Many people think it was Miles Davis who first fused Rock and Jazz. Sorry, folks: Tony Williams got there sooner (and louder!). His band Lifetime gave musicians from both genres an infinite array of new roads to explore and no one flew farther and faster down them than drummer Billy Cobham. Cobham was already established in the Jazz scene when Lifetime emerged in 1969 but his work with Miles, with Mahavishnu Orchestra and with his own ensembles revealed possibilities that not even Tony Williams had considered. This was surely the journey of a Lifetime.In 2013, Billy Cobham joined host Mitch Goldman for a memorable Deep Focus on some rare live recordings of Tony Williams’ Lifetime. Truly, this is one of the Great Secret Vaults. If you know, you know (and if you don’t, now you do).

#WKCR #DeepFocus #MitchGoldman #BillyCobham #TonyWilliams #JazzRadio #JazzRockFusion #JazzInterview #JazzPodcastPhoto credit: Gisle Hannemyr, CC BY-SA 2.5 , via Wikimedia Commons