Word of Mouth

On Pat Metheny's ECM date 80/81 (1980), two tenors stood side by side: Michael Brecker, by then a fusion and pop studio staple, and Dewey Redman, straight out of the free-jazz lineage. Pairing the studio ace with the avant-garde tenor was the whole point of the record.

In 1976, a still largely unknown Jaco Pastorius played bass on Joni Mitchell's folk album Hejira — the same year he released his own debut and joined Weather Report. His avant-garde fretless playing found its way onto one of the era's defining singer-songwriter records.

Howard Johnson, jazz's foremost tuba specialist, is credited on Jaco Pastorius's self-titled 1976 debut — the album that redefined what the electric bass could do. He plays a marching-band instrument that has almost no other place in fusion.