Fuse One -

Fuse One was an American jazz-funk supergroup assembled by CTI producer Creed Taylor around a rotating pool of established jazz and fusion players. The ensemble recorded the 1980 album Fuse One and 1981 follow-up Silk with personnel including Joe Farrell, Ronnie Foster, Stanley Clarke, John McLaughlin, Larry Coryell, Lenny White, Ndugu Leon Chancler, Stanley Turrentine, Eric Gale, Wynton Marsalis, and Dave Valentin. A revised lineup reconvened for the 1984 album Ice, which closed the three-album Fuse One catalog.

Background

Fuse One formed in 1980 as a rotating CTI studio collective under producer Creed Taylor, following the label’s bankruptcy reorganization and new distribution arrangement with CBS Records. Taylor conceived the group without a permanent leader or fixed membership, with participating musicians contributing compositions and ideas under a collective name. Keyboardist Jeremy Wall, co-founder of Spyro Gyra, arranged and conducted the first Fuse One project after recent CTI work on the 1979 Yusef Lateef album In a Temple Garden.

Taylor assembled the first-album personnel from saxophonist and flutist Joe Farrell, harmonica player Hugh McCracken, bassists Stanley Clarke and Will Lee, percussionists Paulinho Da Costa and Roger Squitero, guitarists John McLaughlin and Larry Coryell, drummers Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, Lenny White, and Tony Williams, and keyboardists Wall, Ronnie Foster, Jorge Dalto, Victor Feldman, and Don Grusin. Taylor used different combinations of these players across the seven compositions, with Wall retaining the arranger and conductor roles throughout the album.

Farrell provided a direct link with the earlier CTI roster through a sequence of Taylor-produced albums that started in 1970 with Joe Farrell Quartet. The musicians began the Fuse One sessions in April 1980 and completed further recording across May and June for the self-titled CTI debut.

Discography: