****are you ready to go into fusion in depth; I mean to cover it to your hearts content, rather than just skim over it?****
Sure, and I’m glad to see that you want to cover it in depth, because all too often "skim over it" is exactly what has happened with other topics. For me, "in depth" means that, for starters, things have to be put in a chronological or historical perspective. How did it all began? Where did "fusion" come from? What are the earliest examples of it? How did it evolve?
By the mid sixties traditional Jazz was considered to be practically commercially dead by record producers, while rock and pop where increasing in popularity and young musicians who were growing up with this music started experimenting with mixing elements of jazz in rock projects and vise versa. The increasing use of electric instruments was a major force in all this. Early fusion projects sound very different from what "fusion" would become, but the lineage is clear and interesting.
Guitarist Larry Corryell’s band "The Free Spirits" is considered by many to be the first jazz "fusion" band (1966):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PLa7DwXF9n16EYojdIWL-PFQc_be9iUzvp¶ms=OAFIAVgG&v=Zf95lF...Formed around 1968 the band "Dreams" with the Brecker brothers on horns and Billy Cobham on drums was on the forefront of the fusion movement:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UFK_S-ILmGoIn 1969 Frank Zappa released "Hot Rats" which predated much of what fusion would become:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FFNQQpsOMF4Acman3 already mentioned and posted Tony Williams’ "Lifetime"; classic early fusion band and VERY influential.
That same year Miles Davis would release "In A Silent Way", his first fusion record and first record from his electric period:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?list=PL407832509983DB72&v=AOy-pJ1xQe0One year later (1970) Miles would release "Bitches Brew" and would blow things wide open for the fusion genre; it was here to stay. Hugely influential record:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1a1Ph-ioxoA