[shineon]

And Miles Davis took it around and circled it the other way - giving the mainstream jazz artists the “right” to flaunt their rock influences. It was called fusion - later smooth jazz and it’s Father was Miles Davis.

There is a nice youtube video with Miles Davis playing hoops with John Lennon. Neither of them could score a point. : )

[HLPhat]

>>It was called fusion - later smooth jazz and it’s Father was Miles Davis.

Miles certainly was in the nexus where rock fusion was born - but the key element in fusion, and jazz, and blues.. is the improvisational freedom in the context of a group of mutually supportive, but individual, musicians.

The history of improvisation preceded Miles:

http://scaruffi.com/history/jazz1.html

To me, the significance of “So What” is in the relative simplicity in form that it represents when compared to the preceding bebop era - which was characterized by more changes, with more notes, with more complexity... for what?

So What demonstrated the essence of what jazz could be without all that pretentiousness.