Larry Coryell (born Lorenz Albert Van DeLinder III; April 2, 1943 – February 19, 2017) was an American jazz guitarist, widely considered the "godfather of fusion". Alongside Gábor Szabó, he was a pioneer in melding jazz, country and rock music. Coryell was also a music teacher and a writer, penning a monthly column for Guitar Player magazine from 1977 to 1989. He collaborated with a number of other high-profile musicians, including Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Charles Mingus, Wayne Shorter, Miroslav Vitouš, Billy Cobham, Lenny White, Emily Remler, Al Di Meola, Paco de Lucía, Steve Morse and others.
Larry Coryell was born in Galveston, Texas, United States. He never knew his biological father, a musician. He was raised by his stepfather Gene, a chemical engineer, and his mother Cora, who encouraged him to learn piano when he was four years old.
In Coryell's teens, he switched to guitar. After his family moved to Richland, Washington, he took lessons from a teacher who lent him albums by Les Paul, Johnny Smith, Barney Kessel, and Tal Farlow. When asked what jazz guitar albums influenced him, Coryell cited On View at the Five Spot Cafe by Kenny Burrell, Red Norvo with Strings, and The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery. He liked blues and pop music and tried to play jazz when he was eighteen. He said that hearing Wes Montgomery changed his life.
Coryell graduated from Richland High School, where he played in local bands the Jailers, the Rumblers, the Royals, and the Flames. He also played with the Checkers from Yakima. Coryell then moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington.
In September 1965, Coryell moved to New York City, where he attended Mannes School of Music. After moving to New York, he listened to classical composers such as Bartók, Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, and Shostakovich.
Coryell replaced guitarist Gábor Szabó in Chico Hamilton's quintet. His challenge, at the time, was to combine the bluesy, psychedelic rock 'n' roll of Cream (especially Eric Clapton's guitar style) and The Jimi Hendrix Experience with his jazz training. Of the latter, Coryell first saw them live in 1967 at the Manhattan nightclub The Scene and was "very impressed" by them. Coryell's continued attendance to The Scene exposed him to further music of a similar ilk, catching the performances of Frank Zappa, Buddy Guy, The Velvet Underground, Stevie Winwood, The Doors and others.
In 1969, former Miles Davis Quintet drummer Tony Williams invited Coryell to join his new band, The Tony Williams Lifetime. While flattered by the invitation, he politely declined and suggested, in his place, his British friend and NY newcomer John McLaughlin, then known as "Johnny Mac." It was a career-making move for McLaughlin. Because of his tenure with the Lifetime, he was invited to join Davis's electric band, recording In a Silent Way (1969), the Bitches Brew (1970) double-album and Jack Johnson (1971).
In the 1970s, Coryell led the group Foreplay with Mike Mandel, a friend since childhood, although the albums of this period, Barefoot Boy, Offering, and The Real Great Escape, were credited only to Larry Coryell.
In the wake of the success of John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra he formed The Eleventh House in 1973, with drummer Alphonse Mouzon.
Their debut album, Introducing Eleventh House with Larry Coryell (1974), peaked at No. 163 in Billboard 200 and stayed 11 weeks in the charts. It was deemed unfocused and overindulgent when compared with the quintet's inspiration source, the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Coryell himself admitted to such, stating that the record was a "search party", a product of a group still in search of its identity.
Larry Coryell recorded with Al Di Meola on Return to Forever drummer Lenny White's solo debut, Venusian Summer (1975). Coryell and Di Meola traded solos on "Prince of the Sea", the album's last track. The pairing caused a stir on the fusion community, with fans wondering who played what solo. Coryell reveals this was the only time he and Di Meola played together with electric guitars.
Although enthusiastic about his contemporaries – namely Bill Connors, Allan Holdsworth, Di Meola and McLaughlin – in retrospect Coryell offered the following of mid-1970s fusion:
What happened, in my opinion, was that guitar playing just got too fast, [...] and it also got highly competitive. For years I thought, "All I want to do is become the number one-rated guitarist in DownBeat by the time I'm 30." It was that whole adolescent attitude, placing more importance on the arriving than on the striving. Everything just got so intense.
When fusion started losing steam Coryell turned to the acoustic guitar, recording duet albums with Steve Khan and Philip Catherine. The latter was responsible for Coryell's career turn, showing him in 1976 the Django Reinhardt song "Nuages". He also strengthened, in parallel, his role as a music educator. He gave private lessons and started writing a monthly column for Guitar Player magazine.
In 1978, Larry Coryell started a working relationship with Miles Davis. Davis had hip surgery and went to convalesce in Connecticut at the house of Elena Steinberg, a friend of Coryell's wife Julie. They started working on several pieces, including an unnamed "adagio" and a James Brown-like vamp in a 12/8 meter with trumpet and synthesizer. Larry Coryell recalls that his encounters with Miles Davis in the late 1970s unfolded against the backdrop of his own worsening alcoholism, and that Miles immediately perceived this vulnerability. While Davis himself kept beer chilled on the porch during his recovery in Connecticut, he casually handed Coryell a nearly empty bottle to finish and dryly remarked, “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic,” a comment that Coryell recognized as both perceptive and unsettling. These moments of shared drinking were not convivial bonding so much as stark reflections of mutual excess and self-awareness, occurring alongside cocaine use, erratic behavior, and physical decline. Coryell presents Miles as sharp, ironic, and unflinchingly honest about addiction, using humor and provocation rather than sympathy, and the episodes left Coryell with the sense that Miles saw through him completely—understanding his struggles even as both men remained trapped in destructive patterns at the time.
A year later Coryell formed The Guitar Trio with John McLaughlin and Paco de Lucia. The group toured Europe briefly, releasing a video recorded at Royal Albert Hall in London entitled Meeting of the Spirits.
Larry Coryell and John McLaughlin took part on the making of Paco de Lucía's Castro Marín (1981). Recorded at Tokyo in December 1980, Castro Marín remains one of the most obscure titles in his catalogue. Coryell and Paco played as duo on the fifth track, "Convite (Rumba)", and as a trio on the next track "Palenque".
Coryell's alcoholism and drug abuse eventually cost him his spot on The Guitar Trio, in the early 1980s. Of his struggles in that period, he said: