In the late 1970s, musicians such as Grover Washington Jr., Earl Klugh, George Benson, and Chuck Mangione began to work on fusion music.

Smooth jazz, which has a good  ear, takes on this name and takes the form of a simple, straightforward pop instrumental music. The musicians who were synonymous with street-ahead jazz, or jazz that excites with easy-to-understand simple expressions, performed.

The same lineage includes Yellowjackets, Spyro Gyra, and The Rippingtons, which focuses on the arrangement and puts the synthesizer’s melody on a grand bass (sticky bass, bass repeated phrases). And show off their skills with a little improvisation.

Jazz, called smooth jazz, light jazz, or contemporary jazz, has evolved into fusion from one of the music genres of the radio show, with the crisp rhythms and melody of the music-making the old radio centerpiece radio station was changed to modern.

The first generation of fusion called “traditional” jazz and radio DJs called it smooth jazz.