
The first few years of the 1960s were very much like the 1950s, when jazz still garnered a segment of the popular audience. But with the rise in popularity of the Beatles and television becoming the dominant form of entertainment, jazz clubs began to close, putting musicians out-of-work. But some musicians continued on, striving to extend the boundaries of jazz into new areas. In 1961 tenor saxophonist John Coltrane formed a revolutionary quartet, utilizing many aspects of jazz’s rhythms and harmonies into his approach, culminating in the recording of a milestone work in 1964, A Love Supreme, an album that ensured his position as an important saxophonist and one of the most influential jazzmen of the decade. As jazz struggled to continue through hard times, some jazz musicians looked to the rhythms of rock ‘n’ roll and strived to add elements of that music to jazz, creating “fusion jazz.” The culmination of this movement was the landmark recording by trumpeter Miles Davis entitled Bitches Brew which became a popular seller and catapulted Davis into almost pop star status. In the late 1960s, Latin jazz, combining rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments (piano, double bass, etc.) broke through. There are two main varieties: Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the US right after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s. Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement in the mid-1950s as bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente, and Arturo Sandoval. Brazilian jazz such as bossa nova is derived from samba, with influences from jazz and other 20th-century classical and popular music styles. Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English. The style was pioneered by Brazilians João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim. The related term jazz-samba describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.