Electric Thad: Thad Jones and His Use of Electric Instruments and Rock Styles in the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra

Thad Jones cultivated and expanded the sound of jazz by incorporating elements of rock, funk and soul music into his big band arrangements with The Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. Though the stylistic aspects of these genres carried over onto live big band performances acoustically, Jones treated the rhythm section more as an electric small band on almost half of the ensemble's catalog of recordings dating from 1966–1977, with his use of electric instruments such as guitar, bass, piano and organ. The fact that Thad Jones chose to record with this electric instrumentation represents a truer sense of his intentions, and the recordings provide evidence of the wide spectrum of tone colors that he was hearing in his head a composer.