Return to Forever

In February 1972 Airto MoreiraAirto Moreiraアイアート・モレイラ recorded Chick Corea's ECM album Return to ForeverReturn to ForeverReturn to Forever · 1972 on drums and percussion, joining his wife Flora Purim, Joe Farrell and Stanley Clarke on La Fiesta and Crystal Silence as the band's original lineup.

Chick Corea started from a single wish: to have Stanley Clarke — then a young, unknown bassist — play his tunes. After trying several drummers he ended up with percussionist Airto Moreira, and the lineup that fell together almost by accident became the first Return to Forever (1972), the record that launched Clarke.

In 1970, Airto Moreira laid down polyrhythmic percussion on Miles Davis's fusion landmark Bitches Brew — and that same year turned up on one of the era's gentlest folk-pop albums, built on little more than acoustic guitar and voice.

On Miles Davis's Live-Evil (1971), Chick Corea's electric piano is a distorted roar. A year later, Return to Forever has the same man on the same instrument playing light, Brazilian-tinted tunes — a turn he made on purpose, away from music that shut listeners out. The gap is twelve months wide.

Joe Farrell was blowing tenor in Elvin Jones's hard-bop quartet on Puttin' It Together (1968). Five years later he turns up next to rock guitarist Tommy Bolin on Billy Cobham's Spectrum (1973), one of fusion's landmark records.

Stanley Clarke helped define electric-bass fusion on Return to Forever (1972), yet a decade later he turned up in a very different room: Echoes Of An Era (1982), a session built around a pop/R&B singer performing straight jazz standards.