Keyboardist George Duke, one of the pioneers of the jazz-fusion movement that merged jazz, rock and funk in the late 1960s and 1970s, died Monday in Los Angeles, where he was being treated for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, his record label announced. He was 67.

The Northern California native was one of the leading forces in bringing jazz and rock together, genres that not only were typically separate in the 1950s and early ‘60s, but whose proponents often were philosophically at odds. Duke found the common ground between the styles.

In a career stretching over five decades, Duke collaborated with a wide range of musicians, among them Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, Barry Manilow, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Jarreau, Don Ellis, Cannonball Adderley, Nancy Wilson and Joe Williams.