Fischer was born in
Shelby, Mississippi on March 6, 1935. He worked early in his career with blues and R&B musicians, playing in the 1950s with
Ray Charles,
Guitar Slim,
Big Joe Turner, and
Muddy Waters. During this period, he received his bachelor's degree from
Xavier University in 1956 before taking a master's degree from
Colorado College in 1962. After briefly returning to Xavier as an instructor, he continued his education with non-degree coursework (including experimentation with early
synthesizers) at the Vienna Academy of Music and Performance in 1965–66. From 1967 to 1975, he taught in New York public schools. He worked extensively as an arranger and
session musician for jazz and popular music recordings, working with
Les McCann and
Joe Zawinul (having first met the pianist-composer during his European sojourn); in 1968, Zawinul released
The Rise and Fall of the Third Stream, an album primarily consisting of Fischer compositions. He also arranged for
Herbie Mann, who signed him to the
Embryo Records division of
Atlantic. It was for that label that Fischer recorded his 1970 album
Circles. Comprising his band were guitarists Hugh McCracken and Eric Weissberg, Ron Carter on electric bass, Billy Cobham on drums/percussion, and Bill Robinson on vocals. Fischer also composed and directed the keyboard elements for the
Moog, which were realized at
Walter Sear Electronic Music Studio in New York. Throughout the 1970s, he was associated with
Yusef Lateef,
Roberta Flack,
Gene Ammons, and
Junior Mance among others. In 1972, Fischer issued two solo albums. On his private Arcana label was
Omen, a group of multitracked, manually played synth takes at Walter Sear. On the Spanish label Herri Gogoa, Fischer released
Akelarre Sorta, a collection of psych-soul treatments of
Basque folk idioms. He recorded with
Roland Kirk in 1977 and with
Pharoah Sanders in 1982. Fischer died on May 22, 2023, at the age of 88. ==References==