of the bands/musicians listed]. Problem with PA is the bad tendency to over-categorise and worse ignore what fans and experts in the genre have used previously.

 

Now at the risk of over-categorising myself, to use terms long established before PA existence, to repeat jazz-fusion is the fusion of jazz with any other form of music. I suggest of relevance to PA: jazz-rock , jazz-funk (aka soul jazz), world-jazz (with some legit sub-divisions: Indo Jazz fusion, Arabo-jazz fusion, Anglo-Celtic-jazz fusion, flamenco-jazz etc.), Latin-jazz, nu. jazz, nu.fuzz, hiphop jazz, drum'n'bass jazz, acid jazz, metal jazz, (sic) smooth jazz (aka fusak), dance jazz, jazz turn-tablism fusion, progressive fusion, and then maybe brass-rock cover most of those bases. Whilst jazz-fusion is a catch-all term, there is also is a point where a band's music doesn't fit any of these sub-categories, then the use of jazz-fusion is the last resort. To repeat my perrenial moan, bands like Soft Machine, through their career have produced: psychedelic pop, psychedelic rock, jazz rock, avante/free jazz, jazz fusion, electronica..... hence the need to show the most precise definition (or definitions) of any particular album by a band: not Canterbury!

 

Let's not confuse rock groups veering jazz often, called back then as Brass Rock >> BS&T, Chicago

 

The same name is applied of black groups with heavy brass section like EW&F and The Commodores >> Although I've heard the Brass Funk name used before.

 

and

 

 

 

Jazz musicians going into the rock world >> their musuc got called jazz-rock: from Nucleusto Miles Davis and early Mahavishnu, Weather Report (the Mirislav Vitous years) and even Colosseum (Hiseman & Heckstall Smith were real jazz players. the core years 69-72 (although Soft Machine and Nucleus kept doing jazz rock for a long time)

 

 

Then we should coinsider a sort "degenerescence of jazz-rock that can be called jazz funk >> Weather Report from Mysterious Traveller (the Alphonso Johnson years) onwards, Herbie Hancok's Sextant and Headhunters and from Miles' Man On The Corner. core years 71-75

 

Then from 75 onwards the whole things gets pinned under the name jazz fusion (which is why I  rarely ever heard RTF being named jazz rock. This can be defined as an anything goes a bit like Weather Report's (Pastorius years) Heavy Weather and Black Market >> very much unfocused album compared to their earlier works.

To a lesser extent perhaps Bitches Brew was considered jazz-rock, though it shouldn't be confused with any of the stuff listed above.

 

Jazz-fusion, again as generally referred to in the music press in the middle 70's, consisted of Herbie Hancock/Headhunters, Chick Corea/Return to Forever, Weather Report.  These also have nothing to do the the previously mentioned jazz-rock artists.  They are all the offspring of Miles' Bitches Brew experiementation.

 

So in my mind, jazz-rock was never really about jazz, it was just a convenient way to refer to rock bands with horn sections, whereas fusion was totally about jazz. 

 

Not to be too grumpy about it, but generally speaking fusion bands were generally competent jazz artists, whereas the same could not be said of your average jazz-rock musician.  There are of course exceptions, e.g., Dave Sanbourn's work with the Butterfield Blues Band, etc.

 

I wouldn't agree. If you get the chance check out the marvellous bootleg recording (lifted from the desk by Henry Kaiser) of Nels & Alex Cline with Wayne Peet playing the music of the original Tony Williams Lifetime - specifically  off the 1969 and 1970 albums. At the end of the show Nels Cline (I think) can be clearly saying "That's what they called jazz rock". Until the jazz men joined in the mix of jazz with rock, the rock musicians who had middle 8s or 16s or... as jazzy improv solos, were called 'rock jazz' (e.g. a few of  Timebox 's minor hit singles, Soft Machine's Volume 2, Tasavallan Presidentii's Lambertland)- then if brass or woodwind were added  that became 'brass rock' (e.g. as stated BST, Chicago, Dreams but also  Heaven, Satisfaction and If in the UK during the first phase - Chase, Ides Of March were examples of 2 phase brass rock). Listen to Free Spirits 1966 recording  with young jazz musicians playing what they called jazz rock - thery seriously want to marry jazz with this new fangled rock music.

 

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 - also Steve Marcus's Count's Rock Band or Charles Lloyd's late 60's albums.   WEA Records over the last 5 years have issued a number of compilation albums of jazz mixed with rock - and played by jazz musicians during the late 60's. These are worth sampling to give some ideas of the range of experiments/hybrids being tried  prior to Miles Davis's commitment to electric jazz.

 

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