A sonic exploration and tonal analysis of contemporary creative music in a myriad of improvisational/composed settings, textures, and expressions.
Welcome to Sound Projections
I'm your host Kofi Natambu. This online magazine features the very best in contemporary creative music in this creative timezone NOW (the one we're living in) as well as that of the historical past. The purpose is to openly explore, examine, investigate, reflect on, studiously critique, and take opulent pleasure in the sonic and aural dimensions of human experience known and identified to us as MUSIC. I'm also interested in critically examining the wide range of ideas and opinions that govern our commodified notions of the production, consumption, marketing, and commercial exchange of organized sound(s) which largely define and thereby (over)determine our present relationships to music in the general political economy and culture.
Thus this magazine will strive to critically question and go beyond the conventional imposed notions
and categories of what constitutes the generic and stylistic definitions of ‘Jazz’, ‘classical music’, ‘Blues.’
'Rhythm and Blues’, ‘Rock and Roll’, ‘Pop’, ‘Funk’, ‘Hip Hop’, etc. in order to search for what individual
artists and ensembles do cretively to challenge and transform our ingrained ideas and attitudes of what
music is and could be.
So please join me in this ongoing visceral, investigative, and cerebral quest to explore, enjoy, and pay
homage to the endlessly creative and uniquely magisterial dimensions of MUSIC in all of its guises and expressive identities.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
MILES DAVIS (1926-1991): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musician, composer, arranger, ensemble leader, music theorist, producer, and teacher
SOUND PROJECTIONS
AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE
EDITOR: KOFI NATAMBU
SPRING/SUMMER, 2015
VOLUME ONE NUMBER THREE
CHARLIE PARKER
Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:
DUKE ELLINGTON April 25-May 1 ART ENSEMBLE OF CHICAGO May 2-May 8
Miles Davis: A New Revolution in Sound by Kofi Natambu Black Renaissance Noire Volume 14, Number 2 Fall, 2014
"Knowledge is Freedom. Ignorance is Slavery.” —Miles Davis
"That
period between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s was an era in which the
resources of Jazz were being consolidated and refined and the range of
its sources broadened. Some of the Jazz of this period reached across
class and age lines and unified black audiences. Young people could see
this music as "bad" in much the same sense that James Brown used the
word, and older black people could see its links to black tradition."
--John Szwed
"To
the yang of 'hard bop' Davis brought stillness, melodic beauty, and
understatement; to the yin of 'cool' he brought rich sonority, blues
feeling, and an enriched rhythmic capacity that moved beyond swing to
funk. By refusing to color-code either his music or his audience, Davis
rose at the end of the 1950s to the summit of artistic excellence."
--Marsha Bayles
“What is there to say about the instrument? It’s my voice—that’s all it is."
--Miles Davis
On
July 17,1955 at the second annual Newport Jazz Festival, Davis was
literally invited at the last minute to join a group of prominent Jazz
musicians in a staged twenty minute jam session that had been organized
by the festival s famed music director, impresario, and promoter George
Wein as part of an "opening act" for the then highly popular white
headliner Dave Brubeck.
Scheduled merely as a quick programming
lead-in to stage changes between featured performances by the Modern
Jazz Quartet (MJQ), the Count Basie and Duke Ellington Orchestras,
Lester Young, and Brubeck, nothing special was planned in advance for
this short set which, like most jam sessions, was completely improvised
by the musicians performing onstage. Davis was then the least well known
musician in the assembled group which was made up of Thelonious Monk,
individuals from the MJQ, and other individual members of various groups
playing in the festival. Wein just happened to be a big fan of Davis
and added him because he was "a melodic bebopper" and a player who, in
Wein's view, could reach a larger audience than most other musicians
because of the haunting romantic lyricism and melodic richness of his
style. Wein's insight turned out to be prophetic.
Despite the
fact that most of the mainstream audience on hand had only a vague idea
of who Davis was, he was a standout sensation in the jam session and his
searing performance was one of the most talked about highlights of the
festival. Appearing in an elegant white seersucker sport coat and a
small black bow tie, thus already demonstrating the sleek, sharp
sartorial style that quickly became his trademark (and led to his
eventual appearance on the covers of many fashion magazines in the U.S,
Europe, and Asia), Davis captivated the festival throng with haunting,
dynamic solos and brilliant ensemble playing on both slow ballads and
intensely up-tempo quicksilver tunes alike. Taking complete command of
the setting with his understated elegance and relaxed yet naturally
dramatic stage presence, the handsome and charismatic Davis breezed
through two famous and musically daunting compositions by Thelonious
Monk ("Hackensack" and "Round Midnight"), and then ended his part of the
program by playing an impassioned bluesy solo on a well-known Charlie
Parker composition entitled "Now is the Time" which Davis had originally
recorded with Bird in 1945. That clinched it. He was a hit. Miles had
returned from almost complete oblivion to becoming a much talked about
and heralded star seemingly overnight (of course this personal and
professional recognition had been over a decade in the making). After a
long, arduous struggle as both an artist and individual that began in
his hometown of East St. Louis, Illinois when he started to play trumpet
at the age of 13 in 1939, Miles Davis had finally "arrived." For the
first time since 1950 he was completely clean and off drugs. No longer
addicted, Miles now played with a bravura, command, and creative clarity
that he had been fervently searching for well before he had become
addicted to heroin. It would be the beginning of many more incredible
triumphs and struggles that would catapult the fiery young trumpet
player to the very pinnacle of his profession and global fame and wealth
over the next ten years.
On hand for that historic summer
concert in Newport, RI. was George Avakian, a young music producer from
the large corporate recording company called Columbia (now Sony). Miles
had been after Avakian for over five years trying to get a recording
contract with Columbia which was then the largest and most successful
music company in the United States, but Avakian had been cautiously
waiting for a sign that Davis had conquered his personal problems and
was ready to commit fulltime to his music. Clearly Miles was now ready.
Avakian's brother Aram whispered to George during the concert that he
should sign Davis now, before he became a big hit and signed with a
rival company instead. Miles, himself nonplussed about the critical
acclaim he was finally receiving, wondered what the fuss was all about
and maintained that he was simply playing like he always had been. While
there was some truth to this assertion it was also clear that Miles's
highly disciplined demeanor, new responsible attitude, and impeccable
playing now indicated his intent on making a new commitment to living a
life strictly devoted to his art.
Avakian and Columbia
representatives met with Davis two days later on July 19, 1955 to sign
him to a new contract with the understanding that Davis would first
fulfill the remainder of his contract with the Prestige label by doing a
series of recordings in the fall of 1955 and the spring and fall of
1956 while at the same time making his first recordings with Columbia
that would not be released until after the public appearance of the
Prestige sessions. These small label recordings for Prestige would
immediately become famously known as the "missing g" sessions (so-called
for the dropping of the letter 'g' in the titles of these records, (e.g. Walkin', Workin', Cookin', Steamin', and Relaxin').
As Miles's first great legendary Quintet this young aggregation (the
oldest member of the group was 33 years old) featured then relative
unknowns John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe
Jones. From the very beginning this group and Miles himself would remake
Jazz history and become innovative and protean harbingers of great
changes to come in the music as well as the general culture.
As
with many great musicians, Miles's unique, highly individual sound on
his chosen instrument--the trumpet--would be the creative basis and
structural foundation of this new cultural and aesthetic intervention.
His was a sound that embraced the entire history of Jazz trumpet in its
meticulous attention to the demanding technical and physical
requirements of the instrument yet also sought a creative and expressive
approach that openly allowed for more subtle emotional nuances to
emerge from his playing than were common traditionally on trumpet. Miles
brought a highly burnished lyricism that was both deeply introspective
and fiercely driving all at once. A major characteristic of Davis's
playing was a new and different way of phrasing in which a major
emphasis and focus on the relationship of space to tempo and melody (and
the intervals between notes) became the hallmark of his style. In the
process Davis dramatically redefined and expanded the expressive and
creative range of the tonal palette and instrumental timbre of the
trumpet. By shifting the traditional emphasis from the heraldic and
bravura functions of the instrument to a more diverse and expansive
range of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic ideas Miles was able to openly
express the anguished conflict, sardonic irony, restless desire for
cultural and social change, and questing existential/ psychological
anxiety of the modern age. This intense attention to the broader
expressive possibilities of both musical improvisation and composition
also turned the feverish search for new forms and methods that
characterized the era into a parallel personal quest for discovering a
wider range of emotional and psychological contexts in which to play.
The sonic exploration of the complexities and ambiguities of joy, rage,
love, and melancholia was a major hallmark of Miles's style. Central to
Miles's vision and sensibility was an equally exhilarating appreciation
for the balanced expressive and intellectual relationship between
relaxation and tension in his music. By focusing specifically on the
spatial and rhythmic dimensions of melodic invention Miles developed
musical methods that called for, and often resulted in, a precise
minimalist approach to playing in which each note (or corresponding
chord) carried an implied reference to every other note or chord in a
particular sequence of musical phrases. Through a technical command of
breath control and timbrai dynamics induced by his embouchure and
unorthodox valve fingerings, Miles could maintain or manipulate tonal
pitch at the softest or loudest volumes. By creating stark dialectical
contrasts in his sound through alternately attacking, slurring,
syncopating or manipulating long tones in particular ensemble or
orchestral settings (a technical device Miles often referred to as
"contrary motion") Miles was able to convey great feeling and emotion
through an economy of phrasing and musical rests. This rapt attention to
allowing space or the silence between note intervals to dramatically
assert itself as much or more as the notes themselves created great
anticipation in his audience as to how these tensions would be resolved
(or not). In this respect, the insightful observation by the French Jazz
critic and music historian André Hodeir that Miles's sound tends toward
a discovery of ecstasy is a rather apt description of Davis's
expressive approach. What emerged from Miles's intensely comprehensive
investigation of the creative possibilities of the instrument was a deep
and lifelong appreciation for the tonal, sonic, and textural dimensions
of playing and composing music. These aesthetic concerns as well as
Miles's innovative creative solutions to the rigorous challenges of
improvisational and composed ensemble structures alike in the modern
Jazz tradition soon revolutionized all of American music and made Davis
one of the leading and most influential musician-composers in the world
during the last half of the 20th century.
Davis's widespread
social, cultural, and political influence didn't end there
however--especially in the black community. Miles also quickly became a
social and cultural avatar whose highly personal combination of cool
reserve, fiery defiance, detached alienation, intellectual independence,
and striking stylistic innovation in everything from clothes to speech
embodied, and largely defined for many, the ethos of 'hip' that pervaded
the black Jazz world of the 1950s and early 1960s. But Miles, while
remaining very hip, at the same time also lived and worked far beyond
the insular world of hipsterism and avant-garde bohemia. He was unique
in that his stance was simultaneously existentialist and engaged. As
many observers, fans, scholars, friends, and critics have noted, Miles
became, in many ways, what the critic Garry Giddins called "the
representative black artist" of his era. John Szwed, Yale University
music professor and author of a 2002 biography on Miles entitled So
What: The Life of Miles Davis speaks for a couple of generations of
writers, fans, artists and musicians when he states that by the late
'50s, early 1960s:
“Miles
was becoming the coin of the realm, cock of the walk, good copy for the
tabloids, and inspiration for literary imagination. Allusions to him
could turn up anywhere…Tributes to him sprang up in poems by Langston
Hughes (“Trumpet Player: 52nd Street”), and Gregory Corso…Young people
ostentatiously carried his albums to parties and sought out his clothing
in the best men’s stores. In person, his every action was observed and
read for meaning…A discourse developed around him, one that bore
inordinate weight in matters of race—Miles stories—narratives about his
inner drives, his demons, his pain, and his ambition. Invariably, his
stories climaxed with a short comment, crushingly delivered in a husky
imitation of the man’s voice, capped by some obscenity…He was the man.”
Among
many black people, Davis's outspoken, defiant social stance and hip,
charismatic aura signified a profound shift in cultural values and
attitudes in the national black community that also had a lasting
political significance and influence. This was especially true for the
emerging adolescent youth and radical young adults of the era whose
overt displays of rebellion and defiance of racism and repression were
becoming pervasive with the rise of the Civil Rights and Black Power
movements. Miles quickly became a major symbol of this modern
revolutionary spirit in African American culture and was seen by many as
an important artistic leader in this struggle and its widespread social
and political demands for respect, justice, equality, and freedom for
African Americans that marked the period. Thus, it is not surprising
that many of the various musical aesthetics that Davis devised and
expressed during the late '50s and throughout the '60s consciously
sought to advance specifically new ideas about the structural, formal,
and expressive dimensions of the modernist tradition in contemporary
Jazz music. These changes would openly challenge many of the orthodoxies
of this tradition both in terms of form and content while at the same
time asserting a radically different set of ideological and aesthetic
values about the intellectual and cultural worth, use, and intent of the
music that in attitude and style sought to resist or go beyond standard
notions of both high art and commercial popular culture. Simultaneously
however, Davis sought to consciously establish an even more socially
intimate relationship with his black audience (and especially its
youthful members) that would embody and hopefully expand Davis's views
on the broad necessity for deeply rooted political and cultural change
within the African American community and the U.S. as a whole.
In
the quest to critique many of the philosophical assumptions governing
conventional modernist discourse in art while still retaining a
fundamental aesthetic connection to other important aspects and
principles of modernism--especially those having to do with the
continuous necessity of creative change and revision--Davis epitomized
the 'progressive' African American Jazz musician's desire to use black
vernacular sources, ideas, and values to engage these modernist
traditions and principles on his/her own independent social, cultural,
and intellectual terms. In such major recordings from the 1957-1967
period as his orchestral masterpieces Miles Ahead, (1957) Porgy &
Bess, (1959) and Sketches of Spain (1960)--made in collaboration with
his longtime friend and colleague, the white composer and arranger Gil
Evans --and his equally significant and highly influential small group
Quintet and Sextet recordings, Milestones, (1958) Kind of Blue, (1959)
Live at the Blackhawk, (1961) My Funny Valentine, (1965) Four &
More, (1964) E.S.P., (1965) Miles Smiles, (1966) Miles in Berlin, (1964)
Miles in Tokyo, (1964) Live at the Plugged Nickel, (1965) and
Nefertiti, (1967) Davis was at the forefront of those African American
artists of the period who, in all the arts, were feverishly looking for
and often finding fresh, new modes of pursuing aesthetic innovation and
social change. By dialectically synthesizing and extending ideas,
strategies, methods, and structures culled from such disparate sources
as 20th century classical music, the blues, R&B, and many different
stylistic forms from the Jazz tradition (i.e. Swing, Bebop, 'Cool' and
'Hard Bop' etc.)--many of which Davis himself had played a pivotal role
in developing and popularizing--Miles helped bring about a new creative
synthesis of modern and vernacular expressions that greatly changed our
perceptions of what American music was and could be.
(This essay is an excerpt from a new book-in-progress by Kofi Natambu entitled A BRAND NEW BAG: How African Americans Revolutionized U.S. Culture & Changed the World, 1955-1975)
Source Citation (MLA 7th Edition) Natambu,
Kofi. "Miles Davis: A New Revolution in Sound." Black
Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 14.2 (2014): 36+. Academic OneFile. Web.
23 May 2015.
A Review of Miles Davis and American Culture A book edited by Gerald Early; Forward by Clark Terry (Missouri Historical Society Press) by Tyrone Williams The New Journal October, 2002
As
Eric Porter demonstrates in his overview of the jazz criticism on Miles
Davis, "'It's About That Time': The Response To Miles Davis's Electric
Turn," the paradoxes, contradictions and conundrums that riddle, if not
define, the life and music of Miles Davis have generated a voluminous
body of criticism that mirror his musical, cultural and ethical
tensions. Thus it is not surprising that Miles Davis and American
Culture, a commemorative catalog to the first major museum exhibition of
Davis's work, is a microcosm of the conflicting assessments of both the
musician and human being, not only between but also, in certain cases,
within the essays, memoirs and interviews that comprise this book.
Although there is little that is new here in terms of the critical
debates over Davis's relationships and contributions to the American
music problematically called "jazz," (Davis himself was notorious for
his scorn of the term) cool jazz, hard bop and "fusion" (even more
problematic a term), this collection does feature a number of
interesting essays, at least two of which warrant extended discussion:
the introductory essay by Gerald Early and the critical assessment by
Martha Bayles. Eric Porter's essay is also valuable reading, but as he
is primarily interested in summarizing the critical debates around
Davis's music, particularly the post-1969 material, I will limit most of
my comments to the contributions of Early and Bayles. But first, the
other contributions.
The essays by William Howland Kenney, Eugene
Redmond and Benjamin Cawthra situate Davis's music within the cultural
and economic history of East St. Louis, Missouri. Specifically, Kenney
and Cawthra attempt to account for why Miles Davis is known as someone
only "from" East St. Louis, why Davis both chose and had to leave for
New York in 1944. Kenney's essay, "Just Before Miles: Jazz in St. Louis,
1926-1944," discusses Davis's formative years as a musician in
"hot-dance" riverboat bands in Missouri and Illinois. Kenney argues that
the demise of these riverboat bands--due to the advent of air
conditioning, interstate highways, federal regulations, and the aging
boats themselves--was as crucial a factor in Davis's decision to leave
the Midwest as his desire to play with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie
Parker in New York. Cawthra's contribution, "Remembering Miles in St.
Louis: A Conclusion," argues that the erosion of East St. Louis's
economic and cultural infrastructures, due to deep-seated racism and
political expediency, was and is as great a factor in the city's
inability to retain its cultural talent as is the obvious attractions of
the East and West coasts. More optimistic is Eugene Redmond's
celebratory poem/prose, "'So What'(?)...It's 'All Blues' Anyway: An
Anecdotal/Jazzological Tour of Milesville." Unlike Kenney and Cawthra,
Redmond reads Davis's "from East St. Louis" as, at worst, mere
description, at best, something to be proud of since, Redmond suggests,
Davis's legacy might serve as a cornerstone of the foundation on which
East St. Louis rebuilds itself.
The book also features interviews
with record industry a & r impresario George Avakian and musicians
Quincy Jones, Ron Carter, Ahmad Jamal, and Joey DeFrancesco. It
concludes with a reprint of Davis's 1962 Playboy interview with Alex
Haley. Other contributors include Quincy Troupe, Farah Jasmine Griffin,
John Gennari, Ingrid Monson and Waldo Martin, Jr.
As noted above,
the essays by Gerald Early, Eric Porter and Martha Bayles attempt
comprehensive overviews of the twists and turns of Davis's career: from a
"Newer Negro" (Early) playing black music (hard bop) and a black man
playing Negro music (cool) to, after 1969, a black man playing
black-and-white music (fusion and pop) and, finally, a black man playing
African-American music (hip-hop). The intersection between ethnicity,
race and gender in the preceding reflects concerns that orient almost
all the writings here.
Gerald Early's introductory essay, "The
Art of the Muscle: Miles Davis as American Knight and American Knave,"
begins from the premise that the key to understanding Miles Davis as a
man and musician lies in the relationship between his ascendancy as a
major force in jazz at the very moment that the music's commercial
appeal was in decline. About the latter, Early writes: "No music can
eschew its own commercial dimension, and if it does, as jazz sometimes
has...it only winds up, paradoxically, trying to sell itself on the
basis that it is noncommercial...." (4) Early argues that Davis
attempted to solve this dilemma by embracing elitism while repositioning
himself within the marketplace.
The decline of jazz as a popular
music due, in part, to its own pretensions is an issue taken up later
by Martha Bayles, but the theme is a familiar one in the arguments of
Stanley Crouch, Wynton Marsalis, Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray and
others. The common target is bebop, held responsible, to varying
degrees, for jazz's demise as a popular music. The target behind the
target is the modernist conception of "art" and the "artist," perceived
as intrinsically antipopulist, self-indulgent and formalistic to the
point of narcissism. In all its forms this argument leads to
problematic, if not contradictory, positions, as we will see in Bayles's
essay.
Gerald Early, for one, understands the pitfalls of the
antiart argument and the rest of his essay dances around its
implications. He acknowledges that any contradictions one might perceive
in Davis wanting to have it "both ways" depend on prior presumptions
about the inviolability of musical genres - which the musician may not
share: "In a sense, what Davis wanted to do was transcend jazz and
simply embody musical improvisation." (5) However, this generous reading
of Davis's motivations will not, as Early knows, sustain scrutiny.
Early is merely setting the ground for his own reading of Davis as the
quintessential ever-searching, ever-restless romantic figure of jazz.
This is Miles Davis through a European lens (to adopt one of Bayles's
more useful strategies of reading jazz history). This is Miles Davis as a
white man, which might explain why Early writes, with a straight face:
"Miles Davis is the American bad boy of jazz, our Huckleberry Finn...."
Early
does not neglect the "black" Miles Davis, the would-be homeboy, "Jim."
Most illuminating in this regard is his discussion of Davis's
fascination with boxing in general and his hero-worship of Sugar Ray
Robinson in particular. Davis saw in Robinson's - and, earlier, Jack
Johnson's - celebration of the "sporting life" (the indulgence in women,
gambling, drugs, etc.) - a model and challenge to the "straight" life,
not from the point of view of "hipness" but on the assumption (right or
wrong) that black bourgeois culture was largely a form of accommodation
to white racism. In particular, as Early makes clear, Davis viewed some -
but not all - middle-class mores as attempts to police the "black
body," strategies in concert with white modes of control. As a black
male secularist and musician dedicated to the pleasures of the body,
Davis could no more stomach "Crow Jim" attitudes among Negroes than he
could Jim Crow white law. And just as Jack Johnson had, by virtue of his
exploits in and out of the ring, become a "New Negro" worthy of the
accolades of the Harlem Renaissance literary elite, so too, later, Miles
Davis would become a "Newer Negro." Early points out that Davis saw
himself as a part of a "black male heroic tradition," but whereas
Johnson and Robinson - six years older than Davis - operated as New
Negroes in spite of white American hostility, Davis, simply because he
was in the right place at the right time, benefitted from the "white
Negro"/Newer Negro phenomenon. His on- and off-stage antics thrilled the
young, hip, white jazz aficionados (among them, of course, the Beats)
of the 1950s. In this context, as Early makes clear, Davis's resentment,
however heartfelt, was, like Lionel Hampton's accommodationism, based
on the same premise: the audience for jazz, traditional or avant-garde,
was overwhelmingly white.
Just as Davis is, for Early, a figure
of the romantic artist and opportunistic businessman, benefitting the
historical period in which he lived - the rise of the music industry -
he is likewise, for Martha Bayles, a latter-day Ulysses, a straight man
in an epic tale of pretension and slapstick. Its theme: "the day the
music died." Bayles's largely laudatory essay, "Miles Davis and the
Double Audience," links the modernist divide between technique and
accessibility in modern European music (e.g., serialism) and American
music (bebop) to the growing belief in progress and science in the early
20th century. For Bayles, the result is "no audience" for European
modernism (she cites Milton Babbitt's famous essay, "Who Cares If You
Listen?") and "two audiences" for American modernism. Aside from
exasperating class differences and polarizing blacks and whites, the
elevation of technique, Bayles argues, has resulted in the debasement of
"traditional" musical values (especially melody). Miles Davis is thus
the exception that proves the rule, negotiating the Scylla and Charbydis
of crass commercialism (accessibility) and artistic isolation
(technique): "to the yang of hard bop Davis brought stillness, melodic
beauty, and understatement; to the yin of cool he brought rich sonority,
blues feeling, and an enriched rhythmic capacity that moved beyond
swing to funk." (155). This is, of course, a gloss on Gary Giddins's
more pithy observation - cited by two other authors in this book - that
Davis was the "Midwestern parent" of both West Coast cool and East Coast
bop. These two modes of jazz quickly became color-coded as white and
black in the late Fifties and early Sixties. As Gerald Early implied
with his Huckleberry Finn-Sugar Ray Robinson metaphors, Davis is, for
Bayles, a figure of musical and racial reconciliation despite his
occasional posturing.
Bayles's essay stands alone in this volume
in its attempt to not only bracket but also criticize the extramusical
forces that influenced Davis's music, particularly after 1969 when he
helped popularize fusion. In relation to music criticism, these forces
function as "contexts." Bayles begins by noting, pace Porter et al,
Davis's interracial audiences and the resulting discomfiture for this
son of a "race man." (149) But audience, too, is a "context," and Bayles
will privilege this particular context - for whom is this music? - and
oppose other "contextual" approaches for being, of all things,
insufficiently contextual. Especially, it seems, the political
context(s). Yet what surprises one is the insufficient attention Bayles
pays to historical contexts, a failure which results in misreadings and
distortions of the historical record. Bayles, thinking of Gary Tomlinson
(cited by Eric Porter), asserts that notions of "dialogue," like that
of "contestation," do not provide "genuine insight" into Davis's music
and its significance. Those terms, of course, not only imply "contexts"
but, more important, they presuppose separate black and white cultures
and traditions. This is what Bayles must reject as "significant," much
less "positive," influences on Davis's music. And though she concedes
the limitations of a purely "formal analysis" of Davis's music, Bayles
proceeds to place into abeyance all contextual factors except
"audience." Of course, this makes perfect sense since to invoke
formalism sans audience would mean a retreat into modernist isolation.
I
do not have the space to discuss the ways Bayles distorts the
relationship between modernism, science and "progress" (in this respect
she misreads Babbitt's essay) vis-a-vis serialism and aleatory music
(though her distinction between aleatory music and free jazz is
illuminating). Instead I will conclude by focusing on what Bayles has to
say about American jazz and pop. It is perhaps a little fussy to note
that Davis's infamous turning of his back to the audience is read by
Bayles as contempt (she tries to distinguish gradations of contempt in
Davis's behavior) when he himself claimed that his stage movements were a
rejection of the jazz musician as "entertainer." As already noted in
Gerald Early's essay, Davis came onto the stage of history when a black
musician could not only be tolerated for rejecting the mask that Louis
Armstrong had to wear but could, in fact, be lionized for doing so. This
rejection of the entertainer role preceded Davis (as Bayles notes), but
she can only see it in extremes, in polarized terms as either contempt
or "a clever marketing device." She quotes Davis gleefully reveling in
his "bad boy" role without sufficiently attending to its significance as
a "role."
More egregious is Bayles's reading of Davis's
"electric turn." Effusing over the 1960s in terms of "crossover"
audiences, Bayles writes, "The seemingly miraculous spectacle of the
double audience blending into one attracted Davis." Not according to
almost everyone else in this volume and elsewhere. It was not race that
mattered to Davis in this context but age - he wanted to go after the
youth market, and the youth market was rock 'n roll and r&b. Had
these audiences already been 'blending into one" fusion would have
already been popular. Moreover, the term "crossover" was and is
equivalent to "integration," largely a one-way street in popular music
and social history. Black music was and is more popular with white
audiences than the reverse just as black people move into white
neighborhoods more often than the reverse.
So what "genuine
insight" does Bayles offer in lieu of "dialogue" and "contestation"?
Contemplating Davis's turn to fusion, she writes: "With the popular
audience Davis shared an appreciation for the primary capacities of
music: the power of rhythm to move the body (dance) and the power of
melody to move his emotions (song). Perhaps fusion should be judged by
these standards." (161) I could not agree more, but that's not to say
that these are more profound criteria than the "simplistic notions of
'dialogue' and 'contestation.'" On the contrary, Bayles has simply
withdrawn Davis's music from one "context" (political and social forces)
and inserted it in another context (audience reception) on the basis of
traditional musical values (melody, rhythm). Which really means:
certain kinds of melodic treatment, certain kinds of rhythmic measure.
As
I hope my extended - if incomplete - analyses of Early's and Bayles's
essays - and there are other good ones here - imply, Miles Davis and
American Culture is a worthy addition to the collection of anyone still
fascinated by the enigma that was - and is - Miles Davis. All contents copyright The New Journal, 2002
The
music Miles Davis forged in the first half of the 1970s, his so-called
"electric period," is not jazz. In a determined effort to keep his sound
fresh, he took the audacious step of leaving behind all the frameworks
of the art form which had made him a recognized and venerated figure
throughout the world. In an effort to open himself up to new ideas and
to expand his audience, his new sound maintains elements of the jazz
style he'd evolved for the previous 30 years, while appropriating styles
of music outside the jazz repertoire, namely the propulsive dance
groove of 70s funk (particularly James Brown and Sly Stone), the
raucous, rough-edged, electro-charged brashness of Jimi Hendrix, the
metallic sparkle of India's Ravi Shankar, the European classical
avant-garde methods of Karlheinz Stockhausen, as well as the traditions
of jazz going back to Dixieland and ragtime. It's also indebted to the
free playing of Albert Ayler and late John Coltrane with Pharoah
Sanders.
And what does this add up to? All I know is that the
music manages to expresses feelings I've yet to find in any other art
form. Complex, raw, primal feelings splayed and made tangible.
The
music Miles made in these years—particularly with the scorching
electric guitars of Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas, grounded in the steady,
incantory pulse of Al Foster's 4/4 rhythm on drums and Michael
Henderson's unswerving definition of tempo and key via electric
bass—defined an organic, body-centered response to nature. Bird calls
and the sound of wind through the trees is as much a part of the
pastiche as is the dance of the inner psyche. We've heard these sounds
on walks through the woods.
But the music is—despite the assault
of its unfamiliar gestures and its straying beyond bar measures—rooted
in blues. The whole thing is still a child of the body and spirit-form
called blues. Miles was clearly intending to move his music out of the
elite confines of the music hall and into the street, or at least onto
the radio.
Miles' generosity of spirit, his openness to
influences from outside the expected, his need to dig deep into
emotional recesses never before expressed so vividly, make it seem that
the music is contemporary. To these ears it is not at all dated or
relegated to a nostalgic dip into the past. It was so far ahead of its
time that we're still catching up to it nearly 40 years later.
The
Complete On the Corner Sessions (Sony-Legacy Music, 2007) is the eighth
and final set in a series of Miles Davis boxes. This six-CD package
includes six-plus hours of music, including 12 previously unissued
tracks, plus five tracks previously unissued in full. The package
contains a 120-page booklet with liner notes and essays by
musician/co-producer Bob Belden (Michael Cuscuna is the other
co-producer), journalist Tom Terrell and arranger/musician Paul
Buckmaster.
The Complete On the Corner Sessions is an inaccurate
and misleading title in an academic sense. The tracks he recorded at
Columbia Studio B over the course of 16 sessions presented in this set
from March 9, 1972 to May 5, 1975 offer up at least two very different
artistic intentions. The first is the material realized for what would
be released as On the Corner in July 1972 —the "extended grooves," as
bassist Michael Henderson explains in the liner notes. This is a
singular event in the Miles chronology, although it can be seen as an
extension of the sound he had developed in 1970 in an ensemble that
included Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Michael Henderson, Gary Bartz,
John McLaughlin and Airto Moreira (represented on The Cellar Door
Sessions, released as a six-CD box set in 2005).
Other tracks
collected here, particularly those assembled on Get Up With It (released
November 1974), are another matter. Following the June 1972 sessions
that resulted in On the Corner, Miles moved the ensemble sound away from
an insistence on a churning, full-speed-ahead jam on one chord. On a
handful of sessions over the next few years, orchestral colors are
explored and there's room for chord changes and melodies. Perhaps it's
quibbling, but I'm more comfortable with distinguishing each of the
original LPs as distinct periods, or moments, in Miles' continuous
evolution.
The new solo
In the early 1970s, Miles could
not play trumpet with the intensity, force and bravado he'd exhibited
throughout his career and which had been at a peak in 1969 and 1970 as
he put himself on display to a whole new audience of rock crowds at the
Fillmore East (March 6-7, 1970 and again June 17-20, 1970) and Fillmore
West (April 10-11, 1970 and again Oct. 15-18, 1970), at huge rock
festivals (Isle of Wight, Aug. 29, 1970) and other venues larger than
the night clubs and corner bars he'd been playing for decades.
His
embouchure was compromised. He was in ill health. His use of
recreational drugs was reportedly abundant. Playing trumpet is
physically demanding and Miles, in the 1970s, was willing, but his body
was just not near the same levels as it had been. His soloing and his
steering of the ensemble sound via his horn was diminished from what it
had been.
But what he lacked in physical stamina, he made up for
by taking huge risks in exposing his every vulnerability via a shift in
musical intention. He refused to rely on playing crowd favorites or
tunes from his past repertoire. He was intent on forging something
entirely brand new, of presenting something which hadn't been seen or
heard before.
The case could be made that he was insulting his
devoted audience by merely presenting incomprehensible noise. But I am
in the camp which believes this music is valuable in its revolutionary
intentions.
The Complete On the Corner Sessions box showcases
Miles' power as a leader. While the musicians are not playing charts,
within their prescribed roles each player contributes an individual
intensity and voice while fitting into the ensemble sound.
Miles'
conducting of the group improvisation is firm enough to give a
recognizable shape to the tune while trusting enough of the individual
voices to bring out their best. Not many of the musicians who passed
through Miles' various groups ever sounded better than when they were
with him. Why? Because part of Miles' genius was in encouraging his
partners to reach for expressions they hadn't known were within them. As
leader, he afforded them the time to expand on their ideas, while at
the same time maintaining a unifying order to contain the amalgam of
personal contributions.
However, here the soloing is less
rewarding to listen to because the musicians aren't as skilled as were
the musicians in Miles' previous ensembles. And there's often less
gradations to which the improvisations can respond. Often the solos are
enlisted to override the churning, molten funk of the groove laid down
by the rest of the pack. So, less skilled and less brave than Miles was
when he complemented Charlie Parker's fusillade attack with a whole
different approach, the soloing musicians on these sessions take less
risks and resort to sounding off on their horns in a frenzy of notes in
their attempt to meet the demands of the ensemble sound. There's little
nuance, little chance to explore and test, as the musical concept is
forceful and deliberate.
But this is less a liability because
the act of soloing acquires a new purpose and intent on these tracks.
Each solo is less ego-based than solos from the 60 years of
improvisational music dating back to Louis Armstrong's emergence with
King Oliver. Here, the solo is not the showcase for virtuosity it was
before. While each player's skill is on display and each brings his own
personal touch to the solo, it's more directed to serve the music. The
solo is a momentary display within the textures of the process. It's a
thread in the fabric.
Too, while Charlie Parker in the 78 rpm
era only had three minutes to make his statement, Miles in the LP era
can take his time and uses the space to elongate the music-listening
experience so it can extend the range and incorporate moods and tones
beyond bebop and standards boundaries.
The argument could be
made that the level of musicianship in the ensembles Miles led
throughout these electric years was not as skilled as it had previously
been. These musicians lacked the virtuosic capabilities of the now
recognized jazz masters who had played with Miles throughout the 40s,
50s and 60s, players who were capable of soloing at the proper time in
their prescribed roles as sidemen—beautiful statements that adhered to
the chord changes and showed off their technical facility and aesthetic
craft in the service of making art music.
This was the basic
structure: A small team of musicians would play a theme, then each would
take a turn soloing, the theme would be stated again by the ensemble
and the piece would end. The audience knew what to expect. The thrill
was in how articulate the soloists could express themselves.
Miles,
even at 19 years old when he joined the Charlie Parker band, added
something different to the pyrotechnic virtuosity of players like
Parker. Miles' sound brought a softer, feminine element, a brooding,
reflective wistfulness that countered the alpha male assertiveness of
most other jazz music of the time and of the preceding 50 years.
There
are several reasons why Miles' music of the 70s may be less attractive
to listeners. For one, it's nasty. It digs deep to express dark recesses
of feelings and sustains those moods for long stretches. It is not
enjoyable in the sense that art had served previously. As Theodor Adorno
says, in discussing the music of Schoenberg, affability ceases. The
music is less about serving as entertainment and is more an unrestrained
attempt to express the rawest emotions. It's beyond entertainment.
Miles was through pandering to audience expectations. Too, with his
trumpet-playing limited because of poor health, he began using an
electric organ to produce occasional howls, chords not heard before,
eerie, dark blocks of sound.
Defiling the Cult of Beauty: The Influence of Stockhausen and Messiaen
The
music deserves more serious examination and certainly more recognition
and acclaim. It is remarkable music in that it integrates a universe of
sounds. It's not simply bringing in the ethnic influence of a foreign
culture, as Dizzy Gillespie did decades earlier by bringing Caribbean
dance rhythms into his sound. The music adds textures and complexities
learned from European avant-garde—particularly the collage effects of
Karlheinz Stockhausen, whose pieces since the 1950s, besides traditional
orchestral instrumentation, were making use of electronic effects
(synthesizers, amplified soloists, ring modulators), as well as short
wave receivers.
In the liner notes, Paul Buckmaster, a British
cellist and composer who had experimented with tape loops, recounts how
he exposed Miles to the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen at this time. The
influence this had on Miles' sound is easy to imagine. Stockhausen's
music is a radical break from the classical music tradition in that it
does not rely on narrative. Like a Godard movie, it interrupts the
spoon-fed story-telling structure to offer up a new palette of sensual
and intellectual effects. It is full of surprises, as the listener can
never anticipate what's coming next. It's a music free of sentiment,
unencumbered from the Romantic strategy of appealing to common urges
(assuming agreement is pleasing).
After an absorption in the
compositions of Stockhausen, as well as those of Olivier Messiaen, with
their open-ended structures, Miles' methods can be seen to jettison the
traditional thematic structure left over from the Romantic era, where a
piece of music follows a pattern, or narrative, describing a set of
experiences or feelings through time. Miles begins here, like modern
composers Messiaen and Stockhausen, to make use of the moment. The
allegiance to a story is abandoned. Each moment of the musical piece is
attuned to the extraordinary. Miles acquires a new tonal palette
incorporating ominous and chilling explorations, such as examined in the
music of Stockhausen and Messiaen.
Also, with the use of
silences, the band's forward progression coming to a sudden halt, a
strategy also likely picked up from Stockhausen, the music emphasizes
the collage-like, fragmentary nature of perception, not an ideal
make-believe illusion. The listener can enter and leave anywhere.
Too,
not answerable to any agenda, the music's idiosyncratic path is
decidedly not intended to placate audience expectation. Pure art seeks
to explore and enunciate more than entertain.
These expressions
take art away from the merely beautiful and the artifice of luxury. The
illusion of safe extravagance is removed in order to portray
less-than-polite feelings. Left behind is good taste, decorative
entertainment for the comfort of paying patrons.
The music is so
densely layered and there is so much musical activity that repeated
listening is rewarded as moments and threads are heard differently each
time. And, without the formal dependence on theme and dramatic
progression, our listening experience is splayed out to concentrate on
the moment, not the anticipation of a climax and resolution.
Much
of the music contained in this package could be designated "new age,"
though it's often more raucous than what we typify today as the calming
ambient music we use for relaxing or performing yoga.
While
Miles' intentions with his music might have been to get people up to
dance, at the same time he created a panache of listenable grooves
filled with surprises and unprecedented ensemble sounds that still
retain their freshness and audacious attitude.
Dissonance, Our Friend
Miles' music of the 1970s is not just a rejection of beauty, but a beautiful embrace of the rejected.
For
Miles, dissonance was an acknowledgement that there was more to be
expressed in music than comfort and resolvable sensations. The musical
vocabulary of traditional Western harmony—the I, IV, V form, the basic
foundation for everything from church hymns to blues, standards and rock
'n' roll —imposed limitations to exploring and expressing a range of
emotions and a depiction of possibilities beyond the familiar tonal
centers available in major and minor patterns.
His departure
from these confines might be traced back as far as 1959's Kind of Blue,
which broke from the blues-based form by using modal scales that gave an
effect of suspension, as chords didn't resolve back to the root chord
as in the familiar traditional manner. Pleasing an audience with
tasteful, familiar songs, providing entertainment, became too tired.
Miles wanted to grow as an artist.
Miles' group of the mid-60s
took it even further. Pushed by Wayne Shorter's spiral compositions and
fragmentary style of soloing on sax and by keyboardist Herbie Hancock's
schooling in Debussy and Ravel and drummer Tony Williams' aggressive
splattering of bar lines, this music too offered a sense of suspension
as it uprooted the root and tonic.
The shift from the
traditional standards repertory to a push into something new is
discerned in The Complete Live at The Plugged Nickel set from Dec.
22-23, 1965 (released as an eight-CD box set in July 1995). Miles, the
leader, seems in poor health. His trumpet playing lacks breath and his
soloing comes in short bursts which he can't sustain. He, in fact, does
not play a lot over the course of the seven live sets over two nights.
His weakness gives more of the spotlight to his young, energetic
sidemen, who are eager to advance into new realms beyond the standards
repertoire to which their boss has been anchored.
Later in the
decade, Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea would even be nudging the music
into totally free territory—leaving behind the grounding in a common key
and time signature—before Miles, not quite convinced of the emotional
impact of a total abandonment of order, would rein the group back down
to a place of agreement.
Fortunate to be working for a record
company—Columbia (now Columbia/Legacy, a division of Sony BMG Music
Entertainment)—that indulged his direction and allowed him to pursue his
project, Miles ran with it. Not obliged to the record company to fester
as a recognizable brand, Miles could use the studio and countless live
dates, to continue developing and pushing into unexplored territory to
create sounds which were unheard and unimagined previously.
The Tunes
There
are some gems among the previously unreleased tracks, particularly "On
the Corner (take 4)" and "Mr. Foster," and the release of unheard music
from this phase of Miles' career will thrill devotees of his electric
music.
"On the Corner (take 4)" offers up the entire universe in
one chord. It's a five-minute studio fragment that propels the listener
via one effect: a determined mining of a vamp pedaled to one chord onto
which the musicians, particularly John McLaughlin, augment with furious
yet mannered waves of variation. It could have fit onto side one of A
Tribute to Jack Johnson (released Feb. 1971).
On "On the Corner
(unedited master)," as well as the unedited master and issued take of
"Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X," some new variants are heard, dark colorful
chords on organ, but pedestrian, Theremin-like keyboard noodling by
Harold Ivory Williams (my guess, the other two keyboardists were Chick
Corea and Herbie Hancock, or possibly it's Dave Creamer on guitar) is
amateurish and grates after awhile. We hear for the first time
instrumental solos by Keith Jarrett on electric piano, John McLaughlin
on electric guitar and even Miles on wah-wah trumpet that were excised
in the final mix, sacrificed for the ensemble concept.
The idea here is that individual efforts contribute to a whole. Ego is gone. What's important is the ensemble.
"Ife"
repeats a riff over and over to induce a trance-like fixation on the
spiral pattern. Onto that is layered Miles' solo, which wrestles with
the rhythm, punctuating oscillations. Paul Buckmaster is noted on
electric cello, but I can't discern his presence in the mix.
"Chieftain,"
another previously unissued track, has a startling, almost Caribbean
multi-rhythmic groove provided by Al Foster on drums and Reggie Lucas on
electric guitar, with Badal Roy on tablas and Mtume on congas. Michael
Henderson provides a bass drone pulse and Miles solos achingly through
the wah wah. It's nice to hear a sitar in the mix, but Khalil
Balakrishna is no Ravi Shankar.
"Rated X" begins with Miles
playing eerie chord clusters on electric organ. Michael Henderson enters
on electric bass with an adrenaline-chilling vamp repeated over and
over, with Al Foster laying down his basic pulse-enhancing 4/4. The tune
proceeds as an exploration of the colors with no actual soloing, like a
masseuse touching a nerve ending you never knew existed. It's a diagram
of a mood, unexplained before, reaching foundation feelings rooted in
primitive needs.
The previously unreleased studio takes of
"Turnaround" and "U-Turnaround," a tune that would become a staple of
his live shows for the next few years, doesn't quite get off the ground
in this premier rendition. The elementary theme is stated repeatedly
over the funk groove with Miles stretching the head statement into
varying permutations, but there's little transcendence. Perhaps it's
effective as a dance groove, but as concert music this doesn't provide
enough complexity. Note: On his Miles Beyond website, Paul Tingen, in
consultation with Miles discography expert Jan Lohmann, disputes the
record company's titling of these tracks. They agree that "Turnaround"
and "U-Turnaround," in fact, are two early takes of "Agharta Prelude."
The
tunes which would be gathered on Get Up With It (collecting tracks
recorded between 1970 and 1974 and released as a double LP on November
22, 1974), generally employ the churning groove layers of musical
activity, but add reprieves in the form of chord changes and choruses,
such as "Maiysha" and "Mtume." The earliest recorded track in this box,
"Red China Blues," which would end up on GUWI, is another matter. This
is a standard 12-bar blues with a compact horn arrangement. Miles'
other-worldly-sounding solo through electronic effects is the only
aspect that makes it unusual. It might have been an attempt to create a
reasonably marketable track.
Miles is in fine form on "Mr.
Foster," presumably so named in honor of the fine drummer keeping a
steady, propulsive pulse with him. After the band sets up the groove and
intones a sad mood, Miles enters on muted trumpet played through a
wah-wah pedal and begins a long declaration, growling in the low
register, meandering assuredly through the mid-range and even pushing
into the high range, as expressive of states of sorrow as possible.
Miles
knew how to shape a solo. For the most part, his solos have something
to say. They express an emotional theme. The other soloists—Dave Liebman
and Pete Cosey, especially on this box—decorate the music, but don't
have the lucidity of Miles' statements. But, at 15 minutes, the track
ends too soon.
"Calypso Frelimo" rides on a jaunty texture, with
Al Foster's cymbal work shuffling, allied with a simple, child-like
statement played on the electric organ, which Miles would subsequently
use frequently in concerts. Miles plays with a mournful pleading sound,
as if appealing to the life forces from hell. At around 10 minutes in, a
new movement begins quietly, with Henderson's bass figure repeated as
an ostinato, setting up an eerie, mysterious, almost reverential
atmosphere. Guitar chords are spread to open fields and the organ figure
repeats, this time with other instruments joining in and answering. The
figure has earned a presence. Miles again enters and begins his
statement, calmly engaging the wah-wah to spread his notes with a
feeling of suspension. We're enticed to slow down until the ensemble
returns to the jaunty vamps of the first movement and we're restored to
the surface of the earth. Miles is still expressing darker feelings, but
gradually the bounce of the band's groove proves too infectious and his
playing becomes more playful and as full of the celebration as the
others. A re-statement of the organ figure closes the piece as if to
wrap things up.
"He Loved Him Madly" is the most astounding of
compositions, seamlessly assembled from five different tracks. A dirge
for the recently deceased Duke Ellington, it begins with Miles playing
chilling organ chords, or, more accurately, tone clusters—the likes of
which I've heard before only in the music of Olivier Messiaen. Guitar
shadings seem to be picking through bones, while Al Foster taps out a
graveyard blues as the cortège passes. Things change when the bass
enters at almost 11 minutes in and Foster, in a rhythmic chant never
heard in music before, starts tapping out a slow 4/4, accenting each
beat. Liebman enters on flute (through echo) for the first melodic
improvisation, a tasty solo that picks up for a second iteration after a
trumpet solo from Miles, which begins 16 minutes into the piece. He,
too, is playing through an echo, which adds to the chill of his haunting
cavernous utterances, an eloquent communication of grief over the loss
of his much beloved and venerated predecessor, until it dissipates for
all time.
Each track is astounding, but not all are completely
successful as refined artistic statements. It's the nature of the improv
business.
On "Jobali," for example, Michael Henderson lays down
a riff, the sort of structure he's used before and will use again, but
here it's just not as interesting and feels unrelenting and insistent,
rather than a structure onto which a composition may develop and unwind.
In a typical funk or R&B song, after 12 or so bars, the
vamp shifts into a chorus or refrain, but here it plods along as a root
onto which Miles solos like a low-flying bird, texturing on an
investigative explication. While the structure is a radical departure
from traditional American song form, with lucid melody and an underlying
chordal and harmonic structure to support and embellish it, here, there
are statements, but they're more like calls, summonings.
Other
previously unheard tracks in this set—notably "Big Fun" and "Holly-wuud"
(really two different takes of the same material, 7/26/73), as well as
"Minnie" from 5/5/75—seem to have similar commercial intent. They
foreshadow the pop sound Miles would emerge with in 1981 after a
six-year hiatus, while retaining some of the eccentricities of the
other, more formidable "serious" tracks gathered here. Note: Tingen
claims that "Minnie" is, in fact, a tune Miles titled "Mr. Foster" when
it was recorded. As for the tune called "Mr. Foster (from 9/18/73)
discussed earlier, who knows?
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Is
this box too much of a good thing for those just getting initiated. I'd
steer those seekers away from this package and toward the individual
releases, especially On the Corner and Get Up With It. Then, you can
work your way back to In a Silent Way, A Tribute to Jack Johnson and
Bitches Brew and forward a bit to the live Agharta, Pangea and Dark
Magus. From there, the road is open.
As Bob Belden says in the
liner notes, the box set is also a testament to the genius of producer
Teo Macero, who sculpted the hours of studio jams down to artful form,
excising weak sections, splicing together complementary movements,
layering and performing all manner of tape acrobatics to fashion
finished and refined musical compositions. He is more than an able
producer, he is a collaborator.
Once again, I must fault
Legacy's design department for the packaging of these Miles sets. While
this package is beautiful to look at, for practical purposes it's
irritating to use. The 120-page booklet, while colorful, is bound into
the spine of the package, which makes it harder than necessary to peruse
and the sans serif typeface is not easy to read, especially when blue
type is used over a blue background. Worse, each track's discography
data is scattered amidst the CD sleeves and various pages.
The
photos add a lot of information, namely a sense of the theatricality of a
live Miles Davis show during this era. The tableau we see is equal
parts African warrior, Haight-Ashbury, Carnaby Street and Harlem street.
Another quibble is that the sequencing is hard to figure out.
There seems to be a stab at positioning the tracks chronologically, as
recorded, but that order breaks down with disc six, thus grouping the
OTC material as originally offered on LP with unrelated tracks that
diffuse the coherence and impact of the original OTC issue.
For
more on electric Miles, Paul Tingen's Miles Beyond (Billboard Books,
2001) is the must-have book for its thorough and dependable
documentation of the facts and extensive interviews. Philip Freeman's
Running the Voodoo Down (Backbeat Books, 2006) has justifiably come
under attack for its sloppy research resulting in a slew of historical
inaccuracies (corrected by Tingen on his Miles Beyond website), but for
its impassioned yet reasoned descriptions of the music and its
discussions of how the music fits into the trajectory of its time, it is
an invaluable aid and pleasant accompaniment to Miles' electric music.
From For the Artists: Critical Writing, Volume 2 (Crony Books, September 2014; this article originally appeared on All About Jazz, October 31, 2007)
Throughout
a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis played the trumpet
in a lyrical, introspective, and melodic style, often employing a
stemless harmon mute to make his sound more personal and intimate. But
if his approach to his instrument was constant, his approach to jazz was
dazzlingly protean. To examine his career is to examine the history of
jazz from the mid-'40s to the early '90s, since he was in the thick of
almost every important innovation and stylistic development in the music
during that period, and he often led the way in those changes, both
with his own performances and recordings and by choosing sidemen and
collaborators who forged the new directions. It can even be argued that
jazz stopped evolving when Davis wasn't there to push it forward.
Davis
was the son of a dental surgeon, Dr. Miles Dewey Davis, Jr., and a
music teacher, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, and thus grew up in the black
middle class of East St. Louis after the family moved there shortly
after his birth. He became interested in music during his childhood and
by the age of 12 had begun taking trumpet lessons. While still in high
school, he started to get jobs playing in local bars and at 16 was
playing gigs out of town on weekends. At 17, he joined Eddie Randle's
Blue Devils, a territory band based in St. Louis. He enjoyed a personal
apotheosis in 1944, just after graduating from high school, when he saw
and was allowed to sit in with Billy Eckstine's big band, which was
playing in St. Louis. The band featured trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and
saxophonist Charlie Parker, the architects of the emerging bebop style
of jazz, which was characterized by fast, inventive soloing and dynamic
rhythm variations.
It is striking that Davis fell so completely
under Gillespie and Parker's spell, since his own slower and less flashy
style never really compared with theirs. But bebop was the new sound of
the day, and the young trumpeter was bound to follow it. He did so by
leaving the Midwest to attend the Institute of Musical Art in New York
City (since renamed Juilliard) in September 1944. Shortly after his
arrival in Manhattan, he was playing in clubs with Parker, and by 1945
he had abandoned his academic studies for a full-time career as a jazz
musician, initially joining Benny Carter's band and making his first
recordings as a sideman. He played with Eckstine in 1946-1947 and was a
member of Parker's group in 1947-1948, making his recording debut as a
leader on a 1947 session that featured Parker, pianist John Lewis,
bassist Nelson Boyd, and drummer Max Roach. This was an isolated date,
however, and Davis spent most of his time playing and recording behind
Parker. But in the summer of 1948 he organized a nine-piece band with an
unusual horn section. In addition to himself, it featured an alto
saxophone, a baritone saxophone, a trombone, a French horn, and a tuba.
This nonet, employing arrangements by Gil Evans and others, played for
two weeks at the Royal Roost in New York in September. Earning a
contract with Capitol Records, the band went into the studio in January
1949 for the first of three sessions which produced 12 tracks that
attracted little attention at first. The band's relaxed sound, however,
affected the musicians who played it, among them Kai Winding, Lee
Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, J.J. Johnson, and Kenny Clarke, and
it had a profound influence on the development of the cool jazz style on
the West Coast. In February 1957, Capitol finally issued the tracks
together on an LP called Birth of the Cool.
Davis, meanwhile, had
moved on to co-leading a band with pianist Tadd Dameron in 1949, and
the group took him out of the country for an appearance at the Paris
Jazz Festival in May. But the trumpeter's progress was impeded by an
addiction to heroin that plagued him in the early '50s. His performances
and recordings became more haphazard, but in January 1951 he began a
long series of recordings for the Prestige label that became his main
recording outlet for the next several years. He managed to kick his
habit by the middle of the decade, and he made a strong impression
playing “'Round Midnight” at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1955, a
performance that led major label Columbia Records to sign him. The
prestigious contract allowed him to put together a permanent band, and
he organized a quintet featuring saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red
Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones that began
recording his Columbia debut, Round About Midnight, in October. As it
happened, however, he had a remaining five albums on his Prestige
contract, and over the next year he was forced to alternate his Columbia
sessions with sessions for Prestige to fulfill this previous
commitment. The latter resulted in the Prestige albums The New Miles
Davis Quintet, Cookin', Workin', Relaxin', and Steamin', making Davis'
first quintet one of his better documented outfits.
In May 1957,
just three months after Capitol released the Birth of the Cool LP, Davis
again teamed with arranger Gil Evans for his second Columbia LP, Miles
Ahead. Playing flugelhorn, Davis fronted a big band on music that
extended the Birth of the Cool concept and even had classical overtones.
Released in 1958, the album was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of
Fame, intended to honor recordings made before the Grammy Awards were
instituted in 1959. In December 1957, Davis returned to Paris, where he
improvised the background music for the film L'Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud
(Escalator to the Gallows). Jazz Track, an album containing this music,
earned him a 1960 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance, Solo or
Small Group. He added saxophonist Cannonball Adderley to his group,
creating the Miles Davis Sextet, which recorded the album Milestones in
April 1958. Shortly after this recording, Red Garland was replaced on
piano by Bill Evans and Jimmy Cobb took over for Philly Joe Jones on
drums. In July, Davis again collaborated with Gil Evans and an orchestra
on an album of music from Porgy and Bess.
Back in the sextet,
Davis began to experiment with modal playing, basing his improvisations
on scales rather than chord changes. This led to his next band
recording, Kind of Blue, in March and April 1959, an album that became a
landmark in modern jazz and the most popular disc of Davis' career,
eventually selling over two million copies, a phenomenal success for a
jazz record. In sessions held in November 1959 and March 1960, Davis
again followed his pattern of alternating band releases and
collaborations with Gil Evans, recording Sketches of Spain, containing
traditional Spanish music and original compositions in that style. The
album earned Davis and Evans Grammy nominations in 1960 for Best Jazz
Performance, Large Group, and Best Jazz Composition, More Than 5
minutes; they won in the latter category.
By the time Davis
returned to the studio to make his next band album in March 1961,
Adderley had departed, Wynton Kelly had replaced Bill Evans at the
piano, and John Coltrane had left to begin his successful solo career,
being replaced by saxophonist Hank Mobley (following the brief tenure of
Sonny Stitt).
Nevertheless, Coltrane guested on a couple of
tracks of the album, called Someday My Prince Will Come. The record made
the pop charts in March 1962, but it was preceded into the bestseller
lists by the Davis quintet's next recording, the two-LP set Miles Davis
in Person (Friday & Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, San
Francisco), recorded in April. The following month, Davis recorded
another live show, as he and his band were joined by an orchestra led by
Gil Evans at Carnegie Hall in May. The resulting Miles Davis at
Carnegie Hall was his third LP to reach the pop charts, and it earned
Davis and Evans a 1962 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a
Large Group, Instrumental.
Davis and Evans teamed up again in
1962 for what became their final collaboration, Quiet Nights. The album
was not issued until 1964, when it reached the charts and earned a
Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large
Group or Soloist with Large Group. In 1996, Columbia Records released a
six-CD box set, Miles Davis & Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia
Studio Recordings, that won the Grammy for Best Historical Album. Quiet
Nights was preceded into the marketplace by Davis' next band effort,
Seven Steps to Heaven, recorded in the spring of 1963 with an entirely
new lineup consisting of saxophonist George Coleman, pianist Victor
Feldman, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Frank Butler. During the
sessions, Feldman was replaced by Herbie Hancock and Butler by Tony
Williams. The album found Davis making a transition to his next great
group, of which Carter, Hancock, and Williams would be members. It was
another pop chart entry that earned 1963 Grammy nominations for both
Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Soloist or Small Group and Best
Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Large Group. The quintet followed
with two live albums, Miles Davis in Europe, recorded in July 1963,
which made the pop charts and earned a 1964 Grammy nomination for Best
Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with Small
Group, and My Funny Valentine, recorded in February 1964 and released in
1965, when it reached the pop charts.
By September 1964, the
final member of the classic Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s was in
place with the addition of saxophonist Wayne Shorter to the team of
Davis, Carter, Hancock, and Williams. While continuing to play standards
in concert, this unit embarked on a series of albums of original
compositions contributed by the band members, starting in January 1965
with E.S.P., followed by Miles Smiles (1967 Grammy nomination for Best
Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with Small
Group [7 or Fewer]), Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky (1968 Grammy
nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or
Soloist with Small Group), and Filles de Kilimanjaro. By the time of
Miles in the Sky, the group had begun to turn to electric instruments,
presaging Davis' next stylistic turn. By the final sessions for Filles
de Kilimanjaro in September 1968, Hancock had been replaced by Chick
Corea and Carter by Dave Holland. But Hancock, along with pianist Joe
Zawinul and guitarist John McLaughlin, participated on Davis' next
album, In a Silent Way (1969), which returned the trumpeter to the pop
charts for the first time in four years and earned him another
small-group jazz performance Grammy nomination.
With his next
album, Bitches Brew, Davis turned more overtly to a jazz-rock style.
Though certainly not conventional rock music, Davis' electrified sound
attracted a young, non-jazz audience while putting off traditional jazz
fans. Bitches Brew, released in March 1970, reached the pop Top 40 and
became Davis' first album to be certified gold. It also earned a Grammy
nomination for Best Instrumental Arrangement and won the Grammy for
large- group jazz performance. He followed it with such similar efforts
as Miles Davis at Fillmore East (1971 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz
Performance by a Group), A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On the
Corner, and In Concert, all of which reached the pop charts. Meanwhile,
Davis' former sidemen became his disciples in a series of fusion groups:
Corea formed Return to Forever, Shorter and Zawinul led Weather Report,
and McLaughlin and former Davis drummer Billy Cobham organized the
Mahavishu Orchestra.
Starting in October 1972, when he broke his
ankles in a car accident, Davis became less active in the early 1970s,
and in 1975 he gave up recording entirely due to illness, undergoing
surgery for hip replacement later in the year. Five years passed before
he returned to action by recording The Man With the Horn in 1980 and
going back to touring in 1981. By now, he was an elder statesman of
jazz, and his innovations had been incorporated into the music, at least
by those who supported his eclectic approach. He was also a celebrity
whose appeal extended far beyond the basic jazz audience. He performed
on the worldwide jazz festival circuit and recorded a series of albums
that made the pop charts, including We Want Miles (1982 Grammy Award for
Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist), Star People, Decoy,
and You're Under Arrest. In 1986, after 30 years with Columbia, he
switched to Warner Bros. Records and released Tutu, which won him his
fourth Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance. Aura, an album he
had recorded in 1984, was released by Columbia in 1989 and brought him
his fifth Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance by a Soloist (on
a Jazz Recording).
Davis surprised jazz fans when, on July 8,
1991, he joined an orchestra led by Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz
Festival to perform some of the arrangements written for him in the late
1950s by Gil Evans; he had never previously looked back at an aspect of
his career. He died of pneumonia, respiratory failure, and a stroke
within months. Doo-Bop, his last studio album, appeared in 1992. It was a
collaboration with rapper Easy Mo Bee, and it won a Grammy for Best
Rhythm & Blues Instrumental Performance, with the track “Fantasy”
nominated for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo. Released in 1993, Miles &
Quincy Live at Montreux won Davis his seventh Grammy for Best Large
Jazz Ensemble Performance.
Miles Davis took an all-inclusive,
constantly restless approach to jazz that had begun to fall out of favor
by the time of his death, even as it earned him controversy during his
lifetime. It was hard to recognize the bebop acolyte of Charlie Parker
in the flamboyantly dressed leader with the hair extensions who seemed
to keep one foot on a wah-wah pedal and one hand on an electric keyboard
in his later years. But he did much to popularize jazz, reversing the
trend away from commercial appeal that bebop began. And whatever the
fripperies and explorations, he retained an ability to play moving solos
that endeared him to audiences and demonstrated his affinity with
tradition. At a time when jazz is inclining toward academia and
repertory orchestras rather than moving forward, he is a reminder of the
music's essential quality of boundless invention, using all available
means.
Awards
1955, Winner; Down Beat Reader's Poll 1957, Winner; Down Beat Reader's Poll Grammy Award for Best Jazz Composition Of More Than Five Minutes Duration for Sketches of Spain (1960) Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance, Large Group Or Soloist With Large Group for Bitches Brew (1970) Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist for We Want Miles (1982) Sonning Award for Lifetime Achievement In Music (1984; Copenhagen, Denmark) Doctor of Music, honoris causa (1986; New England Conservatory) Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist for Tutu (1986) Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Soloist for Aura (1989) Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Big Band for Aura (1989) Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (1990) Knighted into the Legion of Honor (July 16, 1991; Paris) Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance for Doo-Bop (1992) Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance for Miles And Quincy Live At Montreux (1993) Hollywood Walk Of Fame Star (February 19, 1998) Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction (March 13, 2006) Hollywood's Rockwalk Induction (September 28, 2006) RIAA Triple Platinum for Kind of Blue
MILES DAVIS SEPTET AT THE ISLE OF WIGHT FESTIVAL, AUGUST 29, 1970
HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE AND WELCOME TO 2011!
In answer to the question:
"WHAT KIND OF MUSIC DOES YOUR BAND PLAY MILES?" Miles replied:
"WE JUST PLAY BLACK. WE PLAY WHAT THE DAY RECOMMENDS"
Legendary performance at the Isle of Wight Festival, 1970. Miles, his ensemble, and an audience of 600,000...
ENJOY!
Personnel:
Miles Davis (trumpet) Gary Bartz (alto saxophone) Chick Corea (piano) Keith Jarrett (organ) Dave Holland (bass) Jack DeJohnette (drums) Airto Moreira (percussion)
Miles
Davis was always known as a jazz artist for whom image was important.
He was also one of the music’s most photogenic figures. And he was a
restless and creative artist who changed his music with the times.
Finally, he was an artist who loved to paint large canvases of slightly
abstract figures in bold bright colors. So it’s no surprise that a
large-scale exhibit of photography, art and artifacts dedicated to the
legendary trumpeter has been organized. The show, “We Want Miles” opened
on April 30 at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, Quebec in
Canada. The show had previously been mounted at the Musee de la Musique
in Paris.
The exhibit was curated by Vincent Bessieres, who wrote
about Miles: “More than the archetype of the cool musician—deliberate,
distant, elegant, uncompromising—Davis is the incarnation of audacity
and invention.” The exhibit certainly has gone to great lengths to
capture his mercurial brilliance.
Included in this first North American multimedia exhibition on Davis are: • Paintings by Davis and works contemporary artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Niki de Saint Phalle, among others; • Original manuscripts and musical scores including the composition for Birth of the Cool; • Musical instruments including horns that he played, and initial pressings of his records; •
Intimate portraits taken by such legendary photographers as Annie
Leibovitz, Lee Friedlander, Anton Corbijn, and Irving Penn, among
others; • Video clips of and full length live concert footage, and stage clothes.
Naturally,
it would impossible to appreciate the art without hearing the music,
and so the museum has gone to great lengths to insure that visitors get
to hear the Prince of Darkness in all his glory. Speakers shaped like
trumpet mutes are scattered throughout the exhibit and there will be
twenty listening stations, as well as a series of large scale
projections of various performances and clips.
In addition, a
companion book has also been published by the fine art publisher Rizzoli
Press. The lavish coffee-table book with the provocative if somewhat
contradictory title, We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz, was written by
Franck Bergerot, the editor-in-chief of Jazz Magazine in France. In
addition to the text by Bergerot, the book includes remembrances of
Davis by David Liebman, John Szwed, Ira Gitler, George Avakian and
others. However, the images comprise the main attraction here. Included
are nearly every iconic image of the trumpeter—from Don Hunstein’s
photos of Miles in the studio recording Kind of Blue to Irving Penn’s
stark and dramatic portrait for the Tutu album cover.
The exhibit and book are the subject of an upcoming Final Chorus column by Nat Hentoff in the July/August issue of JazzTimes.
A Fine Arts Museum’s Tribute to Nonpareil Miles Nat Hentoff on We Want Miles Exhibit and Book
When
I lived in Boston eons ago, the Museum of Fine Arts was within walking
distance, and I often visited to get high on such paintings as a Renoir
of a young couple in what looked like a New Orleans-style slow dance.
I’d stand there fantasizing about taking the man’s place in the
painting, but I never expected to find anything of jazz in this
legendary museum’s exhibitions. Nor have I heard of jazz as a fine art
in any of the other museums around the country. I have been at jazz
concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but there’s nothing of
Louis, Duke, Pres, Bix or Trane in the galleries there.
Suddenly,
however, in a very prestigious museum of fine arts—having opened in
April and continuing until Aug. 29—there is a stunning media exhibition
on someone the museum accurately calls “one of the jazz world’s greatest
innovators.”Coinciding
with the event is a very large-size, hardback catalog, on the cover of
which—characteristically sizing you up skeptically—is Miles Davis. The
book and exhibition are titled “We Want Miles: Miles Davis vs. Jazz.”
And nowhere else have I seen so much of Miles, from his boyhood on.Miles
and I were friends—until Bitches Brew. He never forgave me for not
turning handsprings over his venture into electronics. I felt Miles was
electrifying without the added wattage. But since he was always trying
something new, and always expecting attention, I’m sure he would have
been delighted by this polyrhythmic, visual and sonic odyssey of his
life.This tribute to the
always-alive music of Miles is not in an American museum; the ones here
are not yet hip to jazz as an art. This awakening challenge to our
treasures of high art is mounted by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
It’s the first one there, but it has been brewing for a long time. The
MMFA’s director, Nathalie Bondil, has a long-term relationship with the
Musée de la Musique in Paris, which originally conceived the exhibit,
and Bondil is much involved, as she puts it, in “cross-roading visual
art and music.”Miles was a
painter, and the exhibition shows some of his visual improvisations.
Also, along with his original manuscripts and scores, there are horns he
played. And dig this from Cecilia Bonn, the museum’s communications
consultant: “Small chambers placed throughout the installation in the
form of the ‘mutes’ Miles used are among the design initiatives to
ensure optimal acoustic conditions. And twenty listening stations will
enable visitors to immerse themselves in Miles’ multiple musical
currents.” Also, you’ll be able to hear Miles “live” in “a series of
large-screen projections featuring clips and full-length footage from
such concert performances as the 1985 Montreal International Jazz
Festival.”My unsolicited
suggestion to Nathalie Bondil is that she invite museum directors in the
United States to come to Montreal and immerse themselves in the
microcosm of Miles. Imagine such resourceful, imaginative exhibitions on
Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Fats Waller, Thelonious
Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Jack Teagarden,
John Coltrane, Pee Wee Russell—you can add the names. And throughout
this country—with music classes expunged from so many schools by No
Child Left Behind—fine arts museums correlating sight, sound and
American history shaped by jazz could invite public school classes to
learn more about swinging the arts.
The
kids would also learn something about the thrust and the
often-exhilarating surprise of creation, as shown in the catalog in
these juxtaposed quotes:
Pablo Picasso: “In painting you can try anything. As long as you never do anything over again.
”Miles Davis:“Now, nothing in music and sounds is ‘wrong.’ You can hit anything, any kind of chord. … Music is wide open for anything.”
Pablo Picasso: “You see me here, and yet I’ve already changed. I’m already somewhere else.”
Miles Davis:
“Nothing is out of the question the way I think and live my life. I’m
always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every
morning.”The catalog
further contributes permanently to jazz history with the deeply
searching and knowledgeable text by, among others, Franck Bergerot,
editor in chief of France’s Jazz magazine, writer of many Miles Davis
liner notes, and coordinator of the first volumes of Miles’ complete
works, released by the Masters of Jazz label.Among
the photographs, most of which are new to me, are those depicting Miles
as a boy and Miles as the youngest member of trumpeter Eddie Randle’s
Blue Devils, the house band at the Rhumboogie Club in East St. Louis.
The evolving Miles became music director of the Blue Devils and was in
charge of organizing rehearsals.
From
the text about a time in his life when Miles had seemed to stop
growing: “a young white cat by the name of Chet Baker was named best
trumpet player for 1953; and while in Detroit, Miles heard the playing
of Clifford Brown, the rising black trumpet star. In March, 1954, Davis
was back in New York determined to make … a fresh start.“However,
once again his trumpet was in hock. He was playing Art Farmer’s
trumpet, and Farmer accompanied him to make sure his trumpet did not
vanish.”I’d never heard
that before, but now I have, thanks to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
According to Tourism Montreal, “the Museum is Montreal’s top cultural
destination … and close to 100,000 people take part annually in its
educational and cultural activities.” Now it’s also a swinging
institution, revealing that in a vital area of the arts, America’s
museums are, by contrast, culturally disadvantaged. I hope Montreal’s
“We Want Miles” becomes a traveling exhibition south of the border. Any
museum directors interested?
“The
archetypal jazzman, as elegant as he was inaccessible, Miles Davis was
considered the twentieth-century incarnation of cool, both in his
attitude and in his playing. A ladies' man, an enigmatic personality
touched by genius and by rage, this son of the African-American middle
class established himself as one of the greatest innovators in jazz, a
genre he never stopped confronting and de-compartmentalizing through
various aesthetic revolutions. With exceptional photographs, handwritten
scores, original record-cover art and expert biography, "We Want Miles"
attempts to trace the legend of one of the most fascinating and
extraordinary artists in the history of music.”
Just
when you think that you won’t have anything further to do with the most
merchandised Jazz musician in the history of the music, this book comes
along.
The book is essentially a companion volume to a museum
exhibition initiated and organized by the Cité de la musique, Paris,
with the support of Miles Davis Properties, LLC, in association with the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It is published by Skira Rizzoli in a 9.5
x 11.5” folio format.
The exhibition appeared at Musée
de la Musique, Paris from October 16, 2009 to January 17, 2010 and then
traveled to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts Jean-Noel Desmarais
Pavilion for a showing from April 30 to August 29, 2010. The exhibition
curator was Vincent Bessieres.
Vince Bessieres also serves as
the editor of the book which has contributions from George Avakian,
Laurent Cugny, Ira Gitler, David Liebman, Francis Marmande, John Szwed
and Mike Zwerin.
Skira Rizzoli has done its usual fine job with
the formatting of this work which includes a bevy of photographs. The
book retails for $50.00 although some booksellers are offering up to a
40% discount with shipping included.
Here is the chapter breakdown:
We
have included below the introductions from the book as provided by the
two, museum curators. Sadly, the exhibit did not visit a museum in a
city in the USA.
LAURENT BAYLE / GENERAL DIRECTOR, CITE DE LA MUSIQUE, PARIS ERIC DE VISSCHER / DIRECTOR, MUSEE DE LA MUSIQUE, PARIS
WE WANT MILES
“In
1980, after nearly five years of silence, Miles Davis began to play
again in the studio and on stage. The snappy title of one of the first
records heralding his comeback was the self-evident statement "We Want
Miles" Who is this "we"? How do you explain that simply saying a first
name can conjure up an artist's undeniable power? To understand the
univer sal respect commanded by a figure of this stature, recognized for
ele vating a fledgling musical genre to a global phenomenon, we need
only call to mind the course of his career: Miles Davis got his start
playing in big bands in his hometown of St. Louis, enthusiastically
embraced bebop, initiated the cool, embarked on a quest for a third
avenue between swing and free jazz, and subsequently immersed himself in
electric jazz, with occasional forays into soul and rock. Could this
also explain how his name became legend, with musicians of every stripe
all over the world incessantly chanting "We want Miles" to encourage him
to return to centre stage?—a stage he would now take by storm, with
numerous records, television appearances, advertising and film projects
that transformed him into a genuine media icon. First, Davis became
aware of the legend of jazz, which had expanded into a worldwide genre,
then of his own legend as a "global" artist who transcended styles,
schools and genres to assert himself as a musician, creator and leader
of one of the twentieth century's signature musical cur rents. Although
he contributed to the history of jazz in much the same way as Duke
Ellington, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk, no other
musician embraced its many developments with such boldness and
ingenuity. He even anticipated its major turning points, transforming
music meant for entertainment and dancing into music that had to be
listened to, and he was subsequently criticized for some of his choices
by those who shunned progress.
As with Serge Gainsbourg,
whose name immediately came to mind when the Cite de la musique was
considering a first temporary exhibition on French chanson, cult figure
Miles Davis instantly occurred to us as soon as the topic of jazz was
proposed. In addition to a record title [You're under Arrest], these two
figures, born in the same year, shared the desire to avoid being
confined to any one style, always seeking out new, innova tive—and
sometimes unexpected—musical avenues. They were inspired by the sense of
"the moment" both in the way they related to their era and in their
work: Gainsbourg wrote fast, Davis created music on the spot, pushing
the art of improvisation to the limit without ever losing the connection
with his audience. To quote saxophonist David Liebman from one of the
texts in this catalogue, "When Miles went on stage, past and future
didn't exist. It was all about the present tense, the essence of true
improvisation and what most jazz musicians strive for daily when
playing."
It is undoubtedly this "mystery of the present moment"
that Miles Davis never ceased to explore, developing both the sounds
(his move to electric and amplified instruments is an example of this,
as are his collaborative efforts with Gil Evans) and the language of
jazz. To do so, he tapped into a fertile source of renewal by working
with new musicians. From John Coltrane to Herbie Hancock, the long list
of artists who worked with Davis demonstrates his openness to the
influences of other sizeable talents—his contemporaries as well as
younger musi cians. From Kind of Blue and Tutu to Porgy and Bess and
Bitches Brew, Davis' great albums all bear witness, in various forms, to
his quest for the perfect moment.
This is the exceptional
journey related in this book—a faithful counter part to the exhibition
first presented at the Musee de la musique and subsequently at the
Montreal Museum of Fine Arts—which presents a chronological account by
Franck Bergerot supplemented with reminis cences by certain key figures
of the time. As for the exhibition, the photographs were chosen with
particular care, since it is true that jazz and photography share a
common history. Both capture the moment and record contrasts,
immortalizing the illustrious heroes and pivotal moments of a musical
genre that is quintessentially ephemeral. Neither the exhibition nor
this catalogue would have been possible without the tireless efforts and
unfailing ingenuity of curator and editor Vincent Bessieres. The
project received steadfast support from the Miles Davis Estate,
especially Cheryl Davis, Erin Davis and Vince Wilburn, Jr. The many
lenders, photographers and institutions that contributed to the
exhibition not only made it possible but also ensured its originality.
To them, and to the people at the Cite de la musique and at the Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts, who helped make it a reality, we offer our
heartfelt thanks.”
“Jazz
has had its fair share of eccentric personalities, picaresque protag
onists, tragic destinies, meteoric careers and dazzling creators. But
Miles Davis is still the most fascinating and mysterious of them all.
The exhibition "We Want Miles" does not claim to be the last word on
this artist who left his mark on the twentieth century; rather, it is an
attempt to sketch a broad outline, analyze his transformations and
follow his evo lution. Like the art of Picasso, to whom he is often
compared, Davis' music has its periods. In step with the fast-paced
century, he set out in a new direction every five years. He lost his
audience, found another, lost that one—and won over yet another. When
Miles shed his skin, you just had to keep up with him. He sparks both
desire and frustration: when you arrive where you expect him to be, he's
already gone. What he played one day he would never play again. And yet
it's always Miles. His sound may have changed, his bands may have had a
high turnover rate, he may have flouted convention and been electrified
by electricity, but something remains, making it possible to identify
him in just a few notes.
This is the thread running through the
exhibition, which seeks to discover this complex and elusive man: Miles
the proud young boy, Miles the coun try bumpkin who dreams of Bird,
Miles the epitome of cool, Miles the boxer, arrogant Miles, Miles the
down-and-out junkie, Miles who turns his back on his audience, Miles and
his kind of blue, Miles as Porgy, Miles as Bess, Miles celebrating the
saeta, Miles who finally smiles, Miles who questions jazz, Miles the
hepcat, Miles the rocker, Miles the show-off, Miles and his bitches'
brew, Miles who thinks he's Hendrix, Miles on the corner, Miles who
vanishes, Miles who reappears, Miles the star demanding royal treatment,
Miles haunted by his ghosts, Miles who never looks back, blue Miles,
Miles who stares down the ignorant, Miles the macho, the hero, the
leader, Miles with his nerves on edge, Miles beaten by the cops, Miles
who shamelessly tells his story, Miles and his trumpets of many colours,
Sphinx-like Miles, hip Miles, bop Miles... Miles, Miles, Miles. "We
want Miles," you say. But which one? Can we separate the man from his
music? Can we understand his work without connecting it to his life? His
music has survived him, of course. But in the quintessentially personal
medium that is jazz—this inti mate art form in conversation with the
world—Miles inhabits the music as much as he plays it. Or is it the
music that inhabits him? Imagine his silhouette on stage, his body
hunched over, his trumpet raised. What did Miles play that he had not
experienced? Aside from boxing, nothing else interested him. Miles never
stopped looking jazz in the face and con fronting it.
Opening
new pathways, absorbing trends, surpassing styles, he turned around and
gave it back, all the while avoiding clichés, easy recipes and
ready-made formulas. His misconduct cannot be dis missed on the grounds
that he so often strove for excellence and originality. Who is not a fan
of Miles Davis? Who cannot find, in this vast, varied body of work, a
piece that speaks to them? Everyone has a favourite Miles Davis album,
even Barack Obama, whose election as president of the United States adds
symbolic resonance to an anec dote in Davis' autobiography about a
White House dinner President Reagan invited him to in 1987.
When
another guest, a woman of a certain age, condescendingly asked him what
he had done that was important enough to merit an invitation to the
hallowed halls of the White House, Miles replied, "Well, I've changed
music five or six times." That's enough to warrant an exhibition ... and
this book, which will serve as a lasting record of it. "We Want Miles,"
and we can never get enough of him.”
As the seven chapter
breakdown spanning the years 1948-1991 of the book would indicate, there
is a style, perhaps more than one, of Miles’ work that may appeal to a
wide variety of audiences.
Like the one constant in the universe, Miles’ music was always changing.
As Miles was quoted as saying in 1985:
“…
maybe in a way I change music and stuff …. Yeah, you can say that … I
do change it … but I can’t help it, you know, It’s not that I am a
genius but it’s just that I can’t help it.”
August of 1969 marked Miles Davis’ boldest venture yet into
undiscovered country. This time there was no more holding back, no more
tentative experimentation, no more “walking on eggshells.” The album
that emerged, Bitches Brew, was groundbreaking, beginning with its stark
title and Abdul Mati Klarwein’s memorable cover painting. Made on
Miles’ personal invitation, Klarwein’s expressionistic work captured the
zeitgeist of free love and flower power, depicting a naked black couple
looking expectantly at an ocean, a huge vibrant, red flower beside
them. The background of the title is unknown, but a clue is provided by
the absence of an apostrophe at the end of the word “bitches,” making
“brew” a verb, not a noun. Carlos Santana speculated that the album was
a “tribute” to “the cosmic ladies” who surrounded Miles at the time and
introduce him to some of the music, clothes, and attitudes of the ’60s
counterculture.1 Gary Tomlinson, on the other hand, assumed that
“bitches” referred to the musicians themselves.2 Just like
“motherfucker,” the term “bitch” can be used as an accolade in
African-American vernacular. Whatever the title meant, it sounded
provocative. Teo Macero remarked, “The word ‘bitches,’ you know,
probably that was the first time a title like that was ever used. The
title fit the music, the cover fit the music.” 3
The music on Bitches Brew is indeed provocative, and extraordinary.
For Miles it meant a point of no return for the musical direction he had
initiated with the recording of “Circle in the Round” in December of
1967. Until August of 1969 he had remained close enough to the jazz
aesthetic and to jazz audiences to allow for a comfortable return into
the jazz fold. But Bitches Brew’s ferocity and power carried a momentum
that was much harder to turn around. The hypnotic grooves, rooted in
rock and African music, heralded a dramatic new musical universe that
not only gained Miles a new audience, but also divided it into two
groups—each side looking at this new music from totally different, and
seemingly unbridgeable, perspectives. In the words of Quincy Troupe,
these two groups were like “oil and water.”4
Bitches Brew signaled a watershed in jazz, and had a significant
impact on rock. In combination with Miles’ fame and prestige, the album
gave the budding jazz-rock genre visibility and credibility, and was
instrumental in promoting it to the dominant direction in jazz. The
recording’s enormous influence on the jazz music scene was bolstered by
the fact that almost all the musicians involved progressed to
high-profile careers in their own right. In the early 1970s, Joe
Zawinul and Wayne Shorter (with percussionist Airto Moreira) were
involved in Weather Report, Herbie Hancock and Bennie Maupin set up
Mwandishi, John McLaughlin (with Billy Cobham) created Mahavishnu
Orchestra and Chick Corea founded Return to Forever with Lenny White.
Bitches Brew was not a sudden dramatic move in a completely new
direction for Miles, though. In line with his long-standing,
step-by-step working methods, the recording was maybe a large, but
nevertheless logical step forward on a course he had set almost two
years earlier. In terms of personnel, musical conception, and sonic
textures, the album was a direct descendant of its predecessor, In a
Silent Way. Teo Macero remarked that with the latter album, the music
“was just starting to jell. [In a Silent Way] was the one before
[Bitches Brew]. Then all of a sudden all the elements came together.” 5
Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way are both dominated by circular
grooves, John McLaughlin’s angular guitar playing and the sound of the
Fender Rhodes electric piano. However, Miles related in his
autobiography how he wanted to expand the canvas on Bitches Brew in
terms of the length of the pieces and the number of musicians. While In a
Silent Way featured eight musicians and was recorded in one single
session, Bitches Brew included 13 musicians and was the result of three
days of recording. On the third day the rhythm section consisted of as
many as 11 players: three keyboardists, electric guitar, two basses,
four drummers/percussionists and a bass clarinet. Miles had pulled out
the stops in his search for a heavier bottom end. Uncharacteristically, Miles’ live quintet also influenced Bitches
Brew. Miles’ live and studio directions were strongly diverging around
this time, with the studio experiments pioneering new
material—incorporated elements of rock, soul and folk that only
gradually filtered through to the live stage. But in July of 1969 Miles’
live quintet began performing “Spanish Key,” “Miles Runs the Voodoo
Down” and “Sanctuary,” all of which would appear on Bitches Brew.
(“Sanctuary” had, of course, already been recorded by the second great
quintet on February 15, 1968.)
Having broken in this new material, Miles felt confident enough to
book three successive days of studio time. He began by calling in the
same crew that had recorded In a Silent Way: Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea,
Joe Zawinul, John McLaughlin and Dave Holland; only Tony Williams and
Herbie Hancock were missing. Miles gave preference to live-band drummer
Jack DeJohnette because of his “deep groove,”6 invited Lifetime organist
Larry Young instead of Hancock, and also added session bassist and
Columbia producer Harvey Brooks. Together with Zawinul and McLaughlin,
Young and Brooks had played on a session Miles organized for his wife,
Betty Mabry, a few weeks earlier to record her first and ultimately
unsuccessful solo album, They Say I’m Different. Miles also summoned
19-year-old drummer Lenny White who, like Tony Williams, is reported to
have been brought to his attention by saxophonist Jackie McLean.
Drummer/percussionist Don Alias had been introduced to Miles by Tony
Williams, and brought along percussionist Jim Riley, also known as
“Jumma Santos.” Tenor saxophonist and bass clarinettist Bennie Maupin
was recommended by Jack DeJohnette. A finishing touch, and a stroke of
genius, was Miles’ instruction to Maupin to play only the bass clarinet,
adding a very distinctive and enigmatic sound to the brew.
According to Miles, the approach he had developed of presenting
musicians with musical sketches they had never seen before was also
integral to the making of Bitches Brew. “I brought in these musical
sketches that nobody had seen, just like I did on Kind of Blue and In a
Silent Way”7 However, this contradicts with the fact that three of the
pieces had already been broken in during live concerts, as well as with
his assertion that there had been rehearsals for the making of Bitches
Brew, a fact that is confirmed by Joe Zawinul. “There was a lot of
preparations for the sessions,” the keyboardist recalled. “I went to
Miles’ house several times. I had 10 tunes for him. He chose a few and
then made sketches of them.” 8
“The night before the first studio session we rehearsed the first
half of the track ‘Bitches Brew,’” drummer Lenny White recalled. “I
think we just rehearsed that one track. Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland,
Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter were all there. I had a snare drum, and
Jack had a snare drum and a cymbal. I was a 19-year-old kid, and I was
afraid of Miles. My head was in the clouds! I was in awe. But he was
really cool with me; he encouraged me and I ended up spending time with
him at his home in later months. He was a real positive influence.”
Since Miles was looking for more complex, larger-scale pieces, he
probably felt that he needed some rehearsals to establish at least some
structure and organization to keep more than a dozen musicians focused
during three days of sessions. With none of the musicians aware of the
whole picture, they would still react to the sessions with beginners’
minds.
At 10 a.m. on Tuesday, August 19, 1969, 12 musicians, Teo Macero and
engineer Stan Tonkel gathered at Columbia Studio B for the first day of
the recordings of Bitches Brew. Miles described the sessions as follows:
“I would direct, like a conductor, once we started to play, and I would
either write down some music for somebody or would tell him to play
different things I was hearing, as the music was growing, coming
together. While the music was developing I would hear something that I
thought could be extended or cut back. So that recording was a
development of the creative process, a living composition. It was like a
fugue, or motif, that we all bounced off of. After it had developed to a
certain point, I would tell a certain musician to come in and play
something else. I wish we had thought of video taping that whole
session. That was a great recording session, man.” 9
“As the music was being played, as it was developing, Miles would get
new ideas,” Jack DeJohnette commented. “This was the beautiful thing
about it. He’d do a take, and stop, and then get an idea from what had
just gone before, and elaborate on it, or say to the keyboards ‘play
this sound.’ One thing fed the other. It was a process, a kind of
spiral, a circular situation. The recording of Bitches Brew was a
stream of creative musical energy. One thing was flowing into the next,
and we were stopping and starting all the time, maybe to write a sketch
out, and then go back to recording. The creative process was being
documented on tape, with Miles directing the ensemble like a conductor
an orchestra.”
“During the session we’d start a groove, and we’d play,” Lennie White
remembered. “And then Miles would point to John McLaughlin and John
would play for a while, and then Miles would stop the band. Then we’d
start up again and he’d point to the keyboards, and someone would do
another solo. All tracks were done in segments like that, with only the
piano players possibly having a few written sketches in front of them.
Miles said that he wanted Jack DeJohnette to be the leader of the rhythm
section, because he was wearing the sunglasses! I’m from Jamaica,
Queens, and I had played with other drummers before. I was trying to be
very aware of wanting the music to sound very organic and congruent,
real tight and seamless, so that people couldn’t really hear that there
were two drummers.”
“Bitches Brew was like a big pot and Miles was the sorcerer,” White
continued. “He was hanging over it, saying, ‘I’m going to add a dash of
Jack DeJohnette, and a little bit of John McLaughlin, and then I’m going
to add a pinch of Lenny White. And here’s a teaspoonful of Bennie
Maupin playing the bass clarinet.’ He made that work. He got the people
together who he thought would make an interesting combination. Harvey
Brook said he didn’t know why he got the call, but he made an
interesting pairing with Dave Holland on acoustic bass. It was a big,
controlled experiment, and Miles had a vision that came true.”
“The idea of using two basses and two drummers was very interesting,”
Dave Holland agreed. “The role division between Harvey and me depended
on the piece, but as I remember it, Harvey was taking responsibility for
laying down the main line on the electric bass, and I had a freer part
embellishing things on the acoustic bass. Miles always gave the minimum
amount of instructions. Usually he’d let you try and find something that
you thought worked, and if it did, then that would be the end of it.
His approach was that if he needed to tell someone what to do, he had
the wrong musician. If we used any notation it was often a collage-type
thing with a bass line and some chord movement, and maybe a melody
related to that. But it was never something long or extended. It was
always a fairly compact section, and then we’d move to another section.
The recording of Bitches Brew was therefore often very fragmented. We’d
have these sketches of ideas, and we’d play each for ten minutes or so,
and then we’d sort of stop, come to an ending of sorts. And then we
might do one more take like that, and then move on to the next thing.
Often I didn’t know whether we were rehearsing or recording, but Miles
had a policy of recording everything.”
“I think it was a lot of fun for him, with his favorite musicians on
their respective instruments,” DeJohnette added. “It was different and
it was fun. There wasn’t a lot said. Most of it was just directed with a
word here and a word there. We were creating things and making them up
on the spot, and the significant thing was that the tape recorder was
always rolling and capturing it. Sometimes Miles said: ‘This is not
working. That’s not it. Let’s try something else.’ But it was never
because somebody had made a mistake or something. Miles was hearing the
collective. He was trying to capture moods and feelings and textures. He
always went for the essence of things, and that was much more important
to him than going back and redoing a note that wasn’t perfect.
Perfection for him was really capturing the essence of something, and
being in the moment with it. And then he and Teo later edited all these
moments and put them all together. Some of the edits surprised me, but
overall they were seamless, and captured the feeling and the intensity
of the music.”
Having been rehearsed the night before at Miles’ house, “Bitches
Brew” was the first track recorded on that initial day in Columbia
Studio B. A beautiful example of Miles’ directing and of the
recording-in-sections approach can be heard at 7:28, when the ensemble
appears to drift to a halt. Miles gives some indecipherable
instructions, and the musicians carry on, clearly still not quite
knowing where to go, because the music soon dissolves into entropy
again. At this point, at 7:50, Miles simply says “John.” McLaughlin
begins to solo and the band picks up the groove again. Enough material
was recorded in this way to create a separate track from an outtake (on
which Miles did not play), titled “John McLaughlin.”
After recording “Bitches Brew,” the ensemble—without Maupin, Zawinul,
McLaughlin, Brooks, and White10—performed “Sanctuary,” a Wayne Shorter
composition already recorded in a more gentle, sparser version by the
second great quintet in February 1968, with George Benson on guitar.
Following this, the full complement of twelve musicians tried their
hands on two Zawinul compositions, “Pharaoh’s Dance” and “Orange Lady,”
but these takes were rejected.
“Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” (the title was a reference to Hendrix’s
“Voodoo Chile”) was recorded the next day. In this case the previous
performances of the live quintet of the track led to problems with the
studio rhythm section. The addition of seven other musicians
significantly altered the feel and dynamics of the piece, and Jack
DeJohnette’s medium-tempo, fairly loose live groove didn’t appear to
work.
“Lenny and Jack were playing and somehow things didn’t jell,” Don
Alias explained. “I think Miles really wanted that Buddy Miles sound; he
was just getting into the funk thing. He counted off the second time,
and it wasn’t happening. I couldn’t take it any longer. I had been
practicing this drum rhythm while I was in New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I’ve got the perfect rhythm for this tune.’
I can’t take it any longer and Miles is about to count off for the
third time and I interrupted and said, ‘Miles, I’ve got this rhythm and I
think it would go with the tune.’ So he said: ‘Go over and play it.’ I
sat down and played it, and he said: ‘Show Jack—show Jack.’ And it’s one
of those kind of rhythms where you don’t need any chops. Jack
couldn’t get it, so Miles said to me: ‘Just stay there’ [on Lenny
White’s drumset]. That’s how I ended up being one of the drumset
players on ‘Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.’” 11
On the third and final recording day, White was back in his drum seat
and Alias on congas. The 13th musician, Larry Young, was added to the
ensemble on electric piano, creating once again a battery of three
keyboard players, as on In a Silent Way. Two long tracks, “Spanish Key”
and Zawinul’s “Pharaoh’s Dance,” were put to tape. Altogether, a wealth
of material had been recorded over the three days.
“The sessions would go till about three or four in the afternoon, and
once the three days were over we went to Miles’ house, and listened to
all the unedited tapes,” White remembered. “Half a year later a record
came out that was totally different, because they’d taken the front end
of one tune and put that in the middle and so on. Basically Teo Macero
had made a whole other thing out of it. I suspect that Miles said to
Teo: ‘Go ahead and do what you think best,’ and that Miles then approved
or disapproved what had been done.”
The tape editing on the two opening pieces of the album, “Pharaoh’s
Dance” and the title track, is remarkably complex, and has a
far-reaching effect on the music. In addition, Macero expanded his tool
kit with studio effects like echo, reverb and slap (tape) delay, the
latter courtesy of a machine called the Teo One, made by technicians at
Columbia. This effect can most clearly be heard on the trumpet in the
beginning section of “Bitches Brew” and “Pharaoh’s Dance” at 8:41.
Enrico Merlin’s research, as well the 1998 release of the four-CD
boxed set The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, have cast important new
light on the album’s postproduction process. They show how Macero did
not only use tape editing to glue together large musical sections, as on
“Circle in the Round” or In a Silent Way, but extended his scope to
editing tiny musical segments to create brand-new musical themes.
Courtesy of both approaches, “Pharaoh’s Dance” contains an astonishing
seventeen edits.12 Its famous stop-start opening theme was entirely
constructed during postproduction, using repeat loops of 15- and
31-second fragments of tape, while thematic micro-edits occur between
8:53 and 9:00 where a one-second-long fragment appearing at 8:39 is
repeated five times.
“I had carte blanche to work with the material,” Macero explained. “I
could move anything around and what I would do is record everything,
right from beginning to end, mix it all down and then take all those
tapes back to the editing room and listen to them and say: ‘This is a
good little piece here, this matches with that, put this here,’ etc, and
then add in all the effects—the electronics, the delays and overlays.
[I would] be working it out in the studio and take it back and re-edit
it—front to back, back to front and the middle somewhere else and make
it into a piece. I was a madman in the engineering room. Right after
I’d put it together I’d send it to Miles and ask, ‘How do you like it?’
And he used to say, ‘That’s fine,’ or ‘That’s OK,’ or ‘I thought you’d
do that.’ He never saw the work that had to be done on those tapes. I’d
have to work on those tapes for four or five weeks to make them sound
right.” 13
It appears that Macero found part of his inspiration for his
postproduction treatments on Bitches Brew in classical music. The
English composer Paul Buckmaster pointed out that on “Pharaoh’s Dance”
and “Bitches Brew” the producer created structures that have echoes of
the sonata form that was at the heart of late-18th- and 19th-century
instrumental music. The basic elements of the sonata form, employed by
composers like Mozart and Beethoven, are an opening exposition with two
themes, a middle section called a development (in which the exposition
material is worked through in many variations), a recapitulation (which
contains a repetition of the two themes of the exposition), and a final
coda.
In “Pharaoh’s Dance” the section 00:00 to 02:32 can be called the
exposition, since it contains two basic themes, with theme number one
first played between 00:00 and 00:15 and theme number two at 00:46.
Starting at 02:32 is a solo section, or “development,” containing
references to the material of the “exposition” at 02:54 and 07:55. A
dramatic section is edited in between 08:29 and 08:42, with tape delay
added to Miles’ horn, then repeated at 08:44 to 08:53, and followed by a
one-second tape loop that repeats five times between 8:53 and 9:00.
When Miles at long last plays Zawinul’s stirring main theme (referred to
earlier in the track, but never actually played), at 16:38, it can be
considered the coda.
The influence of the sonata form on the structure of “Bitches Brew”
is not as clear-cut, but still apparent. Enrico Merlin’s analysis notes
15 edits in the piece, including (as in “Pharaoh’s Dance”) several
short tape loops that create a new theme (in this case at 03:01, 03:07,
03:12, 03:17, and 03:27). Another section that leaps out at the
listener is the tape loop from 10:36 to 10:52, where Macero creates
excitement by looping a short trumpet phrase, making it sound like a
precomposed theme. The section from 00:00 to 03:32 can be called the
exposition, with the first theme appearing at 00:00 (the bass vamp) and
at 00:41 (the corresponding melodic theme). The second theme is pasted
in at 02:50. The development occurs between 03:32 and 14:36, with solos
by Miles, McLaughlin, Shorter and Corea. At 14:36 there’s a
recapitulation of the first theme, followed by another development,
beginning at 17:20. The final recapitulation, a literal repeat of the
first 02:50, can be interpreted as a coda.
Macero’s strong editorial involvement in “Pharaoh’s Dance” and
“Bitches Brew,” as well as his selection of “John McLaughlin” for
inclusion on the album, may well have to do with the fact that these
were the tracks that had not been broken in by the live band. Miles
most likely did not have a clear vision for the final structure. By
contrast, “Spanish Key,” “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” and “Sanctuary,”
had all been played live, giving Miles time to develop a functional
structure. Only “Sanctuary” contains an edit, at 05:13, at which point
Macero pasted in another take. It also seems likely that Macero was
influenced in his edits by the form Miles had given to these three
tracks, especially “Spanish Key,” which has a circular structure, with
Miles stating the main theme at 00:36, 09:17 and 16:48, and the solo
section containing several references to the main theme.
“There’s very little dialogue between Miles and myself,” Macero
elaborated on his working relationship with Miles. “If we say 20 words
in the course of a three-hour session, that’s a lot. But there’s no
mystery. I spend as much time listening to it as he spent creating it.
He may have gone over a composition in his mind, mentally, for weeks,
and that’s exactly what I do when I listen to the tape. One thing about
Miles and his music, in working with Miles you can experiment as much
as you wish. You can take his music, you can cut it up, you can put the
filters in, you can do anything you want to it as long as he knows who
it is. I mean, he’s not going to let just anyone do it. I don’t take
liberties on my own, unless I check with him. The final decision is up
to the artist, because he has to live with the record.” 14
The genius of Macero’s editing on Bitches Brew, and his role in
Miles’s electric music in general, can be compared to that of George
Martin’s work with The Beatles. Like Martin, Macero often added a
classical music sensibility to his protégé’s music, and worked with him
over a long period of time (from 1958 to 1983). Yet his influence,
especially in the case of Miles Davis, has not been widely recognized.
15 Publicly, Miles rarely acknowledged Macero’s role. He mentioned the
producer just a few times in his autobiography, and only in passing.
It’s not hard to suspect that this may have had to do with their
love-hate relationship, exemplified by Miles’ refusal to talk to Macero
for more than two years after the producer was involved in the release
of Quiet Nights in 1964. Huge rows, as well as Macero’s assertion that
their relationship was like “matrimony,”16 confirm the picture of a
creatively fruitful, but personally tension-filled connection.
In Macero’s view, “Miles always wanted to take the credit for
everything—on a lot of albums he didn’t want the names of the musicians
on the cover.”17 Once, when Macero asked for a bonus, he claims that
Miles responded, “I don’t think you deserve it. Anybody could have done
it.”18 The most likely reason for Miles’ reluctance to openly credit
Macero was that he saw at several stages during his life how white men
would take, or be given, the credit for black men’s creative
achievements. In his autobiography Miles stated, “Some people have
written that doing Bitches Brew was Clive Davis’ [head of Columbia at
the time] or Teo Macero’s idea. That’s a lie, because they didn’t have
nothing to do with none of it. Again, it was white people trying to
give some credit to other white people where it wasn’t deserved, because
the record became a breakthrough concept, very innovative. They were
going to rewrite history after the fact like they always do.”19 And in a
1973 interview Miles complained, “As long as I’ve been playing, they
never say I done anything. They always say that some white guy did it.”
20 (This was the reason why he had the text “Directions in Music by
Miles Davis” placed on the covers of Filles de Kilimanjaro and In a
Silent Way. Bitches Brew was his last recording to carry the legend.)
But just like the enormous influence of George Martin doesn’t detract
from the genius of The Beatles, emphasizing the importance of Macero in
no way diminishes Miles’ greatness. In reality, the freedom Miles gave
to Macero is an illustration of the trumpeter’s greatness. Many modern
artists tend to want to control every aspect of record making,
producing, and sometimes engineering their own albums. This does not
necessarily lead to better results. Macero once noted, “Miles would
leave it up to me to make all the fucking decisions. People today, they
want to be producer, writer, they want to do everything. I’m saying,
Jesus Christ, then do it yourself. Save yourself some money.”21
Great art has more chance of emerging when artists are acutely aware
of their strengths and limitations. As an improvisational, here-and-now
musician pur sang Miles did not have the inclination, the patience or
the skills to get deeply involved in the time-consuming, laborious
postproduction process. Moreover, one of Miles’ main strengths was the
freedom he allowed the musicians with whom he worked. Delegating
responsibility for the postproduction process to Macero reflects the
same attitude. Given how sacrosanct music was to Miles, he must have
trusted Macero deeply.
“Both of us have learned something from the things we’ve done
together,” Macero remarked. “I learned from the standpoint of editing,
shifting the compositions around. It’s a creative process being a
producer with Miles. In fact, it’s more of a creative process than it
is with any other artist. You have to know something about the music.
You really need to be a composer, because for a lot of it he relies on
you and your judgement. I’m going through them as a composer, Miles as a
composer-musician-performer. You must be very creative along with the
artist, because if you’re not as creative as he is—forget it.”22
It seems that Miles and Macero wanted to force attention on the
collaborative nature of their work by placing the two most-edited and
experimental tracks, “Pharaoh’s Dance” and “Bitches Brew,” at the
beginning of the album. They are like a declaration of intent. Macero’s
edits are not immediately apparent, but create a subliminal sense of
both unrest and structure, something that’s initially hard to grasp, but
immediately lifts the music out of the level of a jam. The edits are
also successful in that they do not detract from the interaction between
Miles and the ensemble. Although McLaughlin, the keyboardists, Maupin,
Shorter and Holland all take solos, they are mixed in a way that makes
them float momentarily on top of the brew. Unlike Miles, they do not
rise above it. This has led some jazz critics to complain that Bitches
Brew doesn’t really contain any solos, thereby not only missing the
solos that were actually there, but more importantly the point that the
musical essence of album is not about sequences of solos, but about the
interplay between Miles and his ensemble.
Miles’ trumpet is mixed much further to the front, like a singer.
This makes it possible to hear the strength and range of his playing,
the way he phrases his notes and guided the other musicians. After five
years of being pushed to his limit in the second great quintet, and
being in good health, he was at the peak of his trumpet-playing powers.
Miles’ sound is round, full and powerful, and the way he drives the
ensemble with often declamatory phrases that have predominantly a
rhythmic rather than a melodic function, is remarkable. A good example
is his solo in “Pharaoh’s Dance” starting at 03:34, where he sounds like
he’s wrestling, or perhaps boxing, with the band, pushing it, pulling
it, steering it and creating constant tension and release. Rather than a
soloist playing over changes, Miles creates contrast, interest and
excitement in relation to a large mass of players that on their own
could easily have sunk into amorphous anonymity.
Billy Cobham, an up-and-coming drummer at the time, played on the
additional material on The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions.23 Cobham
still had the sound of awe in his voice when he remembered: “Miles was
just coming out of the greatest band that he’d ever had, the second
great quintet, and his trumpet playing was at a peak. He always played
the ultimate musical phrase, even if it wasn’t technically correct. It
was unbelievable! When you listen to Freddie Hubbard you hear trumpet
proficiency par excellence, and then you hear Miles and he had a way of
taking what Freddie did and compacting it in five notes. Those five
notes said it all. The air around them became musical, and the silence
became more profound and important. You just don’t learn that. Miles
somehow could just do that. He was like Merlin the magician. It was
based on Miles’ innate ability to use space. Not playing became more
important than playing. But it had to be the right spaces at the right
time! It was uncanny how he’d play one note, and that note would carry
through five or eight bars of changes. That note would be the note.”
A major piece of work by any definition, “Pharaoh’s Dance” was never
performed live, and one wonders whether Miles had any doubts about the
track’s success. The title track, on the other hand, was a staple of the
live band for more than two years, until October of 1971. It was
invariably played at about half the length of the album time (26:58),
thereby raising the issue of the extreme length of the two opening
tracks of the album. (“Pharaoh’s Dance” clocks in at 20:05.) There are
two ways of looking at this. If one relates to the music as an
“abstract,” ambient atmosphere, a jungle environment that one can enter
and roam, the length of these tracks becomes a significant aspect of
their attraction. But from a more traditional, figurative perspective,
in which the focus is on solos, themes, grooves, variety, development,
“Pharaoh’s Dance” and “Bitches Brew” are too long, and would both work
better if cut substantially. The drastic cut in the length of “Bitches
Brew” during live performances was partly due the smaller size of the
live band, but also suggests that Miles shared this opinion.
As with “Circle in the Round,” Macero’s editing was only partly
successful. This is demonstrated by “John McLaughlin,” the outtake from
the track “Bitches Brew.” It is only 04:22 long and sustains interest
from beginning to end, making it a good example of how this music works
in a much tighter format. Moreover, the major tracks that weren’t
edited, “Spanish Key” and “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down,” are much more
focused, and contain Miles’ best solos. “Spanish Key,” a revisiting of
the Spanish influences Miles had explored on Sketches of Spain and
“Flamenco Sketches” on Kind of Blue, is a flowing, fluent boogie based
around several different scales and tonal centers. Enrico Merlin has
pointed out that the track employs what he calls “coded phrases,”
meaning musical cues with which the band is steered towards the next
musical section. “[The] modulations are always initiated by the soloist
who performs a phrase in the new key, thus signaling his own wish to
change the tonal center,” Merlin wrote. “This device was used for the
first time in ‘Flamenco Sketches.’ I believe that Davis was trying, and
he succeeded brilliantly, to adapt the idea of ‘Flamenco Sketches’ to
the musical experimentation of that time [the late ’60s].”24 Sweltering
and riveting throughout, “Spanish Key” would have been even stronger
had it ended around thirteen minutes, when the music appears to come to a
natural halt. “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” is probably the most
successful track on Bitches Brew, courtesy of a beautiful, deep bass
line, Alias’ slow-burning, driving New Orleans drum groove, a tight
structure, and excellent solos by Miles, McLaughlin, Shorter and
Zawinul. It remained a favorite of live performance until August 1970.
Finally, the version of “Sanctuary” on Bitches Brew is expressive and
muscular, but lacks the subtlety of the first recording with the second
great quintet in February of 1968.
Regardless of how the quality of the music on Bitches Brew is judged,
it is important to recognize the astonishing concoction of influences
that had gone into Miles’ cauldron. Miles had combined improvisational
working methods that he developed in the late ’50s with musical
influences such as rock, folk, soul and African music. Moreover, the
ensemble’s collective improvisation, based on the working methods
developed by the second great quintet, and the call-and-response
structure between Miles and the ensemble, both find their roots in early
jazz. In his autobiography Miles likened Bitches Brew’s collective
improvisations to the jam sessions he attended at Minton’s in Harlem in
the late ’40s. Like many writers, Miles also made comparisons between
the recording’s kaleidoscopic sound world and the noises of New York
City. Then, in the words of Lenny White, he mixed in a “dash” of this
musician and that composer, not only skillfully blending their
qualities, but also enlarging jazz and rock’s sonic palette with bass
clarinet and extensive percussion. Both were novel sounds in jazz and
rock music around 1969.
To this explosive mixture Teo Macero added mid-20th-century studio
trickery, a 19th-century classical music awareness of musical structure,
and a way of looking at music as abstract blocks of sound, which he
freely cut and moved around. In other words, the two most heavily
edited tracks on Bitches Brew were hybrids of figurative and abstract
art. They combined, respectively, the traditional musical line of
something akin to a sonata form with the cut-and-paste ideas that had
come out of musique concrète, serial music and studio technology, which
later influenced ambient and dance music. Add to this the strongly
chromatic improvising of the keyboard players, which has echoes of
classical atonal music, and it is clear that an impressive amount of
influences went into the making of Bitches Brew. This is no doubt one of
the major reasons for the recording’s immense success and influence.
Virtually anyone willing to listen to it with an open mind is able to
recognize something familiar in the music, despite the fact that it
contains few easily identifiable melodies, hooks or vamps.
Bitches Brew encompasses about every musical polarity of the late
’60s, whether jazz and rock, classical and African, improvised and
notated music, live playing and postproduction editing. Its greatness
lies in how it managed to bridge these polarities, including and
transcending all the disparate ingredients into a completely new whole,
and ended up with much more than the sum of its components. Bitches Brew
explores a new, intangible musical universe, and any attempt to fully
explain or define its concept and its music will inevitably diminish it
to some degree. If one must find a label for the music, Lenny White
probably had a good stab at it when he called it “African-American
classical music—a combination of the harmonic language developed in the
West over several hundreds of years, played from an African-American
perspective, with an African-American approach to rhythm.”
How Bitches Brew opened up a new, unknown musical paradigm is
humorously illustrated by an anecdote told by Joe Zawinul that mirrors
John McLaughlin’s incomprehension during the In a Silent Way sessions.
The keyboardist had been so baffled by the Bitches Brew sessions that he
didn’t even recognize the resulting music when he heard it later in
another context. “I didn’t really like the sessions at the time,
“Zawinul reminisced. “I didn’t think they were exciting enough. But a
short while later I was at the CBS offices, and a secretary was playing
this incredible music. It was really smoking. So I asked her, ‘Who the
hell is this?’ And she replied, ‘It’s that Bitches Brew thing.’ I
thought, Damn, that’s great.”25
Of course, the recording also had its era on its side. The late ’60s
and early ’70s were full of music that people didn’t necessarily
understand, but that made them feel alive, that spoke to them. It was a
time when audiences were prepared to go out of their way to enjoy the
unusual and the controversial. The energy and mystery of the music, the
title, the eye-catching and ultra-hip cover and the
stream-of-consciousness liner notes by Ralph J. Gleason all perfectly
expressed the zeitgeist. All elements came together in one seamless
package, and the effect was powerful: The recording sold 400,000 copies
in its first year, and earned Miles a Grammy for “Best Jazz Performance,
Soloist with Large Group.” As a result, Gleason’s showy words sounded
prescient rather than hyped-up: “This music will change the world like
Cool and Walkin’ did and now that communication is faster and more
complete it may change it more deeply and quickly.”26
In addition to the music recorded during August of 1969, The Complete
Bitches Brew Sessions also contains material from sessions in November
of 1969, and January and February of 1970. The total amount of music is
dramatically extended from the 94 minutes of the original album to
almost 266 minutes. Some of the additional material had already been
issued on the albums Big Fun, Circle in the Round and Live-Evil, but
there are also nine previously unreleased tracks, totaling about 86
minutes of music.
Macero was invited by Columbia/ Sony to participate in the creation
of the boxed set, but declined after a first meeting. The long
collaboration between Miles and Macero created a deep bond between the
two men, and it’s understandable that since Miles’ passing, Macero sees
himself as a custodian of his legacy. In assuming this role he has
loudly declared to anyone who wanted to listen that he disagrees with
the way Sony/Columbia is reissuing the Miles Davis back catalog in
general, and The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions in particular. He boldly
stated that “Miles Davis would never have agreed to the unreleased
material being released, nor to the way the original material has been
remixed and remastered,” and that’s to quote one of his milder
exhortations. Macero has also supported the argument that the boxed set
is a misnomer.
The original Bitches Brew sessions took place over the course of
three days in August of 1969, and were complete in themselves. It
appears a commercially inspired stretch to include material recorded
several months later, with different personnel and a radically different
musical feel, and declare it part of the Bitches Brew sessions. Reissue
producer Bob Belden and executive producer Michael Cuscuna have reason
to argue in the boxed set that Miles entered a new musical phase in
March of 1970, when he started to work with a small, guitar-based group.
However, the boxed set, awarded another Grammy in 1999 for “Best Boxed
Recording Package,” could have been called something like The Bitches
Brew Era, since the additional material can easily be seen as a phase in
itself, typified by the addition of Indian instruments like sitar,
tamboura and tabla. Most of this material has a pastoral atmosphere
completely at odds with the storm of the original Bitches Brew sessions.
With regard to the issues that Macero raised concerning remixing and
remastering, much of the Miles Davis music issued on CD by Sony during
the late ’90s has undergone this process, including all four boxed sets
released to date. The triple-Grammy winning Miles Davis & Gil Evans:
The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, as well as Miles Davis &
John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings, 1955–1961, were remixed
from three tracks, and The Miles Davis Quintet, 1965–1968 from four
tracks by Sony staff engineer Mark Wilder. The small amount of tracks
meant that Wilder’s freedom to change the nature of the music was
limited. However, Bitches Brew was recorded on eight-track, and involved
multitudes of complex edits and intricate sound effects. This made it
more difficult to reconstruct the original version in a remix, and gave
the remixer much more freedom to impose his own vision. In addition,
some of the original effect equipment, like the Teo One, was not
available anymore, making an exact replication even harder. Finally,
Wilder and Belden decided to make some fundamental changes to the sound
and nature of the mix, leaving themselves open to accusations similar to
those aimed at one time at the restorers of the Sistine Chapel.
“Let me make clear that when Sony told me that they wanted me to
recreate the whole album, I knew immediately that we couldn’t do any
tinkering or release alternative takes or extend pieces,” Belden
explained in response. “I did not want to play Teo Macero. Instead, we
wanted the boxed set to flow seamlessly. That is why we had to remix
all the material. The two-track masters for the original Bitches Brew
album were in bad shape, and there was a lot of disparity between them
and the other material, whereas the previously unreleased stuff had not
been mixed at all. Moreover, for the original LP they boosted the bottom
and cut out the high end, taking out a lot of clarity. We put that
clarity back in. We also decided to try to recreate what the musicians
would have heard in the studio. There were always two distinct Fender
Rhodes players, so we wanted to make sure that Chick Corea was always on
the right and the guest on the left. That gives a sense of continuity.
And we wanted to bring out the sound of Miles’ trumpet and make it sound
more in the pocket, the way you would have heard it during studio
playbacks. We wanted to bring out the natural interplay between the
musicians. At the same time we followed Teo’s edits as faithfully as we
could.”
“Of course it’s much more of a challenge to remix eight-tracks,”
Wilder agreed. “But I was able to get a very accurate approximation of
the original mixes. We tried to pay homage to Teo’s original edits and
mixes as much as we could, but we also tried to bring out the musicality
of the sessions. Those guys played some killing stuff that got a little
lost in the technology of the mix and the postproduction. So yes, we
tried to create a feeling of people playing music together. The
musicality of what occurred during these sessions was paramount for us,
and we wanted to remove some of the original mix technology to bring
this out. They had made some very wild fader movements during the mix
that we couldn’t replicate anyway. But at the same time there are those
signature things that were done during the mix, the slap [tape] echoes
on Miles’ trumpet, that we tried to replicate as best as we could. We
would run my mixes and edits against the original LP version, and
sometimes we’d compare with my version in one speaker and the original
in the other to make sure that there were no edits that we had missed or
mistimed. We worked amazingly hard on this.”
Phrases like “removing some of the original mix technology” or
“recreate what the musicians would have heard in the studio” will alarm
purists. But as always, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and
from this perspective the work of Belden and Wilder is more than
vindicated. All original edits are retained (although the new version
of “Pharaoh’s Dance” curiously loses four seconds that were in the
original version, 08:29 to 08:33) and the instrumental balance of the
mixes on The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions does not sound significantly
different from those of the original album. The sound is greatly
improved, however, displaying more aliveness, depth, and detail, partly
because the Dolby that suppressed the high end (as well as the hiss) in
the original is removed. There’s a pleasant roundness to the new sound
that was missing in the sometimes thin and abrasive-sounding original.
Belden and Wilder also succeeded in their aim of bringing out the
interplay between the musicians. The improved high end especially has
added a transparency that makes it easier to distinguish between the
various percussion instruments, and to imagine oneself in the studio
with the musicians. It seems like a cloud has lifted from the
recordings, and some extra hiss is a small price to pay. Macero strongly
criticized the new mixes, complaining that Miles sounded only “one inch
tall,” but the overall consensus, including from the musicians who
played on the sessions, is that the new mixes sound excellent. The
parallel with the restoration of the Sistine Chapel that appears apt is
that of the brighter colors that emerged, which initially shocked
traditionalists.
The additional material included in The Complete Bitches Brew
Sessions begins with four tracks recorded on November 19. Wayne Shorter
was replaced by the eighteen-year-old saxophonist Steve Grossman, Dave
Holland with Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette with Billy Cobham. Guest
musicians Bennie Maupin, Harvey Brooks and John McLaughlin returned, and
Herbie Hancock sat in as second keyboard player. Miles also added the
exotic sounds of Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira, plus Khalil
Balakrishna on sitar and Bihari Sharma on tabla. Corea was the only
musician from the live band at these sessions, and there is some
historical confusion with regards to the reasons.
In his autobiography, Miles stated that Wayne Shorter left the band
“in late fall 1969” and that he then “broke up the band to find
replacements.”27 This is incorrect, because Shorter played with the live
band until early March of 1970. Miles’ assertion that Shorter had
“told me ahead of time when he was leaving” and that he wanted to try
out new musicians (thereby adding to his growing list of stock company
players) was probably closer to the mark.
The size of the band may suggest a direct line to the Bitches Brew
sessions three months earlier, but the introduction of the Brazilian and
Indian elements took things into a totally different direction. Indian
music influences had become popular in the late ‘60s, mainly through The
Beatles’ and the counterculture’s interest in Eastern mysticism, and
sitars were occasionally employed in Western popular music, especially
psychedelic rock. Miles was one of the few jazz musicians who did more
than just flirt with this influence, and Indian instruments
intermittently played an important part in his music from 1969 to 1973.
During this stage in his career Miles appeared almost obsessed with
incorporating as many disparate musical influences as possible,
seemingly using anything or anyone he could lay his hands on. The
question has often been asked whether Miles had a vision for the end
result or was just randomly throwing things into his cauldron, and was
as surprised by the results as anyone else.
“I think that Miles definitely had a vision,” Dave Holland commented.
“But when you put together improvised music, you’re dealing with
musicians and their approach and style of playing. One of the things I
learnt from Miles is that you don’t come in with a fixed vision. The
vision is there, but it is not finished. The composition a classical
composer writes is finished, and all musicians do is interpret it.
Improvised music is different. Part of your palette is the musicians
you’re working with, and so with this group it will come out one way,
and with that group it will come out another way. So if you ask me, ‘Did
Miles have a vision?’ I’ll say ‘Yes.’ But ask, ‘Did he know what the
end result would sound like?’ and I’d have to say ‘No.’ He couldn’t.
When he was putting something together, he was listening and selecting
what he liked. To me this is the great art of putting together
improvised music. Miles worked in the tradition where you create a form
that’s clear, but that also has enough room for the musicians to be
creative with. Miles was giving us a context for the music, and then we
found what we could do within that context.”
Still, throwing different musicians together to see what will happen
is a risky approach, and this was demonstrated in a series of failures.
The track “Great Expectations,” recorded on November 19, is an example.
It was first released on Big Fun in 1974, and has a structure similar to
that of “Nefertiti” in June of 1967, with a repeating main melody
underpinned by an ever-varying drum section. The bass relentlessly plays
a rock riff not dissimilar to that of “Peter Gunn,” and the Brazilian
and Indian elements add some color and variation. But it’s not enough to
save the rather dreary and repetitive effort, which is weak on the
figurative side (an unengaging melody and little melodic development)
and offers little on the abstract side (the atmosphere is feeble and
unfocused).
Zawinul’s “Orange Lady,” recorded on the same day and also first
released on Big Fun, is better, partly because the melodic line is more
interesting, and partly because it is reasonably successful as a tone
poem, an exercise in creating a mood. The other two tracks recorded
during this session were previously unreleased, and, as Macero argued,
with good reason. “Yaphet” sounds like it starts where “Orange Lady”
left off, meanders for nearly 10 minutes, and adds nothing significant
whatsoever. “Corrado” is no more than a directionless 13-minute jam.
Apart from Miles’ incisive playing, it has no engaging features.
Things didn’t get much better at the next session nine days later on
November 28, with a similar ensemble. Organist Larry Young joined
Hancock and Corea, and possibly to inject some energy from
tried-and-tested elements, Miles reinstated his live band rhythm
section: Holland played bass, and DeJohnette was on drums next to
Cobham. The previously unreleased “Trevere” is a kernel of an idea that
never takes off, and halfway through the band comes to a halt, from the
sound of it because they had no clue where to take things next.
The same problems also apply to “The Big Green Serpent,” which is
basically a group of musicians trying out an idea and getting nowhere.
Belden sounds almost apologetic about the inclusion of “The Little Blue
Frog,” and its alternate take (“A jam in G. That’s all it really is.
Just a jam.”28 but at least the musicians sound as if they’re having
fun, and McLaughlin and the rhythm section lay down a satisfactory
groove. A 02:42 section of “The Little Blue Frog” was released as a
single in the United States in April of 1970, before the release of
Bitches Brew, and in France in 1973, and must have left listeners
completely at a loss. “What were they (and who were they?) thinking?”29
indeed.
The question arises why these two sessions were such failures. One
explanation may be the shooting incident that occurred in October of
1969. The Birdland affair in August of 1959, when Miles had been beaten
and arrested by two New York police officers, had shown how devastating
the impact of extramusical dramas on Miles’ musical progress could be.
It abruptly cut short the rising creative curve that culminated in Kind
of Blue and marked the beginnings of a three-and-a-half-year creative
wasteland. Although less directly related to racial issues, and
therefore emotionally less close to the bone, the episode in October of
1969 was shocking enough, and it would not be surprising if it caused a
creative dip in the months following.
In Miles’ memory, he and Marguerite Eskridge were unexpectedly shot
at when they were talking and kissing in front of her apartment.30
Eskridge remembered the incident differently. “Miles was playing at the
Blue Coronet Club in Brooklyn,” she recounted. “He had supposedly been
getting calls that he should not be playing there unless he booked
through a particular agency. I had a premonition that night at the club
that something was going to happen. At one stage I literally felt blood
trickling down the side of my face, even though I was never shot. After
the gig Miles drove me home in his Ferrari, and he kept looking in the
rearview mirror. At one point he said, ‘There’s a gypsy cab following
us.’ He tried to lose it a few times, and then we pulled in next to the
building where I lived in Brooklyn. A few moments later he saw the car
coming in from the rear, and said, ‘Duck down.’ We both ducked. At that
point a lot of shots were fired from the car, and then it drove away. We
were still sitting in the car because I had been taking my time pulling
out my keys and everything. If I had gotten right out and gotten up to
the outside door I would have been standing unprotected, and I would
clearly have been shot. Miles had been grazed slightly at his side, a
bullet had gone through his leather jacket. The car had trapped a lot of
the bullets. We went to the hospital and at about 5 a.m. the police
came out and read me my rights! I mean, we were the victims! They
wouldn’t say what we were being charged for, but they took us to the
police station, and then finally I found out that they believed that
there was marijuana in the car. Later on, all charges were dropped
because they found that it was nothing but herbal teas.”
Miles said that he had been shot at because some black promoters were
angry with him for using white promoters to do his bookings, but
saxophonist Dave Liebman claimed it was the result of a drug deal gone
wrong. “He was definitely involved in something, you know—questionable
characters that’s for sure.”31 The unfounded suspicions of the police
also give this story a race-related slant, and may well have heightened
the impact the incident had on Miles. Whatever its background, in the
end the link between the shooting and the failure of the November
sessions is speculative. If we are to look for musical reasons, a
possible explanation is that the many new, young musicians felt
inhibited by Miles’ presence, and disorientated by his unorthodox
working methods.
“When [the musicians] are in that studio it’s like God coming—oh, oh,
here he comes,” Macero recalled. “They stop talking, they don’t fool
around, they tend to business and they listen, and when he stops, they
stop. He is the teacher, he is the one who’s sort of pulling the
strings. He’s the professor. He’s the God that they look up to and they
never disagreed, to my knowledge, in the studio. If they did, they got a
goddamn drumstick over their head, and I’ve seen that happen, too.”32
“As far as I was concerned, all the people around me were light years
ahead of what I was capable of doing,” Cobham explained. “So all I
could do was shut up and absorb and hope that something would stick.
For me it was like school time, ten times graduate school. Far beyond
any institution. Everything was experimentation. There was not one
moment when whatever was on a piece of paper was not changed. That’s why
there were no stems on the notes. Nothing was tied. There might be
three notes and then a space and then four tones, and then a space, and
then two notes. You’d have to generally know how it was phrased, but it
didn’t necessarily mean that it was going to stay like that. His
instructions were very minimal, almost Zen. He would give me very little
to work with. The very rare times he talked to me, it was something
like: ‘I need something from you. Give me something between the Latin
and the jazz vein.’ I was blown away by the fact that he even
acknowledged that he liked what I did. I was just like, eyes open, ears
open, absorbing as much as I could.”
Cobham clearly was in awe, and this feeling was shared by several of
the other new musicians, possibly causing them to play inhibited. Miles’
darker side was surely a contributing factor. According to many
eyewitnesses he could be ruthless in the way he handled people, taking
advantage of them if they allowed it, testing them to see how far he
could go. He respected those who stood up to him, but musicians who
couldn’t, didn’t last long. For this reason some musicians were not only
in awe, but actively scared of him.
“His perceptions of people were so intuitive,” explained Lydia
DeJohnette, “In one second he would know who you were and what you
wanted. And if he felt where you were coming from wasn’t centered, if
you couldn’t look him in the eye, if he didn’t think he could treat you
as an equal, he would just put you away. He could destroy people
emotionally.”
“There was always a lot of magic in working with him,” Jack
DeJohnette added. “Always a lot of challenges. You always had to be
prepared for the unexpected. You had to be on your toes and alert. He
kept you thinking all the time, and that was fun. You never knew what
was going to happen, and that made it exciting, but also very
challenging. Personally I was never afraid of Miles, but I’ve seen
people who were. He had a bitter side and a very loving side. He was a
visionary and very intuitive, and he could read people like he could
read music. He immediately knew your vulnerabilities and could press
your buttons.”
Steve Grossman elaborated on the same theme when he remarked that,
even though it was an incredible break for him to be playing with Miles
at such a young age, it was also nerve-racking. “Miles was just such a
great person and very encouraging. He really tried to make me feel at
ease. But he was one of my favorite musicians since I was eight years
old, so it was difficult. Also, I was used to playing straightahead jazz
and to suddenly go into this environment where everyone had a lot more
experience, I would say I was inhibited.”
“I was terrified for the first month,” Airto Moreira recalled.<33
Billy Cobham commented, “I was never scared of Miles, but I was
intimidated by his presence. Miles would sometimes try and see how far
he could go with you. If he thought he could break your nose and you
wouldn’t respond, he would do it. Just to see what would happen. I was
never that unfortunate to experience that kind of stuff, but I’ve seen
him intimidate people to some degree. Of course, it had a rippling
effect throughout the music. The music always is a sincere sonic mirror
of what happened in the social environment in which it is played. And so
some people would play—scared of Miles.”
The air of danger and the unexpected that always hung around Miles
was one way in which he kept his musicians on their toes, fully alive to
the present moment and to music. But it could be counterproductive.
Perhaps this was the case in November of 1969, when several of the new
musicians played “inhibited,” and/or “scared of Miles.” A pointer in
this direction is the fact that the following sessions, on January 27
and 28 and February 6, were far superior. The new musicians may well
have become accustomed to Miles’ presence, gaining in confidence, and
daring to open up more. In addition, Miles seemed to have come to the
conclusion that the experiments with a large group of musicians had run
their course, because his studio ensembles were getting smaller, and the
music better.
On January 27, 1970, Grossman was absent and Shorter returned on
soprano sax, Zawinul replaced Hancock and Young, and McLaughlin, Brooks
and Sharma were dropped. This reduced the ensemble from 14 to 10
players. “Lonely Fire,” first released on Big Fun, starts in a similar
ambient mood as “Orange Lady.” Zawinul’s theme sets up a powerful
atmosphere, and is repeated over and over again with the rhythm section
playing variations underneath, as in “Nefertiti” and “Great
Expectations.” “Lonely Fire” threatens to meander too long for its own
good as a tone poem, but entices again when Holland embarks on a driving
rhythm around the 11-minute mark, with Chick Corea throwing in
Eastern-sounding scales. It works, but it’s not a great track, and
overly long at more than 21 minutes.
“Guinnevere” was first released in 1979 as part of the Circle in the
Round set. A composition by David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash &
Young, it is another showcase for Miles’ interest in American folk
music. Little happens in the 21-minute-long track, and for much of the
time the melody is played over a very slow four-note bass line. But the
atmosphere is nevertheless gripping, probably due to the focus and
simplicity of the playing. Contrary to the music on the two sessions in
November, the musicians sound as if they’re playing with a unified
purpose. It may be a “period piece,”34 but its pastoral atmosphere still
carries some power decades later.
The session of January 28, with the same group as the day before, but
with McLaughlin instead of Balakrishna, was another improvement.
Perhaps Miles also felt that his compositional ideas had not been giving
him the results he wanted, because for this session and the session of
February 6, he did not use his own material, but tried his hand at one
composition by Shorter, and four by Zawinul.
Shorter’s “Feio” is performed in a similar way as “Guinnevere,” with
Holland playing a slow, three-note bass line, the horns somberly blowing
the top line, and the spaces being filled up by drums, Moreira’s
percussion, and some screaming electric guitar splashes by McLaughlin.
It works still better than “Guinnevere,” perhaps because the track is
only half as long, and McLaughlin, Moreira, and DeJohnette create
considerable interest as well as a potent atmosphere. Zawinul’s “Double
Image” completed the day’s work in a version that’s more straightforward
and less raw than the one recorded on February 6 and released in 1971
on Live-Evil.
On February 6 Bennie Maupin was replaced by a sitar player, not
credited on The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, but named as Balakrishna
on the liner notes for Live-Evil. Suddenly and inexplicably everything
fell into place. The track “Recollections,” based on a Zawinul folk
composition not dissimilar to “In a Silent Way,” is simply gorgeous. It
is beautifully executed, with a similarly compelling, frozen-in-time
atmosphere as Miles’ version of said song, all the musicians perfectly
aligned with each other, and McLaughlin plays some graceful and elegant
folk-influenced fills that are very different from the stabbing staccato
riffs that sharpened “In a Silent Way.” “Recollections” is among the
most pastoral pieces Miles ever recorded and entirely successful as an
ambient piece of music. The same applies to the short “Take It or Leave
It,” actually the middle section of Zawinul’s “In a Silent Way.”
Finally, the version of “Double Image” recorded on this day is a
triumph. The rhythm is opened up from the fairly standard way it had
been played when the same track was recorded a week earlier and
transformed into a funky stop-start affair, with a screaming electric
guitar filling the gaps. It’s a format that Miles would explore several
times during the early ’70s. Although there is still a lot of
improvisation going on, the role of the rhythm section is tightly
circumscribed. The track is more firmly in rock territory than anything
Miles had done up to this point, echoing rock avant-garde rather than
free jazz. This is the first sign of Miles formulating a new, rockier,
guitar-centered studio direction, which he would bring to fruition in
the months following on A Tribute to Jack Johnson.
Endnotes
1. Carlos Santana, “Remembering Miles and Bitches Brew,” in The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (Columbia/Legacy, 1998): 7–8. 2. Tomlinson, “Musical Dialogician,” in Kirchner, Miles Davis Reader, 247. 3. Greg Hall. “Teo: The Man Behind the Scene,” Down Beat, (July 1974): 14. 4. Quincy Troupe, “Overview Essay—Bitches Brew,” in The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, 92. 5. Hall, “Man Behind the Scene,” 14. 6. Davis and Troupe, Miles, 302. 7. Ibid., 289. 8. Ouellette, “Bitches Brew,” 34. Miles also claimed in his
autobiography to have met and been influenced by Paul Buckmaster, an
English composer and cellist with a classical music background who was
exploring jazz and rock at the time. However, Buckmaster does not
remember meeting Miles until November 1, 1969, after the trumpeter’s
concert at Hammersmith Odeon in London. Given that the Bitches Brew
sessions happened two-and-a-half months earlier, it is difficult to see
how the then little-known Buckmaster could have influenced Miles. Miles
must have misconstrued the sequence of events in his memory. These
inconsistencies demonstrate that not everything the book contains can
unquestionably be accepted as the definitive truth. 9. Davis and Troupe, Miles, 289–290. 10. Lenny White claimed that he played on this new version, but only
Jack DeJohnette is credited, and the aural evidence only reveals one
drummer. 11. Bob Belden, “Session-by-Session Analysis,” The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, (Columbia/Legacy, 1998): 125. 12. Strangely, Bob Belden’s annotations in The Complete Bitches Brew
Sessions make mention of nineteen edits, but only list sixteen in the
detailed editing chart (see page 129). Enrico Merlin distinguishes
seventeen edits in his sessionography, page 335. Incidentally, all track
timings in this chapter refer to The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions. 13. Joel Lewis, “Running the Voodoo Down,” The Wire (December 1994): 24. 14. Hall, “Man Behind the Scene,” 14–15. 15. This may be the reason Teo Macero displayed a certain bitterness
upon reaching old-age--he “knows how to hold a grudge” noted Eric Olsen
et al in The Encyclopedia of Record Producers (see page 485)--and why he
refused to be interviewed unless paid substantial sums of money.
Although he graciously took this writer out for lunch and answered some
brief questions over the phone, since no funds were available, many
valuable observations and anecdotes sadly remained off the record. 16. Hall, “Miles: Today’s Most Influential Contemporary Musician,” Down Beat (July 1974): 14. 17. Lewis, “Voodoo Down,” 24. 18. Eric Olsen et al, Encyclopedia of Record Producers, 486. 19. Davis and Troupe, Miles, 290. 20. Davis, “Good Rhythm Section,” in Carner, Miles Davis Companion, 155. 21. Olsen et al, Encyclopedia of Record Producers, 487. 22. Hall, “Man Behind the Scene,” 13. 23. There has been some controversy around Billy Cobham’s claims that
he played on the original Bitches Brew sessions, something that was
hotly denied by Lennie White. When asked about this, Cobham answered
that he felt that the whole issue was blown out of all proportion,
because he’s not sure what sessions he played on at all. Apparently
Miles gave him a copy of Bitches Brew with his compliments. Since the
album came out several months after the November 1969 and January and
February 1970 sessions, of which Cobham had been a part, and the music
was radically altered through editing, the drummer genuinely believed
for a long time that he had played on the original album. Mindful of how
Joe Zawinul did not recognize Bitches Brew when it was played to him,
such confusions are understandable. Many musicians had no idea on which
sessions they had actually played, and when and whether and how the
material was released. Cobham also doesn’t remember playing triangle,
although he is credited as having played the instrument on the session
of February 6, 1970. As so often, the mists of time appear to have
covered a lot of historical detail. 24. Merlin elaborated on his concept of “coded phrases” in a lecture
called “Code MD: Coded Phrases in the First ‘Electric Period,’” which
was given during a conference called Miles Davis and American Culture
II, at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, on May 10 and 11,
1996. A transcript, including musical examples and a details analysis of
“Spanish Key,” is available on Pete Losin’s Miles Ahead site, at
www.wam.umd.edu/
~losinp/music/code_md.html 25. Ouellette, “Bitches Brew,” 37. 26. Ralph J. Gleason, “Original LP Liner Notes to Bitches Brew,” in
The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, (Columbia/Legacy, 1998): 35. 27. Davis and Troupe, Miles, 301. 28. Belden, “Session-by-Session Analysis,” 135. 29. Ibid., 135. 30. Davis and Troupe, Miles, 296–297. 31. Fisher, Davis and Liebman, 78. 32. Hall, “Man Behind the Scene,” 15. 33. Lee Underwood, “Airto and his Incredible Gong Show,” Down Beat, (April 1978): 16; quoted by Chambers, Milestones, 192. 34. James Isaacs, liner notes for CD re-issue of Circle in the Round, (Columbia, 1979): 9.
Let me just state off the bat that Miles’ music, from Bitches
Brew on, is my favorite music on this planet (for a lot of reasons,
some of which I’ll touch on in my closing paragraph). I’m going to
structure this writeup around the albums which have been released from
what I believe to be Miles’ most exciting and fertile years (1969 through
1975) : classics like Bitches Brew, A Tribute to Jack Johnson,
On The Corner, Get Up With It, and Pangaea.
By the time 1969 rolled around, Miles had been looking towards
and striving for new sounds for a while. His famed 60’s quintet had
been together with only one personnel change for a five year-plus run;
this band had consisted of Tony Williams on drums, Herbie Hancock on keyboard,
Ron Carter on bass, and Wayne Shorter (who replaced George Coleman in 1964)
on saxophone. Five years is a long time for a jazz unit to be together.
What once seemed inventive and exciting had probably started to sound like
cliché to Miles. That band featured great tone and instrumental
virtuosity - but by Miles’ own account simplicity and directness had been
lost. One can compare the straightforward, soulful reading of Wayne
Shorter’s "Footprints" done on his own Adam’s Apple album (it’s
also available on Blue Note’s excellent The Best of Wayne Shorter)
with the version done by Miles’ quintet on Miles Smiles, where the
tune becomes a backdrop for the usual pseudo-Spanish tinkling around and
theatrical flourishes that characterized that band’s sound, at the tune’s
expense, for an example of this.
Miles had been moving in a simpler, more "modal" (a term that
he helped to popularize during the 50’s) direction for a while. Miles
In The Sky from 1968 started with a brilliant, 16-minutes plus track
"Stuff" which cycled and floated in a gentle soulful manner and sounded
unlike anything that anyone else was up to at the time. Filles
de Killemanjaro from 1968 marked the end of the old quintet, with Chick
Corea and Dave Holland coming into the band partway through the album -
the music occasionally rumbled and exploded, but was also marked by long,
rather lovely modal sections. To me it sounds like ambient jazz.
The buzz on this album in retrospect is that Miles was "flirting with rock
forms". (This is actually one heck of an album - well worth purchasing.
In addition to its other charms, and great playing by all concerned,
Chick Corea’s lovely, peaceful cycling through the lengthy "Mademoiselle
Mabry" is more than worth the price of admission).
Miles continued to flirt with what were certainly different
forms, perhaps related to rock, or to soul. His next LP, In A
Silent Way, was hailed as a groundbreaking effort although I feel it’s
a bit overrated. The music was somewhat hypnotic and repetitive.
Joe Zawinul and John McLaughlin had been recruited to play on the album,
and their presence together with the restraint shown by the other musicians
(for once, Tony Williams does not run rampant on the drums - he plays simple
"rock" rhythms primarily) yielded what was again a very "ambient" album.
Miles wanted his music to get more basic, more in touch with a
blues feeling. In his autobiography he states "See, when I used to
listen to Muddy Waters in Chicago down on 33rd and Michigan every Monday
when he played there and I would be in town, I knew I had to get some of
what he was doing up in my music. You know, the sound of the $1.50
drums and the harmonicas and the two-chord blues". At this point
he started to focus in on the more modern and aggressive sounds that would
inform the rest of his works. His girlfriend Betty Mabry introduced
him to Jimi Hendrix, and the two of them hit it off immediately.
Miles appreciated the power in what Jimi was doing, as well as appreciating
its grounding in blues and other black forms. Sly Stone and James
Brown were also by Miles’ account big influences on what was about to become
his new sound. Things were about to get a lot more African.
"My Funny Valentine" was about to go out the window.
In August of 1969 Miles assembled numerous massively talented
musicians into a New York City studio for the Bitches Brew project.
He brought in "musical sketches" moreso than tunes - as he had 10 years
previously during the Kind Of Blue sessions. The musicians would
jam on themes according to Miles’ direction (during three "all-day" sessions),
and the jams would be edited into pieces. It was an abstract way
of working, a bit different than anything done previously by an artist
with commercial viability - the tape recorder would deliberately be used,
in "artistic" fashion, to shape the pieces after the fact. Hence
musicians could explore ideas at length, without a burden of knowing that
everything that they played during a "take" would necessarily be presented
to the public with their name on it.
What makes the album superb is the playing. The music swings
gently, in multiple directions at once. It is a new kind of swing.
Jack DeJohnette and the other drummers on this recording deserve a world
of credit for their subtle, tugging playing. Multiple electric keyboards,
usually two per track, swing and swagger across this musical landscape
(Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, and Larry Young are at the keys). John
McLaughlin contributes electric guitar playing which is occasionally possessed
of brilliance. Bennie Maupin’s bass clarinet, Wayne Shorter’s sax,
Airto’s percussion, and the basses of Dave Holland and Harvey Brooks also
contribute towards the music’s tonal palette. On top of it all we
have Miles. His playing had always been minimalistic, and he had
always been comfortable playing blues-based forms. Here he found
his most natural expression, and contributed forcefully to the music.
He laid down the real stuff, the essence of music, on his trumpet and topped
the whole thing off brilliantly.
A rough guide to the Bitches Brew album - Side 1, "Pharoah’s
Dance", is an abstract keyboard-oriented piece. Due to its absence
of a memorable central theme, it’s a strange choice to open the album with,
but it is a nice slice of music and of subtle swing. Side 2, "Bitches
Brew", is massive. The composition, a combination of ambient theme
and deep groove, comes together perfectly. Side 3 features the deeply
rhythmic, gently bouncing "Spanish Key" (built on an interesting drum figure)
and the shorter, slightly chaotic "John McLaughlin" (McLaughlin claims
to have been as surprised as anyone when the LP came out and he saw that
Miles had named this tune after him). Side 4 features the gritty,
juke-joint-ish, artfully extended funk of "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down"
and the album’s closer "Sanctuary" which builds towards a frightening climax.
The pieces provide landscape portraits more than they do traditional tunes
or "featured player" improvisation. It was a new way of playing,
based on cooperative effort which was centralized and focused on rhythm.
In that regard the album reminds one of African cultures and of their music.
It was one heck of a record and was promoted as being such.
Miles proceeded to put out a couple of live 2-LP sets during the next year.
Black Beauty was the first (I’m not sure that it was released in
the U.S. at the time). It’s a fairly honest and straightforward recording
of his band in April of 1970 with Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Dave
Holland, Airto, and Steve Grossman. The sound is a bit cacaphonous;
it’s the sound of jazz players raising flashy, energetic hell on electronic
instruments. The band keeps things swinging along throughout the
whole set. Chick Corea fans will especially want to hear this as
his electronic keyboard is the most prominent voice in much of the music,
and as always he plays extremely well. The recording gets a bit "psychedelic"
in part through his use of effects. It reminds me a bit of the German
rock scene from the early 70’s; it’s easy to imaging getting stoned to
this record and digging it. I consider it a good but not great album.
At Fillmore came out next and drew some attention. It documents
a 4-night stint opening for Laura Nyro at the Fillmore West; each 25-40
minute set is edited down to an approximately 20-minute album side.
The intention was apparently to show that the band had an organic flow
and that even when they played the same material night after night that
it would be a "unique" experience. In retrospect the approach seems
silly; who wants to hear the same basic set, chopped and diced different
ways, four times in a row? The band sound is a bit difficult and
cacaphonous and the editing only makes things more confusing. Of
course there are some good moments; I always love it when that keyboard
riff (sounds like a clavoline, usually) kicks in to start off the deep
Bitches Brew groove. However, I believe that this album is
basically a mess.
At this point in time Miles was opening for rock performers, dressing
in his flashy manner of the time, and was generally thought to be courting
a rock audience. The majority of critics, pundits, and listeners
didn’t seem to understand what was going on with him. Miles was occasionally
criticized from this point on for deserting jazz, and for "losing the beauty
which had been present in his music".
The intended follow-up to Bitches Brew was Live-Evil.
The majority of this 2 LP set consists of some lengthy jams done at the
Cellar Door in Washington DC (these were augmented with a few new studio
recordings). The live tracks are oriented around Jack DeJohnette’s
aggressive and energetic funky drumming, Keith Jarrett’s pulsing, squealing,
and frequently soulful keyboards (for a guy who has since gone on to decry
the popularization of electronic instruments, Jarrett could really raise
some hell when he was in the mood to), Michael Henderson’s repetitive basslines
(Henderson had just joined the band - his playing here is not as dead-on
as it later became), guest star John McLaughlin playing some fantastic
electric guitar solos, and Airto putting some funky percussion on in places.
Davis and sax player Gary Bartz play (and play well), but also lay out
for huge periods of time while this band grooves. This, to me, really does
sound like a "fusion" of rock (and soul) and jazz. The aggression
and form of rock are present, but the players still have a tendency to
meander and show off in the general style of jazz players. If you
are in the mood for extended jam pieces (and it seems as if in the early
70’s, everybody was), these are pretty good for the most part.
The opening track, "Sivad", might burn a hole through your stereo system
with its relentless funk for a while before it moves into the soulful,
minimalist piece later known as "Honky Tonk". "What I Say" is a nice
21-minute slice of frenetic modality, too. Sides 3 and 4 feature
a band grooving at length in a manner that has its charms, but probably
isn’t the kind of thing that you’d want to start your morning with every
day.
Miles cut what I regard as his next masterpiece in 1970, during
five sessions which were fused into 2 sidelong pieces. A Tribute
to Jack Johnson was done as a soundtrack for a film about the legendary
heavyweight boxing champion. Side 1, "Right Off", is an extraordinary
jam. In addition to some bouncing bass (Michael Henderson, I believe),
rock-solid drums (Billy Cobham, I believe), and some rollicking organ (I
won’t hazard a guess), John McLaughlin’s electric rhythm guitar playing
is right on the mark. Imagine Keith Richards crossed with Jimi Hendrix
crossed with a classically trained guitarist - he sounds something like
that. The rhythm of the piece is deep and constant, and greatly hypnotic.
Just try to shut the music off in the middle - see if it keeps playing
in your head. Each member of the group displays a perfect, close-to-the-bone
devotion to the groove and the whole things rocks massively. Side
2, "Yesternow", is spacier. It seems put together from a few different
takes (it actually includes some of the "In A Silent Way" music towards
the end). It generates some ghostly groove and eventually makes way
for a memorable freak-out guitar solo by Sonny Sharrock (with Chick Corea
working Sonny’s echoplex box, apparently).
Sharrock remained uncredited on this album, as did many other
of the players present on the sessions. For some reason, only the
players signed to Columbia received credit on the cover. I was told
some of the participants by Sharrock once - I probably don’t remember everyone
that he mentioned to me, but I do remember the names Chick Corea, Jack
DeJohnette, Dave Holland, and himself as participants in addition to the
musicians listed on the cover (Davis, Steve Grossman, Michael Henderson,
Billy Cobham, John McLaughlin, and Herbie Hancock).
Miles continued to play and continued to record. His music
was starting to bewilder the buying public, who had been confronted with
a stream of 2-LP sets that didn’t conform to their expectations of what
Miles Davis should be doing (namely, playing lyrical trumpet over a jazz
background). Some of his sessions, like the ones which eventually
came out in 1974 on Big Fun, had to wait for years before being
released. Big Fun has 4 side-long pieces : "Great Expectations/Mother
Laranja" which is a 27 ½ minute slice of almost prototypical Miles,
based on a repeating phrase over a flowing backdrop; "Ife", a long static
piece with a repetitive bassline which is really a drag (it sounds more
like an experiment in audience tolerance than it does music); "Go
Ahead John" which is a small-band jam featuring John McLaughlin on guitar
(playing choppy strokes with wah-wah, just like Reggie Lucas & Pete
Cosey would go on to do), with some nice soloing over Jack DeJohnette’s
busy drumming (which is heavily phased for the sake of funkiness); and
"Lonely Fire" which is a bit aimless. The music throughout this album
is not Miles’ best, but Teo Macero’s production here is quite creative,
and the record ends up being a decent ambient-styled listening experience
thanks to the strength of Sides 1 & 3.
Some other early 70’s sessions came out even later, in the early
1980’s, on a couple of 2-LP sets : Circle in the Round and Directions.
Among the highlights to be found on those sets are the killer McLaughlin/Cobham-fueled
funk of "Duran", the impressionistic, multiple keyboard-based floating
of "Ascent", an alternate take of "Sanctuary", and an extended take on
the David Crosby tune "Guenneviere" which flows wonderfully and sounds
like the missing fifth side to Bitches Brew. Both are good
collections with some important stuff on them (lined up alongside a lot
of moderately interesting stuff).
Next up was another change of direction : 1972’s On The Corner.
Now this is abrasive stuff. It grooves, and it grooves hard, and
it makes no apology for doing so. Miles was getting deeply into funk
and also more deeply into dissonance. The album plays like one continuous
suite of chattering funky percussion and deep bass topped with sitar, trumpet,
and whatever else was on hand as a vehicle for self-expression. It
is a "black thing" for sure, and a deep dark one at that. I’ve always
felt that this album was a primary influence on the Public Enemy sound
which started in the late 80’s and has had a large effect on popular music
ever since (even the most "popular" artists these days are prone to augmenting
their songs’ chorus structures with screeching background noise, or at
least with light abrasion. I hear it all over the place). Miles
was simultaneously interested in deep funk ala Sly Stone and James Brown,
and musical abstraction ala Stockhausen. The end result was a fairly
startling album. The cover art, with a funky "street" illustration
by Corky McCoy, and a complete absence of personnel listings, was also
a notable departure from the norm.
The album was not promoted heavily by Columbia and was not embraced
heartily by the listening public or by critical reaction. Miles was
not going to be "the next big thing" commercially, was not going to outsell
the ranks of white boys playing electrified blues guitar which is what
a lot of people were into at the time. Fortunately, he kept at his
music anyway (rather than backtracking or waiting for the general populace
to catch up with him), because the best was yet to come.
Miles’ staffed his next working band with musicians whose backgrounds
were in the kind of funky music that Miles wanted to be working with, rather
than in a jazz tradition. Michael Henderson was still on bass, and
Al Foster came on to augment him with his fat, rock-steady drumming style.
Mtume (who now lays down those funky soundtracks for the TV show "New York
Undercover"), the son of Miles’ old pal saxophonist Jimmy Heath, came in
on percussion (and managed to outdo his well-known predecessor, Airto).
A band with these players, plus Reggie Lucas on guitar (it’s been said
that he managed to play guitar "like a water drum" - his playing was perfect
for this band - think choppy strokes and wah-wah pedal), Dominique Gaumont
on guitar, Carlos Garnett (a sax player who seemed to understand what was
going on and could fit into the music well), Cedric Lawson (a keyboard
player), and a sitarist and tabla player augmenting things, toured in 1972
and had the live In Concert released subsequently. It showed
a band which had dispensed with any perceived need for the bop-like chatter
of jazz and would get down deeply into groove for extended periods of time.
They jam on pieces which Miles had cut or would soon cut on "studio" albums,
energetically and loosely. It’s like On The Corner come to
life (the instrumentation is similar), but longer and with different themes.
It’s not a perfect album; the music gets interesting and kicks out jams
for a few minutes at a time, but tends to stay in one place for longer
than might be preferable. It alternates between impressing the listener
and annoying the listener. Fidelity is limited, too. Still,
it’s an uncompromising furtherance of something that was new, and documents
this period well. It’s just come back into general U.S. release.
1973 saw more touring, and the occasional bit of studio recording
by Miles’ band. In 1974 a unit of Davis, Henderson, Foster, Mtume,
Lucas, and Gaumont, plus new feedback-freakout-oriented guitarist Pete
Cosey, with Dave Liebman and/or Sonny Fortune on sax and flute, cut the
majority of tracks to be released on Get Up With It. (Some
sessions from preceding years were used as well). This record could
be seen as the culmination of Miles’ career; it’s some serious business.
The key to the album is Henderson’s bass - his playing is perfect and huge.
Foster’s drumming provides the perfect foil to him, and you’ve got a thoroughly
grounded musical maze starting already. Then add Mtume’s shifting,
inventive percussion to that, and stack two rhythmic guitar players on
along with one feedback-oriented player (who does some nice soloing on
this album) - now you’ve got some great shifting funk going on. Then
put Miles on in a surly mood, playing some serious, no-frills trumpet and
raising some hell on organ too. It’s quite a trip. I shouldn’t
forget Dave Liebman’s contributions - there are some who say that he was
partially responsible for "Mayishia", a thoroughly perfect musical act
in two parts on here. And Sonny Fortune plays well, and some other
names pop up on the recordings as well. Side 1 of this record is
a bit strange, a tone-poem dedicated to Duke Ellington who had recently
passed away. Side 2 contains "Mayishia" and the strong, deeply funky
"Honky Tonk" (actually recorded years previously with a whole host of famous
musicians), as well as the bizarre "Rated X". Side 3 is an out-of-control
madhouse piece called "Calypso Frelimo" which shows this band at their
most anarchic, but clears way for another killer bassline after a while.
Side 4 features the dense, energetic "Mtume" (an amazing cut which typifies
this band’s sound) and the funky "Billy Preston", along with a relatively
traditional piece, "Red China Blues". Each side is about 30 minutes
long. If I had to describe this record with one word, the word I
would choose would be "massive". This is one that you’ll be taking
the measure of for years and years..
That band (more or less - different sax players came through the
band, and Gaumont left) cut a number of live albums. Dark Magus
from early 1974 is a pretty good one. It’s only with the current
wave of Miles reissues actually come into print in America. The sound
is starting to center on Al Foster’s fat and flexible drumming, which is
in a class of its own. Side 1 opens with a hot theme which turns
up again on next year’s Pangaea as "Zimbabwe". There are large
chunks on the album where the band starts improvising around some fairly
flat figure, but through their now-patented "collective improvisation"
method manage to build the sound up into something nice. It makes
you aware, though, of how truly awesome they could be when they got themselves
wrapped around memorable material. It’s amazing how contemporary
this music sounds, all the more so as it comes from a live concert.
It could be heard as a stream of sublime drum’n’bass music being DJ’d on
stage by Miles Davis using real players instead of records.
Miles and the boys played at Osaka Festival Hall in Japan on February
1, 1975, one set in the daytime and one at night. The daytime set
was issued on 2 LPs as Agharta. I’ve never been totally crazy
about Agharta as a whole; to me most of the second half sounds a
bit flat and directionless. However, the opening 33 minutes or so
of "Prelude" (thanks to compact disc technology, we can now hear this continuously
without having to flip a record over partway through) is a great extended
exploration of funk and soul, and I rank it with my favorite Miles live
performances. I love the whole of the nighttime set, Pangaea,
which remained unissued in the U.S. until some kind soul rectified this
in 1991. It’s consists of two lengthy pieces, each of which is the
length of an LP. The first, "Zimbabwe", lays down a thick groove
and plays around that. The second, "Gondwana", is built around a
peaceful, circular figure. It flows lazily and naturally for a great
length of time, and contains some rather nice flute playing by Sonny Fortune.
The CD liner notes accurately note that this piece is reminiscent of some
of Sun Ra’s music.
To me, this music (especially Pangaea) has a real naturalistic
flow to it. He and his band had found their niche. The same
type of "collective improvisation" which had been used to create Bitches
Brew was being used to create natural, straight-forward music (groove
music, really). These guys put up a nice, thick wall of sound which
could be easy to get into, and easy to stay with for a while.
After that, Miles retreated into his house and rarely came out
of it for the next 5 Years, making no new music and no formal appearances.
Miles was suffering from health problems, didn’t feel like making new music,
and spent much of his time doing drugs.
Miles died in 1991 after making a comeback in the early '80s (most impressively on a live set from '82 We Want Miles,
where the compositions contain brilliance and the playing is dead-on).
He left behind him an amazing legacy of music, and an interesting
autobiography (done with Quincy Troupe) entitled "Miles: The
Autobiography"
where he explains himself, his life, and his music in a straightforward
manner (I recommend the book highly for anyone interested in any of
Miles’
music, or in jazz history, or just in interesting stories). He was
a funny guy and the book reflects this, while touching on his
relationships
with some of the most significant figures in 20th Century music.
The key to understanding Miles is to realize that he was a reserved
individual
and a minimalist. He would just as soon not say anything unless he
had something he really wanted to say, and when he did speak, he tended
to tell the truth regardless of how anyone might react to it. And
his music reflected this aspect of his personality totally.
In closing, why do I love Miles’ electric music so much?
Why do I consider it the greatest music yet made on this planet?
Well, of course one’s enjoyment of music is entirely subjective, but I
present for your consideration the following virtues regarding Miles’ music
:
You can dance to it. (Try "Black Satin" on On The Corner).
You can relax and unwind to it. (Try "Mayishia" on Get Up With It).
You can use it to get your adrenaline pumping. (Try "Fast Track"
on We Want Miles).
You can sit and reflect on it. (Try "Gondwana" on Pangaea).
You can nod your head to it. (Try the bass break in "Calypso
Frelimo", on Get Up With It. If even more head-nodding is
desired, try Sides 2 & 4 of that album as well).
You can make love to it. (Try "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down"
on Bitches Brew. If your partner doesn’t dig it you can always
masturbate to it. Or try "Ascent" from the Directions collection
for something a bit more romantic, in its own strange way).
It reflects the black experience and consolidates previously disparate
musics into a coherent whole. (Try Bitches Brew and
On The Corner).
So many artists have been influenced by this music that you may as
well cut out the middle-man and go straight to the source, for the real
deal.
It’s timeless; you can still listen to it decades from now without
shame. In fact, it may make more sense to most of us decades down
the line.
It’s genuine art, created through an individual’s (considerable)
experience, intellect, and desire for self-expression. Plus it’s
lovely and it swings like a mother.
Recorded at various sessions between 1970-74, what is technically a
hodge-podge collection of jams (stylistically, chronologically) has
somehow become, over time, one of the Dark Magus' towering achievements.
A heck of an ALBUM LISTEN for starters, its unheralded ranking in
Davis' pantheon has done the record's reputation nothing but good over
the long haul. Over-familiarity and endless reissuing of seemingly every
other album he made between 1960 to 1975 has had a tendency to dilute
their impact. Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, On the Corner and Sketches of Spain,
to name a few of the acknowledged bangers among many, have mos def lost
a bit of lustre due to the near constant influx of yet another
"DEFINITIVE" version appearing shortly after the earlier version(s). But
people seem to gobble 'em up, so what do I know?
As with most of Miles' post-1958 output, Teo Macero is the
producer/conductor/editor and all around general glue holding the shit
together. His technical mastery in assembling seamless edits from
disparate sessions, jams and versions deserves its very overdue tip of
the hat from the music industry. Fuck the Grammys and lifetime
achievement awards and all that, Buildings and institutions should be
erected and dedicated in his honor. Check out a list sometime of the
records he's worked on. You'll see what I'm saying.
And the list of players on this particular platter are no
slouches. One of the few constants throughout these jams is Michael
Henderson on the Fender bass. His solid lines anchor the madness
occurring around him, be it a tranquil modal wander like the epic
"Maiysha" or the Stockhausen inspired breakbeat organ-voodoo of stunner
"Rated X." Mtume's hand percussion is a layer present on all of these
songs too and deserves attention for the shine he gives, pushing the
performances upwards and onwards- not for nothing does he get a track
named for him. Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey ply their guitars with
attention to shimmer and attack, but stand at the ready to ramp up the
volume and hit some dirt noise and angular funk with slack-jawed glee.
Miles' Bitches Brew compatriot John McLaughlin shows up as well
on the aforementioned "Rated X" to scour and preen. Al Foster, Bill
Cobham and Bernard Purdie hit the skins to rude effect. With rhythm
kings like those dudes at your disposal, you can relax and stretch out
knowing something's gonna happen.
The one single defining factor effecting this collection is Davis'
adoption of organ and piano textures, played by the man himself, in
addition to his jittery wah-wah trumpet bleats. Opening up the songs
with his minimal vamps (excepting "Rated X," which sounds like he jammed
coke straws in all the keys, just to let it wail). Yeah, as loathe as I
am to drop it like that, this is a VERY seventies cocaine record,
albeit scoured of a lot of twaddle thanks to Mr. Macero's scissor job.
Interesting to note that shortly after the record's release, Miles
disappeared into his apartment, his Ferrari and various elevators and
broom closets, babbling and brooding to himself and no-one else for
close to ten years of paranoia chants.
That's what makes this double record, which is essentially a salvage
job, so alien and, let it be noted, more interesting than the rest of
his seventies albums by a long shot. Drug addiction and general burnout
had made Miles a basket case and the record company (Columbia) was quite
ready to get something else out before he shut down. It's stature over
the years as one of his most maligned and misunderstood releases makes
sense due chiefly to the fact that there is no over-arching concept to
it, nothing to tie it together conceptually like say, On the Corner or Bitches Brew.
This is the the 1970-1975 Miles Davis mixtape that you can throw on
randomly and find something strange and funky at any point. The fact
that it was released as just another album only adds to its weird
contours and textures. True head music for the people, only the people
weren't listening by this point. So it was simply released and forgotten
about quickly.
But let's not get side tracked. This here album rewards many repeated
listens, strictly due to the power of the collective improvisations
boiling and simmering with a leisurely violence never too far from the
surface. Opener "He Loved Him Madly," for Duke Ellington, rolls along
like at a fittingly stately crawl, ambient before there was such a
thing. Fucking Eno(!!) has expressed as much, publicly saying this
particular track had a hand in pushing him along the path of creating
some truly vague system music. When the high priest of drool rock says
that, you'd best recognize. After all is said and done, this track is
one of the highest examples one could proffer of true majesty, a slow
burn for the heavy-lidded and the spiritually gifted. Bow down to the
exit sign, someone said at some point.
My favorite jam of the bunch has to be the Latin-tinged "Maiysha." A
relaxed yet dissonant stroll that unfurls itself slowly over its near
fifteen minute running time. Miles switches between the organ and the
trumpet here, never hurrying things along too much. At times almost too
unbearably gorgeous to believe, the first three quarters floats on a
gentle breeze before it changes gears into some more jagged funk, Miles'
organ smears itself over the proceedings at random points, with some
nice parry and thrust guitar workouts rebounding before the edit
silences the whole thing quickly. Again, it cannot be overemphasized how
much the edits shape and color this album. Random cut-offs bump the
pastoral into the visceral. The modus operandi here seeming to be that
there is none, other than grabbing the best bits and throwing them
together and weaving a patchwork that loosely hangs together. BANG! GET
IT OUT THERE! The commercial imperative to get some more Miles product
on the shelves being the number one goal for everyone involved.
This is not a bad thing though. When I say the commerce imperative is
not a bad thing in this (and many other cases), I mean that there was
just a desire to put some physical product out there. But it also helps
that Miles had pretty much absolute creative control at this point due
to his very favorable contract with Columbia. "Honky Tonk"'s afterburner
bar room blues fuckery sitting astride the afore-mentioned "Rated X"'s
jittery bleat? A stretch for anyone to pull off on the most inspired of
days but here it works in the most casual of ways. Take it or leave it.
It's just another album. If only.
Being one of the truly experimental albums of the 1970's to my ears, Get Up With It
can only be truly be explained by being brushed by some kind of
accidental magic. Teo going through some tapes and splicing together
takes of half-together jams to satisfy Miles and the suits. That's
alright though. Why stress it too much and microscope the shit to death?
There's some hot grooves there, wacked noise wig-outs and tropical back
rubs to calm a guy down. Miles commands them to get the fucker out and
so it happens. Done.
The Genius of Miles Davis: Explained! by Ransom Riggs Mental Floss
Ed Note: Sometimes it's hard to hear music as described on the page. Bill DeMain's story on Miles Davis and Kind of Blue in our latest magazine
is wonderful, but we wanted to make sure readers actually got to hear
the sounds. So we asked Ransom to remix it with any YouTube clips he
could find. The following is a mish-mash of Bill's story and Ransom's
writing, all enhanced with Miles' music. We're hoping it gives readers a
slightly richer experience. Enjoy!
Music icon Miles Davis has long been revered as a jazz pioneer -- but
what exactly did he pioneer? To some purists, jazz music can be broken
into two distinct eras: Before Miles and After Miles. A student and
bandmate of Bebop legends Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, Miles'
musical education took place occasionally at the Julliard School of
Music but mostly in the smoky clubs of 52nd street, where he was trained
in the esoteric art of "hot jazz," a hyper-complex, acrobatic style of
playing torrential melodies at breakneck tempos. Miles was a quick
study, but after a year touring as a rising star in Charlie Parker's
band, he dropped out in 1958. Miles found that the "hot" stuff didn't
speak to his soul; instead, he was captivated by the pensive, intimate
sounds of pianist Thelonious Monk, singer Billie Holiday and composer
Gil Evans. Their songs cut deeper and played more slowly than popular
"hot jazz" tunes, and with those musicians' help and influence, he
pioneered a style known as "cool jazz," which focused the genre's
intensity into a laser beam of sound. Here are some clips that help
illustrate the "birth of the cool," as music historians have dubbed it.
A quiet fire: the early years
From early in his career, Miles was obsessed with the idea that a single note could convey all the beauty of music.
That idea started to take form in his one-off recordings from the
late 1940s, when to most Americans he was nothing special -- just
another fast-blowing sideman who'd once played with Charlie Parker. Jobs
were scarce and he drifted around, on the cusp of celebrity but not
truly finding it until he moved to Paris in 1949, where he was hailed as
a jazz god. When he returned to he U.S., the contrast was unbearable,
and Miles' career almost went permanently off the rails. Broke, bored
and frustrated by a lack of creative momentum, he turned to heroin -- a
period in his life he would later call "a four-year horror show."
By 1954, the junk was threatening everything he held dear. Shunned by
even his closest friends, he returned to his hometown of St. Louis,
where he locked himself in his family's guest house for two months and
kicked the habit cold-turkey. After that, his resolve to find a new
sound grew stronger than ever, and his playing became richer. It was
imbued with a deep loneliness and heartache that hadn't been there
before -- on full display in his 1955 release 'Round About Midnight, which put Davis back on the map. Here's a clip from the title track, "'Round Midnight," a song written by Thelonious Monk:
On
this album, he pared down his solos and found drama in moments of
silence; Miles' "cool" aesthetic dominates the beginning of the song.
Here, Miles trumpet has a depth of feeling and starkness that never errs
on the side of sentimentality. (The clip is from a performance in
Stockholm, 1967, and features Wayne Shorter on sax and Herbie Hancock on
the piano.) He now had all the tools he needed to construct his
masterpiece, Kind of Blue.
Miles' "Blue" Period
Sessions for Kind of Blue commenced on March 2, 1959 in a
converted Greek Orthodox church in Manhattan. Together with his sextet,
which included pianist Bill Evans and saxophonist John Coltrane, Davis
was creating beautiful compositions spontaneously. He abandoned the
usual chord progressions that govern jazz and supplied only outlines for
his pieces. To capture the spirit of discovery, he gave his band vague
directions: telling them to "play this pretty" or make it
"Latin-flavored." After just nine-hours in the studio, they were
finished, and the resulting album tracks are all first takes;
"First-take feelings -- they're generally the best," remarked pianist
Evans. Here clips from a few tracks on this classic album.
So What?
The five tracks on Kind of Blue
may have been improvised, but they didn't come out of nowhere. "So
What" isn't just the name of a song -- it was one of Miles' favorite
expressions. Whenever someone would challenge him on an idea or
decision, he would respond in his raspy voice: "so what?" You can hear
his motto in the sassy two-note phrases that run throughout the song.
Freddie Freeloader
This
tune was named after a guy who often tried to sneak into Miles' gigs
without paying, and the groove captures Freddie's slippery personality.
It also features what many feel are some of the best solos on the
album, a part of Miles' musical legacy that went on to influence lots of
other musicians; you can hear it in the free-roaming solos of guitarist
Duane Allman and the keyboard works of the Doors' Ray Manzarek.
Ken has his say
Ken Burns' Jazz is a great film that has a segment devoted to the making of Kind of Blue.
It's worth watching just for the interviews; the reverence with which
critics and other musicians talk about Miles speaks volumes.
Miles: the later years
After briefly touring behind Kind of Blue, Miles set off on
new adventures. During the next 30 years, until his death in 1991, he
pioneered the use of electric instruments in jazz and experimented with
rock, funk and pop. Some jazz purists felt that Miles went from
birthing the cool to chasing it -- they point to his final album, You're Under Arrest,
which includes covers (excuse me, "jazz reinterpretations") of Cyndi
Lauper's "Time After Time" and Michael Jackson's "Human Nature". Check
out this strange, very 80s video for "Decoy," a soul-electronica hybrid
which sounds about as far from "Freddie Freeloader" as you can get while
still playing the trumpet: Despite critics of his later work, however, it could be argued that,
having perfected his vision of "cool jazz," it was natural for Davis to
move on to other styles and musical expressions. No matter: even if
he'd released five Michael Jackson cover albums, Kind of Blue
ensured he'd always be known as the Father of the Cool; it was moment in
musical history when his spare phrasing and sense of melodic space
found an answer to the eternal question: "What is the sound of one note
swinging?"
Filmmaker, photo hound, author of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Before he was a best-selling author, Ransom was a daily contributor to mentalfloss.com for many, many years.
Click here to see the best and worse uses of Kind of Blue in the movies.
Miles Davis
Miles Davis' Kind of Blue,
which was released 50 years ago today, is a nearly unique thing in
music or any other creative realm: a huge hit—the best-selling jazz
album of all time— and the spearhead of an artistic revolution. Everyone, even people who say they don't like jazz, likes Kind of Blue. It's cool, romantic, melancholic, and gorgeously melodic. But why do critics regard it as one of the best jazz albums ever made? What is it about Kind of Blue that makes it not just pleasant but important? On March 2, 1959, when its first tracks were laid down at Columbia Records' 30th
Street Studio (the album would be released on Aug. 17), Charlie Parker,
the exemplar of modern jazz, the greatest alto saxophonist ever, had
been dead for four years, almost to the day. The jazz world was still
waiting, longing, for "the next Charlie Parker" and wondering where he'd
take the music. Parker and his trumpeter sidekick, Dizzy Gillespie—Bird
and Diz, as they were called—had launched the jazz revolution of the
1940s, known as bebop. Their concept was to take a standard blues or
ballad and to improvise a whole new melody built on its chord changes.
This in itself was nothing new. But they took it to a new level,
extending the chords to more intricate patterns, playing them in
darting, syncopated phrases, usually at breakneck tempos. The problem
was, Parker not only invented bebop, he perfected it. There were only so
many chords you could lay down in a 12-bar blues or a 32-bar song, only
so many variations you could play on those chords. By the time he died,
even Parker was running out of steam.
When Miles Davis came to New York in 1945, at the age of 19,
he replaced Gillespie as Parker's trumpeter for a few years and played
very much in their style. A decade later, he, too, was wondering what to
do next.
The answer came from a friend of his named George Russell (who died just last month
at the age of 86). A brilliant composer and scholar in his own right,
Russell spent the better part of the '50s devising a new theory of jazz
improvisation based not on chord changes but on scales or "modes." The
kind of music that resulted was often called "modal" jazz. (A scale consists of the eight notes from one octave to the next. *
A chord consists of three or four specific notes in that scale, played
together or in sequence: For instance, a C chord is C-E-G.)
This distinction may seem slight, but its implications were
enormous. In a bebop improvisation, the chord changes (which occur when,
usually, the pianist changes the harmony from one chord to another)
serve as a compass; they point the direction to the next bar or the next
phrase. Chords follow a particular pattern (that's why it's easy to hum
along with most blues and ballads); you know what the next chord will
be; you know that the notes you play will consist of the notes that
comprise that chord or some variation on them. Playing blues, you know
that the sequence of chord changes will be finished in 12 bars (or, if
it's a song, 32 bars), and then you'll either end your solo or start the
sequence again.
Russell threw the compass out the window. You could play all
the notes of a scale, which is to say any and all notes. "It is for the
musician to sing his own song really," Russell wrote, "without having
to meet the deadline of a particular chord." In other words, he
continued, "you are free to do anything" (the italics were his), "as long as you know where home is"—as long as you know where you're going to wind up.
One night in 1958, Russell sat down with Davis at a piano
and laid out his theory's possibilities—how to link chords, scales, and
melodies in almost unlimited combinations. Miles realized this was a way
out of bebop's cul-de-sac. "Man," he told Russell, "if Bird was alive,
this would kill him."
In an interview that year with critic Nat Hentoff, Miles
explained the new approach. "When you go this way," he said, "you can go
on forever. You don't have to worry about changes, and you can do more
with time. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically inventive you
are. … I think a movement in jazz is beginning, away from the
conventional string of chords and a return to emphasis on melodic rather
than harmonic variations. There will be fewer chords but infinite
possibilities as to what to do with them."
Davis needed one more thing before he could go this route: a
pianist who knew how to accompany without playing chords. This was a
radical notion. Laying down the chords—supplying the frontline horn
players with the compass that kept their improvisations on the right
path—was what modern jazz pianists did. Russell recommended someone he'd hired for a few of his own sessions, an intense young white man named Bill Evans.
Evans was conservatory-trained with a penchant for the
French Impressionist composers, like Ravel and Debussy, whose harmonies
floated airily above the melody line. When Evans started playing jazz,
he tended not to play the root of a chord; for instance, when playing a C
chord, he'd avoid playing a C note. Instead, he'd play some other note
in, or hovering around, the chord, suggesting the chord without locking
himself into its restraints.
Davis hired Evans for his next recording date, the session that became Kind of Blue, which would be the perfect expression of this new approach to playing.
The clearest example of its novelty is a piece, composed
(without credit) by Evans, called "Flamenco Sketches." At most jazz
sessions, the sheet music that the leader passes around to the band
consists of "heads"—the first 12 or so bars of a tune, with the chords
notated above. The band plays the head, then each player improvises on
the chords. But for "Flamenco Sketches," Evans had jotted down the notes
of five scales, each of which expressed a slightly different mood. At
the top of the sheet, he wrote, "Play in the sound of these scales."
For the band's two saxophone players, John Coltrane on tenor
and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on alto, it was a particularly bizarre
instruction. Both were astonishingly adept improvisers, but they built
their creations strictly on chords, Adderley as an acolyte of Charlie
Parker (with a gospel-infused tone), Coltrane as an almost spiritual
explorer, searching for the right sound, the right note, mapping out his
voyage on charts of chords, piling and inverting chords on top of
chords, expanding each note of a chord to a new chord, not knowing which
combinations might work and therefore trying them all.
A few months after the Kind of Blue sessions, Coltrane led his own band on an album called Giant Steps, which pressed this quest to its ultimate degree—literally:
Giant Steps marked the end of the bebop frontier;
Coltrane knew this, and, afterward, would go in a whole new direction,
less tethered to structure, more "free," than even Russell's concept
envisioned. But on Kind of Blue, especially "Flamenco Sketches," he took his first—and most lyrical—step out on that brink:
The departure from bebop is clear from the album's opening
tune, "So What," which would emerge as this new sound's anthem. Evans
describes it on the album's liner notes as "a simple figure based on 16
measures of one scale, 8 of another and 8 more of the first … in free
rhythmic style." (Loose as it is, this was more structured than some of
the pieces. Evans writes that, for "Flamenco Sketches," the
improvisations on each scale can last "as long as the soloist wishes.")
In this 30-second clip from "So What," Davis improvises on a single
scale for all but the last few seconds, when Evans signals a shift to a
different scale:
Compare this with "Freddie Freeloader," the album's only
conventional blues. (For this track alone, Miles let his usual pianist,
Wynton Kelly, a straight blues-and-bebop keyboardist, sit in for Evans):
Structurally, it's similar to the early bebop tunes that
Davis played with Parker in the mid-1940s, the melody latched to the
pianist's chord changes, which occur nearly every bar, as in this 1946
Parker recording of "Ornithology" with Davis as sideman:
Now contrast these conventional bop pieces with the most fully developed piece of "modal" jazz" on Kind of Blue, called "All Blues":
It has the same feel as the other blues tunes, but
listen closely: The horns, blowing harmony in the background, are
playing the same notes in each bar; they're not shifting them to follow
the chord changes; there are no chord changes. It sounds (hence the
album's title) kind of blue.
So Kind of Blue sounded different from the jazz
that came before it. But what made it so great? The answer here is
simple: the musicians. Throughout his career, certainly through the
1950s and '60s, Miles Davis was an instinctively brilliant recruiter; a
large percentage of his sidemen went on to be great leaders, and these
sidemen—especially Evans, Coltrane, and Adderley—were among his
greatest. They came to the date, were handed music that allowed them
unprecedented freedom (to sing their "own song," as Russell put it), and
they lived up to the challenge, usually on the first take; they had a
lot of their own song to sing.
The album's legacy is mixed, precisely for this reason. It
opened up a whole new path of freedom to jazz musicians: Those who had
something to say thrived; those who didn't, noodled. That's the dark
side of what Miles Davis and George Russell (and, a few months later, Ornette Coleman,
in his own even-freer style of jazz) wrought: a lot of noodling—New Age
noodling, jazz-rock-fusion noodling, blaring-and-squealing noodling—all
of it baleful, boring, and deadly (literally deadly, given the rise of
tight and riveting rock 'n' roll). Some of their successors confused
freedom with just blowing whatever came into their heads, and it turned
out there wasn't much there.
Another appealing thing about Kind of Blue, though
it's also a heartbreaking thing: There was no sequel. Soon after the
recording date, the band broke up. Evans formed his own piano trio;
Adderley went back to playing gospel-tinged bop; Coltrane (after making Giant Steps)
took his own road to freedom; Davis, too, retreated to earlier forms
for the next few years, until he formed his next great band, in the
mid-'60s, with younger musicians who pushed him on to more adventurous
experiments.
Kind of Blue is a one-shot deal, so dreamily
perfect you can hardly believe someone created it. Which is why it
remains so deeply satisfying, on whatever level you experience it, as
moody background music or as the center of your existence. Listen to it
100 times or so, and you still marvel at its spontaneous inventions; now
and then, you'll even hear something new.
Correction, Aug. 19, 2009: The article originally stated that a scale consists of 12 notes, which is true for chromatic scales
(scales with all the notes—natural, flat, and sharp), but since Russell
was talking about scales or "modes" that sound different from one
another (meaning they include at least some different notes), this can
be true only of scales with eight tones or eight notes. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis (Musicians in Their Own Words)Hardcover– November 1, 2008
Miles on Miles collects
the thirty most vital Miles Davis interviews. Essential reading for
anyone who wants to know what Miles Davis thought about his music, life,
and philosophy, Miles on Miles reveals the jazz icon as a complex and contradictory man, secretive at times but extraordinarily revealing at others.
Miles
was not only a musical genius, but an enigma, and nowhere else was he
so compelling, exasperating, and entertaining as in his interviews,
which vary from polite to outrageous, from straight-ahead to contrarian.
Even his autobiography lacks the immediacy of the dialogues collected
here. Many were conducted by leading journalists like Leonard Feather,
Stephen Davis, Ben Sidran, Mike Zwerin, and Nat Hentoff. Others have
never before seen print, are newly transcribed from radio and television
shows, or appeared in long-forgotten magazines.
Since
Miles Davis’s 1991 death, his influence has continued to grow. But
until now, no book has brought back to life his inimitable
voice--contemplative, defiant, elegant, uncompromising, and humorous. Miles on Miles will long remain the definitive source for anyone wanting to really encounter the legend in print.
Miles at the Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3
Columbia / Legacy 2014
By Mark Richardson
March 31, 2014
Miles Davis hated
stasis. In the 30-year period between the time he first gained notice
playing bebop with Charlie Parker to when he retired for five years in
1975, his music was usually in a state of transformation, with steady
but noticeable changes occasionally interrupted by moments of what, in
another context, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould called “punctuated equilibrium.”
The shifts were not linear and could never be understood in terms of
“progression.” Explorations into impressionist harmony, modal
improvisation, pastoral sound-painting, neoclassical orchestration,
abstract funk, and sheets of electronic noise weren’t experienced as one
music building on top of another, but rather a constant search for the
possibilities lurking in the unknown. As the years wore on, Miles’ own
fear of irrelevance kept him working with players many years younger
than himself so he was being exposed to new ideas without feeling the
need to chase trends (most major jazz figures with an interest in
experimentation made some overtures toward free jazz in the 1960s but
Miles never did). All of which is to say that when you contemplate a
single, narrow segment of Miles’ brilliant and varied career, there’s no
telling what the music is going to give you until you immerse yourself
in it. You have to look at where it came from and where it would go
next.
Miles at the Fillmore, the latest entry in
Columbia’s revelatory bootleg series collecting unreleased Miles Davis
live material, finds the trumpeter departing one musical world and
entering a new one. In the previous five years, he’d taken the music of
the Second Great Quintet (Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and
Tony Williams) as far as it could go; hearing new music in his head,
music that had never been made before, Miles fully embraced electric
instruments on the dual landmarks In a Silent Way and, a year later, in April 1970, Bitches Brew; most of this set was recorded in June of that year. By this point in a very busy year of live performances, Bitches Brew
was in stores and selling well and making waves, and Miles and his band
were playing large rock venues, landing on the same bills as the
Grateful Dead and Neil Young.
Some of this material has been
released in a different form. These four discs each contain an evening’s
set, recorded on four consecutive nights in New York at the Fillmore
East (live albums during this time can get confusing—Miles also recorded
in April 1970 at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, and some of that
material, in far poorer sound quality, is included as bonus tracks). On
the 1970 2xLP Miles Davis at Fillmore, each night was condensed
and edited by Teo Macero into an approximately 25-minute collage to fit a
single album side and given an overarching title without identifying
individual pieces (“Wednesday Miles”, “Thursday Miles”, etc.) That
decision foreshadowed what was to come with Miles’ live sets through the
rest of the 1970s, as written compositions and themes were considered
only as additional elements to be swirled into process-oriented whole,
and needn’t necessarily be identified.
Compared to where his
music would take in the ensuing four years, Miles’ sound in mid–1970 was
still loosely tethered to jazz tradition. There are distinct
compositions that unfold with a set arc, there are recognizable themes,
there’s still a standard in regular rotation. And unlike his music in
1974 and ’75, Miles Davis’ trumpet is very much the focus, and his tone
was strong and forceful and could easily cut through the electronic din.
There are two keyboard players here, both of whom would go on to become
hugely popular in the 1970s: Keith Jarrett (organ) and Chick Corea
(electric piano). With no guitarist in the band, Jarrett and Corea are
responsible for the electronics, and each plays his instrument in ways
that go well beyond its intended use; Jarrett’s squawking solos are
often harsh and noisy, reminiscent of electric guitar, while Corea’s
electric piano gives the music a sense of disembodied drift. Dave
Holland’s basslines are simple ostinatos but feel more connected to jazz
proper than the minimal funk Michael Henderson would bring a short time
later. Saxophonist Steve Grossman serves a more functional role, with
solid workmanlike solos that mostly serve to make Miles’ time out front
that much more exciting. And Jack DeJohnette’s drumming alternates
between forward-driving and hard-hitting funk/rock and pure texture
during more abstract passages. DeJohnette’s contributions underscore the
defining quality of the music here: it’s relentless energy.
The
opener for each night, the Joe Zawinul composition “Directions”, sets
the bar very high in this department. It’s built around a brilliantly
simple bassline and has a classic theme that only shows up later in the
piece, signaling when to pass the soloing baton to the next player.
Miles would lose interest in this sort of structure over the next couple
of years, but “Directions” is the perfect tune for him at this moment,
and hearing the four show kick-offs in one place provides an opportunity
to see how pieces varied from night to night. Wednesday night
absolutely rips, as Holland’s bass refrain drives the song forward
almost faster than the band wants to go. Thursday is comparatively
mellow and exploratory, allowing for more space. On Friday DeJohnette
takes a less polyrhythmic approach to drums and Miles is more fluid and
less intense in his soloing. And then Saturday is lighter and trickier,
with more quick rhythmic interplay. The set lists each night were almost
identical—“The Mask”, “It’s About That Time”, “I Fall in Love Too
Easily”, and “Bitches Brew” are all heard in multiple versions—but
jumping to different takes from disc-to-disc never feels redundant, such
is the invention and variation with each performance.
Each phase
of Miles Davis’ development calls for a different kind of listening.
Both 1969 and 1970, to my ears, are more accessible than the late-period
material with the second quintet, with its unusual harmonies and
deceptive structure. Nefertiti from 1967 truly feels like a puzzle, something I’ll be working to understand forever, but the appeal of the Miles at the Fillmore
material is obvious: This is an amazing band and they rip, but they
never leave traditional ideas of rhythm and melody behind. There are
extended soundscape passages in “Bitches Brew” and “The Mask” that are
more about experiments in timbre, exploring how jazz improvisation can
become the furthest-out space music possible, but the best of this set
comes in hearing these players creating a new sound that remains
immediate. You’re hearing jazz form straining against its enclosure, and
soon enough, it would be abandoned—by 1974, another key era, musicality
would not be a priority, as black-hole-level density took over
completely. Any notion of mainstream acceptance was pretty much gone by
then, and Miles and his band were doing brilliant things with that
freedom. Here they’re doing equally brilliant things within certain
strictures, making up a few rules and bending a few others to the
breaking point.
Say the name Miles Davis and it conjures images of the most
poignant figure in jazz—ever. He changed the direction of jazz multiple
times, and he was always at the precipice of the next groove of his own
musical frontier. From bebop to hip-hop, from Coltrane to Prince, Davis
effortlessly and seamlessly melded his distinctly delicate sound through
straightahead, fusion, funk and beyond. He’s been studied and copied
and debated. He’s a hero and a villain, an artist’s artist who always
wanted the music to move forward.
Whether you know this about Miles Davis or just learned it, the
people in charge of his legacy are working to make sure you never forget
it.
“We want to raise the profile of Miles so people just don’t remember
Miles when they reach into their record collection or turn on the
radio,” says Darryl Porter, general manager of the Miles Davis estate.
“We want it so that when people pick up a newspaper or magazine they
have to see him.”
Since the beginning of the year, Davis’ estate has been managed by a
new team comprised of family members and aided by business advisors who
want to perpetuate his legacy. Plans are in the works for a
motion-picture biography as well as recordings that remix classic Miles
and pair him with soul, pop and hip-hop artists. His artwork comprising
some 150 lithographs will be exhibited, and we’ll soon see Miles showing
up in ad campaigns.
All of these efforts are being guided by Miles Davis Properties LLC,
which includes Davis’ youngest son, Erin, his daughter, Cheryl, his
nephew Vince Wilburn Jr. and his brother-in-law, Vince Wilburn Sr. The
group is assisted by attorney Gerry Margolis of the Manatt, Phelps &
Phillips LLP law firm in Los Angeles. Publicity is handled by Rogers
and Cowan, also in Los Angeles.
The current roster of players is a departure from New York-based
representation spearheaded by attorney Peter Shukat of Shukat, Arrow,
Hafer and Weber, which had a long history with the estate. Now all
things Miles have a West Coast focus, and in the early days of the
transition, the team was in the midst of transferring properties from
New York to Los Angeles and untangling deals the new group didn’t think
were a good fit.
“Part of the change in direction of how Miles’ intellectual property
is treated is to make re-use something more special and treated with
respect,” says Margolis, who has represented the Rolling Stones for more
than 30 years. Representatives from the Shukat firm declined to talk about how Davis was marketed in the past.
Wilburn wants an aggressive marketing approach for his uncle and
says, “I just felt like it wasn’t moving along the way Miles would
probably want it to. There wasn’t enough going on but reissues. How many
issues can you reissue? I just thought we could keep it fresh. And with
Gerry and Darryl and the new team it just adds that dimension.” On a day-to-day basis, Margolis, Rogers and Cowan, the family and
Porter work in concert to guide the process. Porter and Wilburn Jr. run
point on the stream of requests to use Davis’ music or to adopt his
likeness.
“I don’t recall a situation when we weren’t on the same page,” Porter
says. “Their agenda is all the same: to preserve Miles’ legacy and to
maximize the estate and not jeopardize the legacy.”
No one in the group will say how much the estate is worth or how it
has performed over the years. Margolis says the majority of revenues
that flow into the estate are driven by royalties from the use of Miles’
master recordings and his copywritten material.
The principals in charge of keeping Davis in the forefront don’t talk
about money in public; instead they choose to speak fervently about the
aesthetics and the essence of the deals they pursue. They talk about
style, class and cool, all the things connected to Miles, so any
endeavor they attach his name to has to embody those qualities.
“I’m not looking to whore Miles Davis out,” says Margolis when
pressed about finances. “I don’t get paid on a percentage of the money I
generate. We want to make sure the legacy is marketed in the classiest
way possible.”
In March, Miles Davis was swept into the public consciousness once
again through his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a nod
to his influence in shaping musical styles across genres.
The importance of the artist was highlighted again when Davis’ family
donated artifacts from the performer’s life to the Smithsonian’s
National Museum of American History. The museum already houses some
100,000 pages of unpublished compositions of Duke Ellington and a
collection of instruments chronicling the contributions of musicians
from King Oliver to Louis Armstrong.
The Davis donation furthered that treasure with the sheet music he
used to play Porgy and Bess’ “Summertime” and the Versace suit he donned
at his landmark 1991 performance at the Montreux Jazz Festival in
Switzerland. John Edward Hasse, curator of American music at the museum,
believes the Miles donation is especially significant because of his
place in the culture.
“We see Miles Davis as one of the greatest American trumpeters ever.
As an innovator who again and again reinvented himself and reimagined
the music we call jazz,” Hasse says. “Someone who transformed the
aesthetic a number of times, whose sound on his instrument became a
unique aural trademark, instantly identifiable, and came to dominate
jazz during the second half of the 20th century more so than anyone
else. His importance goes far beyond jazz, for he was one of the great
American musicians, period. And one of the great 20th-century musicians,
period.”
There is probably no other move the estate could have made to ensure
the proper positioning, respect and cultural prominence for Miles than
giving the Smithsonian tangible pieces of the artist to share with the
world. As Hasse puts it, “Something we bring in now will be here in a
thousand years, when most things in the 20th century will be forgotten.
It is important that Miles Davis be in the national treasure house, for
it tells the story of America.” Hasse says he’s in talks with the family to obtain the rest of Miles’
sheet music so it can be kept safe and studied for the ages.
As a brand, Miles Davis is probably the next great untapped resource,
whose potential to penetrate the market for economic gain and celebrity
capital has yet to be realized. In midsummer a number of deals linking
Miles to fashion, commercials, music and the use of his likeness are in
play. While sifting through the flood of options that confront his
estate daily, the group is guided by one principle: “Would Miles do
this?” Just as the group is eager to exploit good opportunities that
would be lucrative and grant easy exposure, they are just as adamant of
steering clear of relationships and collaborations that would portray
Miles in a bad light.
Jonathan Faber is president of CMG Worldwide. His firm specializes in
handling the intellectual property of celebrities including Duke
Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and Buddy
Rich. Faber says deciding what marketing is out-of-bounds and carefully
choosing which relationships are appropriate is part of the “branding
process.” This is a crucial decision by estates that determines how an
artist is presented and under what circumstances. “We tend to regard our
clients as brands to the extent that’s appropriate for that client,”
Faber says. “We work with Princess Diana, and we would never say that
she is a brand because that would be offensive to the people in charge
of her rights now, and that is contrary to what she stood for. But you
could also say that was her brand: an anti-brand.”
A large part of branding involves the use of photographs because they
provide an easy vehicle to project an artist into the public
consciousness. For instance, there has been an effort on the part of
Faber and CMG to market only images of Holiday at her best: youthful,
beautiful, vibrant, without the signs of abuse that wore on her
countenance later in life. “You can’t rewrite history and sometimes
tragedy is a part of that history,” Faber says. “But we would never want
to emphasize that.”
The Elvis Presley estate has made similar choices to present the
public with photos of the young svelte Elvis to keep that image fresh in
the public’s mind. Porter has helped manage a number of artists, which
included a stint with Elvis’ wife, Priscilla Presley. While Porter
thinks the Presley estate made a smart move, he feels he doesn’t have
the same issues when marketing Miles.
“The music grew because of Miles, and he grew with the music,” Porter
says. “I don’t think there was ever a time when you can look at Miles
and say he didn’t optimize cool. We don’t have the same restrictions as
other people who try to lock in on a segment of a person’s life or
career.” He adds, “So we haven’t begun to think about imaging, but we
have thought about branding, and the branding is all about keeping it
cool.”
Control over photos goes beyond projecting a certain aesthetic to the
public. It’s also important for estates to prevent images from being
connected to causes or companies in conflict with the wishes of the
artist or the family. Faber says Marilyn Monroe’s estate won’t license
images of her with fur. CMG has also worked with Humphrey Bogart, who
has a cigarette in almost all his photos. “He died of lung cancer, and
the family doesn’t want to see advertising with Bogart smoking a
cigarette,” Faber says. “It would be lucrative for Bogart to license
tobacco companies, but they don’t want it.”
Porter says the estate is currently in talks with General Motors, BMW
and several other top brands about doing commercial tie-ins using a
combination of Miles’ image and music. And Wilburn is attempting to find
the right label to establish a Miles Davis line of clothing. He says an
agreement with Damon Dash, the former head of Roca Wear, was close, but
fell through. In midsummer, the estate’s official Web site,
milesdavis.com, is still under construction. By the fall Wilburn
anticipates the site will feature chats with the family, music downloads
and information on album releases. Eventually the site will also be
used to market Miles’ artwork and other paraphernalia.
Faber says because Miles Davis, like Jimi Hendrix, oozes cool
whenever he is thought of or seen, he becomes a metaphor for all things
hip, and that quality will be transferred to the product lines he
endorses. He believes this dynamic is at work when marketing Ellington.
“If you’re an ad executive and you have a company that you want to be
thought of as sophisticated and intelligent and unique, Duke Ellington
is all of those things. And it becomes shorthand because the public
already has all of those built-in feelings and emotional connection to
him, and it gets assigned to the company whether consciously or
subconsciously.”
One of the Davis estate’s top priorities is to move discussions for a
motion picture of the artist’s life from the tentative stages to
greenlight status. As of mid-July there was overwhelming enthusiasm but
little progress on the essentials of bringing Miles to the big screen.
There’s no script and no director, but a few A-listers are lobbying to
give voice to Miles’ unmistakable whisper.
Wilburn, who lived with Miles and played in his band from 1984 to
1987, said a biopic on his uncle is long overdue. “People thought they
knew Miles, but they probably only knew one side of Miles. We want to
tell the story of his life and his craft. We want to show how he changed
the course of music, how he came to that thirst and drive that kept him
going until he passed away. We can’t get it all in the film, but we
want to touch on the important periods in his life. And there was a dark
side. You have to touch on that, too. My other uncle, Vernon, used to
say, ‘Miles was no angel.’”
The estate has been in talks with director Antoine Fuqua, who guided
Denzel Washington to his Oscar for Training Day. “Antoine’s excited
about this project,” Wilburn says. “When you talk to him, you can feel
the fire.”
Porter says the estate has also been speaking with actor Don Cheadle,
who Porter says has been quoted in Ebony magazine saying his dream is
to play Miles Davis. Cheadle received a best-actor nomination for his
performance in Hotel Rwanda. “We’ve been having intimate conversations
with both of them,” Porter says. “We are locking in on a writer, and
then we’re going to a new studio to lock in the project and get it
made.” He adds that since the project’s been generating buzz, Terrence
Howard, who also has a best-actor nomination for Hustle & Flow, has
expressed interest in playing Miles.
Both Porter and Wilburn say they want the biopic on Miles to rival
the artistic and commercial success of Ray, which chronicled the life of
Ray Charles and earned Jamie Foxx an Oscar for best actor.
“Hollywood is tripping all over itself to lock up story-life rights,”
says CMG’s Faber. “We are constantly being solicited to give options
for the right to pursue investors and get everything in place for a
biopic. If the artist still maintains publishing rights, it can be very
significant for the estate.”
The thinking that guides family members in charge of the estate is
simple: Push the legacy forward, don’t harm the legacy and keep the
branding cool. But family rivalries aired in public may blur the
message. Miles’ other sons, Gregory and Miles IV, weren’t included in
his will and haven’t been involved in plans to promote and continue his
legacy.
This month Gregory Davis is slated to release Dark Magus: The Jekyll
and Hyde Life of Miles Davis by Backbeat Books. The 224-page read, with a
foreword by Clark Terry, will offer a front seat to life with Miles on
the road, backstage and at home. Gregory says the book is an attempt to
pull away the public façade: “They will get insight from someone who
traveled with him. An inside view of this great international icon and
his first son, who served as his assistant, road manager, nurse and
bodyguard—whatever he needed.” He says writing the book was at times
cathartic. “And painful at times, and very humorous and funny. We had
some good times and some times that were very painful.”
In the documentary The Miles Davis Story, Irene Cawthon, the mother
of Cheryl, Gregory and Miles IV, is shown talking about her pain after
learning her sons were excluded from Miles’ will. “It didn’t matter
about me,” she says. “He could forget about me, but as far as the
children are concerned, with that amount of money you have enough to
leave a little something, but he didn’t.”
Gregory, 60, still thinks the will doesn’t reflect Miles’ true
wishes. “My father was not that angry at his sons or that mean as a
person.” He says his anger over the will or tension with family members
isn’t why he wrote the book. “I don’t harp on that to everybody, but it
never leaves my consciousness.” He says if members of the estate were to
reach out to him in good faith and compensate him for lost revenue, he
would want to reconcile.
Porter says the olive branch is always extended. “We want to work as a
united front. Gregory has rights to certain publishing, as does Miles
IV. No one is trying to interfere with that. I don’t know what has been
conveyed back to Gregory by his lawyers, but I do know that our guys
have extended the branch. If Gregory is not aware of that, that’s
unfortunate.”
The future of Miles is tied to the gritty beats and urban flows that
define hip-hop. As the estate sees it, it’s essential to entrench Miles
with the hip-hop generation and cultivate new fans that will take his
music into new enclaves of social awareness. “What we hope to do is
bridge the gap between young listeners,” Porter says. “And the best way
to do that is create a fusion between hip-hop and jazz—and hip-hop and
Miles specifically.”
The estate’s first foray into this effort is Evolution of the Groove,
produced by Wilburn and scheduled for release in the first half of next
year. Evolution features remixes of classic Miles tracks with hip-hop
and soul artists blessing the music with their personal imprint. “We
went after Nas, and he was doing his record, so we went to Dallas
Austin’s studio in Atlanta and recorded Nas,” recalls Wilburn. “And his
dad, Olu Dara, played some trumpet parts on it and it was killing.” He’s
also interested in getting rapper Q-Tip from A Tribe Called Quest on
the album and has been talking to vocalist Rachelle Ferrell about her
participation.
What the estate is planning isn’t new. Panthalassa: The Music of
Miles Davis 1969–1974, released by Columbia in 1998, featured producer
Bill Laswell remixing songs from the trumpeter’s electric period. And a
number of labels have allowed DJs to rummage through their vaults to
sample and loop songs to provide the foundation for countless hit
records, the most famous being Blue Note, which struck platinum in 1993
with US3’s Hand on the Torch featuring Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe
Island,” which was sampled to create “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia).” Eli
Wolf, vice president of A&R at Blue Note, who oversees the remix
projects, said the formula for success is to find an artist who can
blend a classic sound so it resonates with contemporary tastes. “You
also want to pick creative remixers who have an audience in their own
right.” Porter says the estate averages about 35 requests a week to sample
Miles’ music, but so far it has turned down all queries. “We’ve had
people who want to take a Miles sample and build a career [by]
co-branding their name with Miles and bring no talent to the table,”
Porter says. “We have been very cautious not to do that because that
dilutes the brand.”
There is a misogynistic and violent bent to some hip-hop, and the
estate wants to stay clear of it. Porter tells of an A-list act that
wanted to sample a track from Sketches in Spain, but the approach wasn’t
flattering to women. “The family opted to pass on it even though it
would have generated thousands of dollars for the estate,” says Porter,
who won’t name the act. “We will probably go back to the group and say,
‘It didn’t work with your idea. Here’s our idea, can you do something
that fits?’”
Each time Miles moved his sound a little farther from the comfort of
his listeners, there was backlash and resentment. Porter says the estate
isn’t worried that fans will take exception to the hip-hop-Miles link.
“We don’t want to offend anybody,” Porter says. “Miles passed 15 years
ago, and his legacy was locked in at that point. Anybody who wants to
listen to Kind of Blue doesn’t have to worry, that will be there.” He
adds, “The beauty of this is they can’t get mad at Miles for this. They
can get mad at me, Vince and Erin. We don’t mind if people point the
fingers at us and say, ‘These guys messed up.’” Bassist Marcus Miller, who played with Miles and worked as a
writer/producer from 1985 until his death in 1991, thinks what Wilburn’s
up to is in sync with Miles’ wishes. “He was all about the next step,”
says Miller. “I remember a story about someone walking up to Miles and
saying, ‘Man, I could get with you back in the ’50s, but I can’t get
with what you’re doing now.’ And Miles said, ‘Well, you want me to wait
for you?’”
In the late ’80s Miles expanded his audience by blowing his magic
into pop hits like “Time After Time” and “Human Nature.” The estate
wants to replicate that success in the new era with the international
release of Cool and Collected: The Best of Miles Davis on Sony. Besides
the Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson hits, the record will feature other
mellow, smoother classic tracks like “So What” and “Stella by
Starlight.” “This is designed to create new Miles fans,” Porter says.
“The goal is to reach a population that might not like classical jazz.
We’re looking to grab an audience that may not think they like that kind
of jazz and help them understand they really do.” Miles’ renditions of “Time After Time” and “Human Nature” are still
in heavy rotation on smooth jazz radio. “The reason Miles Davis gets
played over and over is he put his own twist on the song,” says Lori
Lewis, program director at WSMJ in Baltimore. “It’s almost like Miles
owns ‘Human Nature’—and, oh, yeah, Michael Jackson sang it once.”
For those who aren’t interested in remixed music or attempts to sate
pop sensibilities, classic Miles, and plenty of it, is on the way. In
May, Concord released The Miles Davis Quintet: The Legendary Prestige
Quintet Sessions. The four-disc set is unique because it’s the first
time a painting by Miles, “New York by Night,” appears as cover art. The
set includes a disc with transcriptions of his solos. Featured are “Max
Is Making Wax” from a Tonight Show performance and two transcriptions
of “Tune Up,” one from the studio and the other from the Blue Note in
Philadelphia in 1956.
Cheryl Pawelski is senior director of catalog development for Concord
Records. “I was trying to think of something unique with the first box
set we are doing. With the Prestige sessions there isn’t a lot of
unissued material and with the Miles stuff, there’s nothing at all. So I
wanted to give it a different spin.” She says two more box sets are
planned with original cover art and extras like the transcriptions. “I’m
trying to do something new, not only with packaging, but I’m looking
for photos that people haven’t seen before.”
And for the Miles fans who also love Prince, there are talks in the
works to release recordings of Davis playing at one of the Purple One’s
birthday parties. The estate says to stay tuned.
Porter, Wilburn and the estate’s other players have latched onto the
business savvy that Miles displayed in life, always looking to open
himself up to new modes of expression. The caretakers of his legacy are
taking the genius of his life to new audiences through the Web and
motion pictures, and they’re reinventing his music for the next
generation of fans while maintaining his presence as a key figure in
classic jazz. As Wilburn recalls, “He just wanted to reach a broader and
broader audience. He wanted to reach the masses.”
MILES DAVIS SPEAKING:
"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself."
"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."
"For me, music and life are all about style."
"I know what I've done for music, but don't call me a legend. Just call me Miles Davis."
"I'll play it and tell you what it is later."
"I'm
always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every
morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life."
"If you understood everything I say, you'd be me!"
"It's
always been a gift with me, hearing music the way I do. I don't know
where it comes from, it's just there and I don't question it."
"The thing to judge in any jazz artist is, does the man project and does he have ideas."
"It took me twenty years to be able to play that note and you want to understand everything I do in five minutes?"
"I have to change. It's like a curse"
Miles Ahead: Bibliography
Chris Albertson, "The Unmasking of Miles Davis," Saturday Review, November 27, 1971, pp. 67-87 (with interruptions).
Frank Alkyer, "The Miles Files," Down Beat, December 1991, pp. 22-24.
------ (ed.), The Miles Davis Reader. New York: Hal Leonard, 2007.
Amiri
Baraka, "Miles Davis: One of the Great Mother Fuckers," in Amiri and
Amina Baraka (edd.), The Music: Reflections on Jazz and Blues. New York:
William Morrow, 1987, pp. 290-301.
Bob Belden and John Ephland, "Miles... What was that note?" Down Beat, December 1995, pp. 17-22.
Ian Carr, Miles Davis: A Biography. New York: Morrow, 1982.
Franck Bergerot, Miles Davis: introduction a l'ecoute du jazz moderne, editions du Seuil, Paris, 1996.
Luca
Bragalini, "Miles Davis e la Disgregazione dello Standard, parts 1-2"
Musica Jazz, 53/9 (Agosto-Settembre 1997) and 53/10 (Ottobre 1997). An
English translation is available on this website.
Howard
Brofsky, "Miles Davis and My Funny Valentine: The Evolution of a Solo,"
Black Music Research Journal 3, Winter 1983, pp. 23-34.
Gary Carner, The Miles Davis Companion: Four Decades of Commentary. New York: Schirmer Books, 1996.
Ian Carr, Miles Davis: A Critical Biography. New York: Morrow, 1982; London: Quartet Books, 1982.
Jack
Chambers, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis. New York: Da
Capo Press, 1998. Previously published by Quill/Morrow, 1989. Originally
published in two volumes, 1983 and 1985.
Bill Cole, Miles Davis: The Early Years. New York: Da Capo Press, 1994.
George Cole, The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis, 1980-1991. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004.
Todd
Coolman, The Miles Davis Quintet of the Mid-1960s: Synthesis of
Improvisational and Compositional Elements. Ann Arbor: University
Microfilms, 1997.
Julie Coryell and Laura Friedman, Jazz-Rock Fusion: The People, The Music. New York: Delta Books, 1978.
Laurent Cugny, Electrique Miles Davis 1968-1975. Marseille: André Dimanche Éditeur, 1993.
Michael Cuscuna and Michel Ruppli, The Blue Note Label: A Discography. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988.
Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989.
Miles Davis with Scott Gutterman, The Art of Miles Davis. New York: Prentice Hall Editions, 1991.
Scott DeVeaux, The Birth of Bebop: A Social and Musical History. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1997.
Chris
DeVito, Yasuhiro Fujioka, Wolf Schmaler, David Wild, edited by Lewis
Porter, The John Coltrane Reference. New York and London: Taylor and
Francis, 2008.
Gerald Early (ed.), Miles Davis and American Culture. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 2001.
Leonard
Feather, "Miles and the Fifties" (Classic Interview), Down Beat, March
1995, pp. 36-39. (Interview originally appeared in Down Beat July 2,
1964.)
Leonard
Feather and Miles Davis, "Blindfold Test." Davis did five Blindfold
Tests with Feather in Down Beat magazine: September 21, 1955 (pp.
33-34); August 7, 1958 (p. 29); June 18, 1964 (p. 21); June 13, 1968 (p.
34); and June 27, 1968 (p. 33).
Larry Fisher, Miles Davis and Dave Liebman: Jazz Connections. Stroudsberg: CARIS Music Services, 1999.
Yasuhiro
Fujioka, Lewis Porter, and Yoh-Ichi Hamada, John Coltrane: A
Discography and Musical Biography. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1995.
Rutgers University Institute of Jazz Studies, Studies in Jazz, Volume
20.
Ralph J. Gleason, "Miles Davis," Rolling Stone, December 13, 1969.
Frederic Goaty, Miles Davis, Editions Vade Retro, Paris, 1995.
Gregg Hall, "Miles Davis: Today's Most Influential Contemporary Musician," Down Beat, July 18, 1974, pp. 16-20.
Alex Haley, "The Miles Davis Interview," Playboy, September 1962.
Max Harrison, "Sheer Alchemy, for a While: Miles Davis and Gil Evans," Jazz Monthly, December 1958 and Febraury 1960.
Don Heckman, "Miles Davis Times Three: The Evolution of a Jazz Artist," Down Beat, August 30, 1962, pp. 16-19.
Michael James, Miles Davis. London: Faber and Cassell, 1961.
Ashley Kahn, Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece. New York: Da Capo Press, 2000.
Barry
Kernfield, Adderley, Coltrane, and Davis at the Twilight of Bop: The
Search for Melodic Coherence (1958-1959). Ann Arbor: University
Microfilems, 1981.
Bill
Kirchner (ed.), A Miles Davis Reader (Smithsonian Readers in American
Music). Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997.
Jan Lohmann, The Sound of Miles Davis: The Discography 1945-1991. Copenhagen: JazzMedia ApS, 1991.
Daryl Long, Miles Davis For Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers, 1994.
Jeffrey Magee, "Kinds of Blue: Miles Davis, Afro-Modernism, and the Blues," Jazz Perspectives vol. 1, no. 1 (May 2007): 5-27.
Howard Mandel, "Sketches of Miles," Down Beat, December 1991, pp. 16-20.
Barry McRae, Miles Davis. London: Apollo Books, 1988.
Dan Morgenstern, "Miles in Motion," Down Beat, September 3, 1970, pp. 16-17.
Yasuki Nakayama, Miles Davis Complete Discography. Tokyo: Futabasha, 2000.
------, Listen to Miles, Version 6. Tokyo: Futabasha, 2004.
------, Miles Davis: We Love Music, We Love the Earth. Tokyo: Tokyo FM, 2002.
Eric Nisenson, 'Round About Midnight: A Portrait of Miles Davis. New York: Da Capo Press, 1996.
Tore Mortensen, Miles Davis: Den Ny Jazz. Aarhus: n/a, 1976.
Chris Murphy, Miles to Go: The Later Years. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002.
Takao Ogawa a.o., Jazz Hero's Data Bank. Tokyo: JICC, 1991.
Toyoki
Okajima (ed.), The Complete Blue Note Book: Tribute to Alfred Lion.
Jazz Critique Special Edition, No. 3 (1987). Tokyo: Jazz Hihyo, 1987.
------, The Prestige Book: Discography of All Series. Jazz Critique Special Edition No. 3 (1996). Tokyo: Jazz Hihyo, 1996.
Harvey Pekar, "Miles Davis: 1964-69 Recordings," Coda, May 1976, pp. 8-14.
Bret Primack, "Remembering Miles," Jazz Times, February 1992, pp. 17-88 (with interruptions).
Michel Ruppli and Bob Porter, The Prestige Label: A Discography. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Michel Ruppli and Bob Porter, The Savoy Label: A Discography. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980.
Jimmy Saunders, "An Interview with Miles Davis," Playboy, April 1975.
R.B. Shaw, "Miles Above," Jazz Journal, November 1960, pp. 15-16.
Chris
Smith, "A Sense of the Possible: Miles Davis and the Semiotics of
Improvised Performance", in In the Course of Performance: Studies in the
World of Musical Improvisation (edd. Bruno Nett and Melinda Russell),
University of Chicago Press, 1998.
John Szwed, So What: The Life of Miles Davis. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002.
Greg Tate, "The Electric Miles: Parts 1 and 2," Down Beat, July and August 1983.
Paul Tingen, Miles Beyond: Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967-1991. New York: Billboard Books, 2001.
Gary Tomlinson, "Miles Davis: Musical Dialogician," Black Music Research Journal 11/2, Fall 1991, pp. 249-64.
Ken Vail, Miles' Diary: The Life of Miles Davis, 1947-1961. London: Sanctuary Publishing, 1996.
Robert
Walser, "Out of Notes: Signification, Interpretation, and the Problem
of Miles Davis," Musical Quarterly, Summer 1993, pp. 343-65.
Peter Weissmüller, Miles Davis: Sein Leben, Musik, Schallplatten. Berlin: OREOS, 1988.
Richard Williams, The Man in The Green Shirt. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1993.
Posted by Kofi Natambu at 4:21 PM
Labels: 20th century Art, American Culture, Jazz history, Miles Davis
50 great moments in jazz: How Miles Davis's second quintet changed jazz
In 1964, Miles Davis responded to free jazz by enlisting a group of
untried talents who would challenge, rather than flatter, his remarkable
trumpet sound. It was a gamble that paid off ...
It's hard to think of a more significant influence on the
small jazz ensembles of the last four decades than Miles Davis's second
quintet, formed in the mid 60s. Davis was reacting to John Coltrane and
Ornette Coleman's pioneering work and absorbing their
structure-loosening innovations into his own music – just as he had done
on at least three occasions since he first fought his way into Charlie
Parker's 1945 group by a mixture of guile, persistance and raw talent.
Back then, the young Davis had changed bebop's nervous sound with softer
tones and spacious solos – a development that informed the Birth of the
Cool sessions, with more languorous bop lines folded into sumptuous
ensemble harmonies. Then came Davis's rejection of established jazz
chords with 1959's Kind of Blue, as well as collaborations with big-band
composer/arranger Gil Evans that produced jazz concertos such as Porgy
and Bess and Sketches of Spain.
But by the 60s, jazz was being shaken up by the fearless
(some might say foolhardy, or even unlistenable) challenges of musicians
such as Coltrane, Coleman and pianist Cecil Taylor. The exploratory
artist in Davis drew him toward these liberating possibilities, but he
needed the attention of a broader audience. His reaction to free jazz
was to reinvent his quintet with untried talents to see what would
happen. Davis hired 16-year-old drum prodigy Tony Williams, fast-rising
pianist Herbie Hancock (whose jazz-improv and pop instincts appealed to
Davis), plus the Coltrane-esque Wayne Shorter on sax and bass powerhouse
Ron Carter.
The band quickly became Davis's finest group. Their solos
were fresh and original, and their individual styles fused with a
spontaneous fluency that was simply astonishing. The quintet's method
came to be dubbed "time, no changes" because of their emphasis on strong
rhythmic grooves without the dictatorial patterns of song-form chords.
At times they veered close to free-improvisation, but the pieces were as
thrilling and hypnotically sensuous as anything the band's open-minded
leader had recorded before.
Davis employed such unruly young sidemen not to flatter his
remarkable trumpet sound, but to challenge it. I interviewed Hancock for
the Guardian some years ago, and he described Davis's demand that his
talented new partners, respectfully nervous of their boss's legendary
ego at first, should turn up the heat on him. "Tony and I had got into
the habit of playing all kinds of mixed rhythms ... so we started
playing some of those rhythm things behind Miles too, things that were
hard to predict, would sometimes swing and sometimes float. The first
night we did it he stopped a lot in his solos, jerked around as if he
was uncomfortable, not sure what to do, trying to find his way. Next
day, he was more at ease, playing longer phrases, but still not into it.
Then by the last set on the next day, he wasn't struggling with it any
more at all. In fact he played so many unexpected things himself that it
was me that was jerking around! In less than 24 hours Miles had not
just grabbed the ball, but run beyond us with it."
The "second great quintet" first indicated the bridges it
would build between Davis's post Kind of Blue work and his subsequent
enigmatic music on 1964's Miles in Berlin, made after Shorter joined.
Then came the remarkable sequence of albums such as ESP, The Sorcerer,
Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky (hinting at the beginnings of jazz rock,
with Hancock introducing the Fender Rhodes), Filles de Kilimanjaro and
the stunning Live At the Plugged Nickel – but that's another story.
Betty and Miles Davis ringside at the Muhammad Ali-Joe Frazier title
fight in New York, 1971. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis
Forty
years ago, Miles Davis rewrote the jazz rulebook with his album Bitches
Brew – but he never would have made it without the inspiration of the
amazing Betty Mabry, as she now reveals in a rare interview
by Neil Spencer 4 September 2010
As
the incendiary year of 1968 dawned, Miles Dewey Davis found himself in a
most unusual situation: he was no longer hip. The trumpeter had reigned
as the crown prince of jazz for nearly two decades, his music mutating
subtly through hard bop to the mesmeric lyricism of 1959's Kind of Blue.
Where he led, others followed. To go with his music was Miles's persona
as the acme of cool, aloof in immaculate mohair suits, an outsider
unreachable behind an unsmiling glare, with the Zen riddle of "So What"
for his signature tune.
Yet at 41 years of age, the crown prince
of jazz had unaccountably slipped behind the beat of the times. He and
his quintet still held court at New York's Village Gate and were still
making albums of poise and invention such as Miles Smiles (1966) and
Sorcerer (1967), but for a new generation weaned on Motown and Black
Power, Davis and his music were suddenly passé. The young
African-Americans being conscripted to fight for Uncle Sam in Vietnam
went to war humming James Brown, not "So What".
Even arch jazzers
in search of new frontiers were beholden to the "free" experimentalism
of Ornette Coleman rather than to Miles. Still, as Miles would put it in
his 1990 autobiography: "I wasn't prepared to be a memory yet." Over
the next two years, he would pull off a breathtaking act of reinvention,
disbanding his lauded quintet in favour of electrically charged
line-ups using two drummers, two bass players and two, even three,
keyboards. It was a process of exploration that culminated in 1970's
Bitches Brew – an album that spawned a new genre, fusion – which has has
now been lavishly reissued for its 40th anniversary. En route, the
elegant suits were swapped for a garish wardrobe of suede, leather,
jerkins and scarves, the respectful world of jazz clubs for noisy rock
venues.
Miles's embrace of electricity split the jazz world
between excitement and contempt but he remained unrepentant. "I had seen
the way to the future and I was going for it like I had always done,"
he reflected later. "I had to change course to continue to love what I
was playing."
The catalyst for Miles's change, the woman
responsible for his glimpse of the future, was his new lover Betty
Mabry, a 22-year-old model whom he had met late in 1967 and whom he
would make his second wife a year later. Their marriage would last only a
year, yet the influence of Betty Davis (she retained her married name)
on Miles would be profound.
When they met, Mabry was a successful
model, her stunning looks matched by a fiery spirit and a cutting-edge
sensibility. She already hosted her own New York club, the Cellar, and
planned to become a singer, an ambition she would realise a few years
later on a trio of sassy albums. It was Betty who turned Miles's ears
towards rock and funk, to James Brown and Sly Stone and especially to
the cosmic forays of Jimi Hendrix, whom she knew and whose music,
bafflingly, had evaded Miles's radar.
"His world was progressive
jazz, plus he was a lover of classical music, so there were lots of
things he hadn't picked up on," Betty told me in a very rare interview.
Only recently, after the reissue of her long-deleted albums, has she
re-emerged from the seclusion she entered at the close of the 1970s. She
now lives in Pittsburgh, and sounded demure when we spoke, no longer
the wild child.
Her influence on her ex-husband has never been
forgotten, however. Speaking in 2003 about Miles's conversion to an
electric groove, guitarist Carlos Santana recalled Betty as "indomitable
– she couldn't be tamed. Musically, philosophically and physically, she
was extreme and attractive".
The courtship was not without
problems. At their first meeting, Miles patted a stool and asked Betty
to "sit on my hand" – she demurred – and as he drove her home in his
Lamborghini told her he "liked little girls". "I ain't no girl," she
spat back.
Betty's impact on Miles is etched into Filles de
Kilimanjaro, the album he released in the autumn of 1968, which featured
his new wife on its sleeve and contained two tunes inspired by her,
"Mademoiselle Mabry" and "Frelon Brun". Both are modelled on Hendrix
riffs, respectively "The Wind Cries Mary" and "If 6 Was 9".
By
then, Betty had introduced Miles to Jimi in person. The young rock god
and jazz elder hit it off, the mutual fascination leading to talk about
playing together. Betty's influence on Miles extended to his clothes and
his drug habits: "I never took drugs. I was really into my body and I
wouldn't do anything to damage myself. When I was with Miles, he was
clean – he even stopped smoking. I had something to do with it, but it
was his willpower," she says now. "I loved Miles's suits, but he grew
fond of clothes from a place I used to shop at, Hernandos, which had
Mexican designs and which would custom-make items for him."
It
was also Betty who named Bitches Brew: "Miles wanted to call it Witches
Brew, but I suggested Bitches Brew and he said, 'I like that.' Contrary
to what some people said, there was nothing derogatory about it."
Relations
between husband and wife soon soured, however. In his autobiography,
Miles complained she was "too young and wild" and suspected her of
having an affair with the raffish Hendrix, something she flatly denies.
"I was so angry with Miles when he wrote that. It was disrespectful to
Jimi and to me.
"Miles and I broke up because of his violent
temper," she continues. "Other than that, it was a good experience for
me because I developed creatively – Miles produced an album of mine that
never came out."
Even after the pair had split at the end of
1969, they continued to see each other. "When two people are tied
together you just have to find a way through it," she adds
phlegmatically.
Away from Miles, Betty had her own career to
build. Her eponymous first album featured a stellar line-up put together
by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico and including the Pointer Sisters on
backing vocals. Its tough funk grooves were fronted by vocals that
rasped, rocked and screamed with something between delight and threat.
The
subsequent They Say I'm Different and Nasty Gal likewise presented her
as a proud, predatory woman beholden to no man with cuts including "If
I'm in Luck I Might Get Picked Up", "He Was a Big Freak" and "Nasty
Gal", the last declaring: "You dragged my name in the mud… but I used to
leave you hanging in bed by your fingernails." There has been a
widespread assumption that Betty's songs referred to her ex-husband (or
to Hendrix) but she claims she was merely "exercising my creativity".
Despite
critical acclaim, none of her albums achieved much commercial success
(a fourth was never released), their cause not helped by radio's
aversion to their sexual explicitness (pretty mild by today's
standards), but her talent was never in doubt. "She was the first
Madonna, but Madonna was like Donny Osmond by comparison," reckoned
Carlos Santana.
By contrast, Miles's move into fusion won him a
new generation of fans. Following 1969's transitional In a Silent Way,
the electric storm of Bitches Brew in 1970 became the biggest-selling
jazz album in history, shifting 500,000 copies instead of the 60,000
usually commanded by his releases.
The influence of Hendrix is
all over Brew. Like Electric Ladyland, it's primarily a studio creation,
complete with splices and special effects, while "Miles Runs the Voodoo
Down" echoes Jimi's "Voodoo Chile". In 1970, the two men even appeared
on the same bill at the Isle of Wight festival before an audience of
600,000. Miles arrived on stage in a red leather jacket and blue
rhinestone trousers.
Many of Miles's accomplices would go on to
write their own careers in "fusion", among them Joe Zawinul, John
McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Larry Young. For drummer Jack De Johnette,
the process that created Bitches Brew, while thrilling, had human as
much as artistic origins: "It was a midlife crisis played out through
experimental jazz."
Bitches Brew (Legacy Edition) is out now on Sony Jazz
Upper West Side Street Renamed in Miles Davis' Honor
by Jon Weinstein
5/26/2014
NY1 News
Legendary
musician Miles Davis' name will now forever be tied to the Manhattan
street he called home. NY1's Jon Weinstein filed the following report.
The familiar sounds of Miles Davis' famous trumpet filled 77th Street on what would have been his 88th birthday.
Hundreds turned out to rename this block after the musician.
And just how excited was everyone?
After
a string snafu during the street sign unveiling, one enterprising and
athletic fan climbed the lamp post to make sure this stretch between
Riverside and West End officially became Miles Davis Way.
"This
is where the seminal pieces of music were rehearsed. You know, the
quintet was here. We did a record here with man with the horn. It's like
what Graceland is to Elvis, this is to Miles Davis: Miles Davis Way,"
said Vince Wilburn, Jr., Miles Davis' Nephew.
Davis lived on this block and made some of his most memorable music as a resident of the Upper West Side.
The jazz legends who got the chance to play with Davis say this is an honor he deserved.
Miles Davis was not only a legend but he was a trendsetter in terms of pushing the envelope," said jazz musician Bobbi Humphrey.
"He was a pioneer in the change in music. He kept evolving," said jazz musician Jimmy Heath.
"New
York is the place where everybody wants to come because they say if you
make it here, you make it anywhere. So Miles came here and made it
big," drummer Jimmy Cobb said.
Davis'
children say he was inspired by life in the city and even though he
wasn't born here, this is a place he always called home.
"This is kind of like when we think of Miles in New York, we think of 77th," said Erin Davis, Miles Davis' Son.
"He
thought the sounds of New York were musical to him in different ways
and that's how he used it in his music and in his profession," said
Miles Davis' daughter Cheryl Davis.
For the fans, this was a chance to come together to celebrate his life and make sure his music is never forgotten.
"He never stood still, his music keep moving,"
"This is what New York is about. New York is Miles Davis,"
Now, there is a permanent reminder of that famous connection between the city and the legendary musician.
NYC BLOCK PARTY CELEBRATES OFFICIAL UNVEILING OF 'MILES DAVIS WAY' ON THE 88th BIRTHDAY OF MILES DAVIS
NEWS & PHOTO TIP FOR MONDAY, MAY 26, 2014: “Don’t Play What’s There, Play What’s Not There”
-Miles Davis
NYC BLOCK PARTY CELEBRATES OFFICIAL UNVEILING OF “MILES DAVIS WAY” ON 77TH STREET ON THE BIRTHDAY OF MILES DAVIS
WHO:
Cheryl Davis (daughter of Miles), Erin Davis (son of Miles) and Vince
Wilburn, Jr. (nephew of Miles), representing Miles Davis Properties, LLC
and special guests.
WHAT:
NYC Block Party to celebrate official unveiling of “Miles Davis Way” on
the birthday of globally renowned musician Miles Davis, a major
cultural innovator and originator, who changed the course of music five
times. Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill to rename West 77th Street between
Riverside Drive and West End Ave as “Miles Davis Way” in recognition of
the legendary trumpeter, who has become synonymous with New York City.
The Far West 77th Street Block Association is sponsoring the event to
honor and memorialize the iconic genius’s long tenure on the street,
which included regular interaction with the community.
Jazz
legends such as Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey
and Tony Williams (who rented an apartment in Miles’ building) used to
drop by the neighborhood all the time. The West 77th Street location is
where Davis created the music for such celebrated albums as Kind of Blue
and Bitches Brew.
Vince
Wilburn, Jr., nephew of Miles, also joined the rehearsals there and
played drums on five Davis albums including Man With The Horn.
“It’s
a great honor for my uncle,” says Wilburn Jr., adding “The family is
very excited about Miles Davis Way and thanks the community for all of
their support.”
Fans
and well-wishers can show their support by getting the tweet out
@milesdavis and including #MilesDavisWay in their posts, and by leaving
comments at Facebook.com/MilesDavis. For updated news, please visit the official Miles Davis website at www.milesdavis.com.
WHERE: 312 77th Street (between Riverside Drive & West End Ave)
Free & Open to the Public
WHEN: 12 NOON – 2:00 P.M.
12:30 p.m. Official Unveiling
Onsite Interview availability and photo opportunities with RSVP
COMMENTS:
Davis has long been noted for his restless artistry, which played into
his changing the course of music five times, his continued status as a
fashion icon, and his globally recognized artworks, which most recently
have been featured in Paris, Brazil, Montreal and Napa to outstanding
acclaim.
A
quintessential Renaissance Man, Davis continues to break records as the
U.S. Postal Service's most successful and fastest-selling iconic stamp
in recent years, with more than 23 million sold to date.
The
spotlight currently is on Miles Davis with the recent announcement of
his biopic going into production this June, starring Don Cheadle, Ewan
McGregor and Zoe Saldana.
In
conjunction with the official unveiling of Miles Davis Way, Rock Paper
Photo in collaboration with the Miles Davis Estate, will release an
exclusive line of artwork on May 20, featuring the legendary musician.
The line will include rare and iconic limited-edition photographs; fine
art reproductions of paintings and drawings by the artist; and graphic
designs inspired by the imagery and typography of classic Miles Davis
album art, available in contemporary materials such as brushed aluminum
and premium wood. For more information, please visit http://www.rockpaperphoto.com/miles-davis
MILES
AT THE FILLMORE – Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3 – a
critically acclaimed 4-CD box set is also now available, presenting four
nights of historic performances at legendary Fillmore East in New York,
in their complete form for the first time. Additionally, over two hours
of previously unissued music, including bonus tracks that were recorded
at Fillmore West.
Part of W 77th St. in NYC being renamed 'Miles Davis Way'; opening block party happening on Memorial Day
In
honor of the legendary jazz musician, West 77th St. in Manhattan
between Riverside Dr. and West End Ave. is being renamed Miles Davis Way
and to celebrate there will be a block party this Monday (5/26, aka
Memorial Day) from noon to 2 PM which is free and open to the public.
The press release reads:
Mayor
Bloomberg signed a bill to rename West 77th Street between Riverside
Drive and West End Ave as "Miles Davis Way" in recognition of the
legendary trumpeter, who has become synonymous with New York City. The
Far West 77th Street Block Association is sponsoring the event to honor
and memorialize the iconic genius's long tenure on the street, which
included regular interaction with the community.
Jazz
legends such as Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey
and Tony Williams (who rented an apartment in Miles' building) used to
drop by the neighborhood all the time. The West 77th Street location is
where Davis created the music for such celebrated albums as Kind of Blue
and Bitches Brew.
Vince
Wilburn, Jr., nephew of Miles, also joined the rehearsals there and
played drums on five Davis albums including Man With The Horn.
"It's
a great honor for my uncle," says Wilburn Jr., adding "The family is
very excited about Miles Davis Way and thanks the community for all of
their support."
There's
also a new line of Miles Davis artwork and photographs available from
Rock Paper Photo and Miles' new live album, Miles at the Fillmore -
Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3 is out now.
The legendary jazz artist is celebrated in his old neighborhood.
by GREG THOMAS
May 27 2014
The Root
On
May 26, the day that would have been his 88th birthday, the iconic
trumpeter Miles Davis was honored in New York City with the unveiling of
a street, Miles Davis Way, on the West 77th Street block where he lived
in Manhattan from the late 1950s to the mid-1980s. “The contribution he
made to music, especially when he lived on that street, was
immeasurable; some of the greatest music of all time,” says Quincy
Troupe, writer of Miles: The Autobiography.
Manhattan
Borough President Gale Brewer supported the effort for recognition of
Davis on the Upper West Side since the time she was a City Council
member representing the area. “Mr. Davis lived in our community when he
was writing his most prolific music,” she says. “The people in the
neighborhood didn’t forget. They really advocated.”
From
the late 1940s through the 1960s, Miles Davis was central to major
currents of stylistic development in jazz. A leader of leaders, he
mentored many of the young musicians who themselves became great leaders
in jazz. He was what collaborator Gil Evans (“Sketches of Spain,”
“Porgy and Bess”), in the documentary Miles Ahead, called a sound
innovator who changed the sound of trumpet for the first time since
Louis Armstrong.
Miles
apprenticed with Charlie Parker playing bebop, began experimenting with
pastel sound forms with the “cool school” as a journeyman, and swung
into his own leadership and mastery in the Kind of Blue period
(1955-1961), resulting in the first great Miles Davis
Quintet/Sextet—with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers,
Philly Joe Jones or Jimmy Cobb and Wynton Kelley (and Red Garland or
Bill Evans).
The
second great quintet in the 1960s (with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter,
Wayne Shorter, and Tony Williams) integrated elements of bebop and hard
bop with their own take on avant-garde, free jazz experiments in the
1960s. In the late 60s and beyond Davis ventured new vistas, embracing a
mélange of influences, incorporating electronic music, pop, rock, “Sly
Stone, Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Karlheinz
Stockhausen, and Paul Buckmaster,” recalls Troupe.
The
person most responsible for naming West 77th Street between Riverside
Drive and West End Avenue Miles Davis Way was Shirley Zafirau, a
longtime neighbor. Drummer Vincent Wilburn, nephew to Davis, says that
she’s a “hero” to the Davis family. Zafirau is an avid jazz fan who,
after becoming a tour guide, realized that other musical icons such as
Duke Ellington and Chico O’Farrill had streets named after them but
Davis didn’t. For the past five years she’s been fighting for Davis’
recognition in the neighborhood.
After Five Years of Silence, the Lonely Voice of Miles Davis' Trumpet Is Once Again Heard in the Land By Cheryl McCall September 28, 1981 PEOPLE magazine archives Volume 16, Number 13
When
Miles Davis stopped performing in the spring of 1976, rumors flew that
the legendary jazz trumpeter would never play again. Once he had been
sighted occasionally on the streets of New York; now he was not seen at
all. Like an invalid under self-imposed quarantine, Davis remained
hidden away in his Manhattan brown-stone for five years, admitting only
his most trusted friends. Anguished fans began lingering on his block,
staring at his windows, pawing through his garbage for some clue to his
mood, and listening in vain for the lonely, probing sound of his
trumpet. Then came word of a series of operations. Some of his followers
concluded that Miles Davis, embittered and alone, was dying.
Happily,
the mourning was premature. When Davis, 55, returned to live
performances this summer, and released The Man With the Horn, his first
new recording in six years, he was accorded the kind of greeting
reserved for a demigod. Almost immediately, the album soared to the top
of the jazz charts, then became a pop hit as well. Davis had
demonstrated once again that as a composer and stylist, he is one of the
few jazz artists capable of reaching beyond the genre for an audience.
His 60 recordings, so widely imitated by other musicians, wed emotional
sophistication with a rare simplicity of form.
It is a tribute
to his own steely pride that Davis managed to overcome the physical
obstacles that reduced him to silence. In 1972 both of his legs were
broken in a car crash. Three years later his general health began
deteriorating rapidly. In exhausting succession, he underwent surgery
for an artificial hip implant, a recurring problem with polyps in his
throat, a painful leg infection and gallbladder trouble—ailments further
complicated by a bleeding ulcer, a bout with pneumonia and chronic
insomnia. Constantly in pain and drugged into torpor, Davis gave little
thought to his music. "I was so disgusted, man, by those operations," he
says. "The doctors were giving me codeine and morphine and I didn't
even know it. I didn't feel like playing the trumpet, didn't feel like
listening to music. Didn't want to hear it, see it, smell it, nothing
about it." His solitary confinement during recuperation took on a
numbing monotony, and there were reports that he had sunk into a deep
depression. Characteristically brusque, Davis dismisses the notion as
nonsense. "Bored is the word," he says. "So bored you can't even realize
what it was like. I just didn't come out of the house for four years. I
was nuts. I wasn't doing nothing. I didn't even go to the store."
Before
his bizarre confinement, critics had fumbled for superlatives to
describe Davis' playing and his prolific contribution to musical
literature. For decades it was his music that signaled the dawn of new
eras in jazz—from bebop to cool to fusion. Imitators have yet to match
the impact of such seminal Davis albums as Sketches of Spain (1959),
Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), Kind of Blue (1959) and his
controversial gold LP, Bitches' Brew (1970)—still the biggest seller in
his catalog. His immense influence reached beyond jazz to color the
music of Joni Mitchell, Carlos Santana, Rickie Lee Jones and scores of
rock-fusion groups. His genius for recognizing unheralded talent was
equaled only by his generosity in sharing the spotlight.
Fortunately,
Miles never gave up the idea of a comeback. "I knew that if I felt like
playing again, I'd play, even if it was just once," he says. "You never
actually retire from an instrument, because if you've been playing
since you were 12,' it's always in your mind. But I wasn't getting any
melodies or anything in my head, because I wouldn't let myself hear
anything. Then suddenly all these melodies came back to me. I just felt
like playing a little again." His young saxophonist, Bill Evans—no
relation to the late jazz pianist—helped get Miles' creative adrenaline
flowing again, and a romantic reunion with actress Cicely Tyson revived
his interest in life. That wasn't all, says Miles. "The real reason I
came back," he says mischievously, "was because my manager, Mark
Rothbaum, didn't think I could do it."
Now completing an 11-city
U.S. tour, Davis is soon to leave for jazz-crazy Japan, where he will
earn $700,000 for seven performances. Though pacing himself carefully to
preserve his delicate health, he has made few concessions in matters of
style. He still favors the eccentric but impeccable wardrobe that once
earned him high praise from Gentlemen's Quarterly, and he drives a
$54,000 canary-yellow Ferrari. He also uses the same tarnished
mouthpiece he has played with since childhood. The moody, intimidating
mystique and onstage glowering that earned him the nickname Prince of
Darkness have not been dispelled, but he has astonished recent audiences
by facing them rather than turning his back as he did in the past.
After concerts last month in Chicago and Detroit, he shattered precedent
further by returning to the stage and taking a bow to thunderous
ovations.
However electrifying his performances may be, they
exact a grim physical toll. By mid-concert, the chainsmoking Davis is
racked by cramps caused by poor circulation. He begins signaling his
road manager for Tylenol with codeine, which he washes down with a
Heineken. Woozy with fatigue by intermission, he revives himself with
oxygen from a portable tank. "Sometimes, watching him after a
performance when he's so totally spent that he can barely walk, I wonder
if it's worth it," admits Cicely, who attends every concert. "He's very
fragile. His history has been his image, which is only his way of
protecting his vulnerability. He is basically a very shy, very
introverted, very sensitive human being, but few people take the time to
look behind his facade."
Those who have looked speak of the
man's piercing loneliness. Miles often turns to his family, placing 4
a.m. phone calls to his older sister, Dorothy Wilburn, a Chicago
schoolteacher, and his younger brother, Vernon, an IRS employee in East
St. Louis, III. Davis' road managers, James Rose and Chris Murphy, know
the peculiar thrill of being awakened in their hotel rooms in the
predawn hours by one of the world's great musicians and ranking
insomniacs, and being asked if they would care for a cigarette. As
desperate as those long dark hours may seem, they are also the source of
Davis' art. "Music comes to me mostly in the night," says Miles. "I
write it down on anything as soon as it comes—I'd write it on your hand.
Then I tape it, and I never turn the recorder off because I might
stumble onto something and later not know what I played. It's my memory
bank."
Inevitably, critics straining to come to terms with Davis
compare him to originals in other fields—Picasso, say, or Brando. Even
such manifest flattery taxes Miles' patience. "I'm in a class by
myself," he says. "I play very strange—the way sanctified people will
play in church or a hillbilly sings. The words fall on funny beats. It's
not a burden. It's just that I can't play like anybody else and I can't
write like anybody else. I don't mess around with music because I love
music. That is 90 percent of my life, and the rest is Cicely and a few
others."
Among those "others" are his young sidemen, toward whom
Davis is fiercely protective. Irritated by criticism of his band during
the current tour, Miles defends his men as "good musicians and
professionals who could each have their own band right now. I don't
listen to critics." How does he choose the men he will play with? "I
look at a musician's carriage first," he says. "I can tell whether he
plays or not by the way he carries his instrument. And then I look at
how he talks and acts. If he's acting too hip, I know he can't play shit
so I don't bother with him." History has vindicated his credentials as
talent scout. Pianists Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea,
guitarist John McLaughlin, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter of Weather
Report are only a few whose apprenticeships under Davis marked the
beginning of brilliant careers.
Miles learned about exacting
professional standards from his father, Miles Dewey Davis II, a
successful oral surgeon. His interest in music was the legacy of his
mother, Cleota, a piano teacher. Born in Alton, Ill., Miles grew up on a
farm in nearby East St. Louis, where his father raised horses and
pedigreed pigs as a hobby. "My family was strict," he recalls. "I
couldn't fool around. I knew that whatever I did, if it wasn't good, my
father was going to strangle me."
When he was 12, Miles received
his first instruction on trumpet from one of his father's patients,
Elwood Buchanan. He taught the youngster to play without vibrato and
suggested a unique mouth exercise to improve his technique. "He told me
to spit rice all the way to school," Davis remembers. "So I'd have a
mouthful and spit for a mile and a half." Maintaining a straight-A
average at all-black Lincoln High School, he played in the marching
band, had a newspaper route, and worked in his father's office after
school mending dental plates. By the time he was 16, Miles was earning
$100 a week as musical director of Eddie Randle's Blue Devils, a local
jazz orchestra, and jamming with musicians who traveled by boat up the
Mississippi from New Orleans. When Charlie "Bird" Parker and Dizzy
Gillespie came to St. Louis, Miles sat in with them, and the excitement
of their sessions together helped seal his future.
Married at 18
to his first wife, Irene Cawthon, Miles left East St. Louis for New
York, where he enrolled in the celebrated Juilliard School in 1944. "Oh
man, I was excited," he says. "I had never seen a city like that before.
I used to walk in the rain and dig the subways and all sorts of pastry
in the windows." He quickly tracked down Bird Parker, who moved in with
him and Irene and shared their $40-a-week allowance from Miles' father.
After 18 months at Juilliard, Davis left to make his mark in the
then-thriving 52nd Street jazz clubs as a sideman with Coleman Hawkins,
Benny Carter and Billy Eckstine. Forming the first of his own groups in
1946, he quickly discovered his own meter and phrasing. Then came the
celebrated recording sessions that yielded his watershed LP, Birth of
the Cool. Yet his success was by no means assured. "Miles was young and
he had ideas and we were doing new things," says drummer-composer Max
Roach, one of the few survivors of that turbulent era. "But the critics
didn't like it and we weren't making records. New York is tough—even if
somebody is touted as a prodigy."
Like Parker and Hawkins, Davis
eventually fell prey to drugs and liquor. By 1949 he was a heroin
addict, supporting his habit with a stable of seven prostitutes. "I was a
pimp and I made a lot of money," he says bluntly, "but I got tired of
looking at myself. I went home to St. Louis and quit cold turkey. My
father and I were out walking, and he said, 'If you were with a woman
and she left you, I'd know what to tell you. But this you have to do by
yourself.' I went into a room in the farmhouse, shut the door and didn't
come out for about two weeks. I didn't scream, because my father was
next door and I wasn't going to let him hear me. I thought about jumping
out the window to break my leg so they'd give me some drugs. But then I
thought I might break my arm and not be able to play the trumpet, so I
forgot the idea. Each day it got better and better, but that was the
worst thing I've ever been through."
"When Miles put that needle
into himself, he put it into the whole family," says his sister
Dorothy. "Miles has lived through more pain than anyone I know.
Sometimes I think it's a miracle that he's alive at all." It was his
legendary hair-trigger temper, she recalls, that cost him his speaking
voice some 25 years ago, reducing it to the raspy whisper that has
become one of his trademarks. Disregarding orders not to speak for two
weeks after polyp-removal surgery, Miles got into a shouting argument
with a record industry executive and heard his voice fade to a croak in
mid-tirade. Today, his temper no longer at flash point, Miles claims
reports of his moodiness are greatly exaggerated. "It takes a lot to
make me angry and very little to make me happy," he insists. "But
because I don't lie and I'm straining to talk, people think I'm drunk or
high or just mad."
Fiercely and unrelentingly private, Miles
regards most of his life story as no one's business but his own. He
acknowledges, however, that he has been married and divorced four times.
By his first wife, Irene, he fathered three children: Cheryl, 37, now a
preschool teacher in East St. Louis; Gregory, 35, a trumpet player in
New York; and Miles IV, 32, a St. Louis steel-worker. Later he was
married to Frances Taylor, singer Betty Davis and Marguerite Eskridge,
the mother of his only other child, Aaron, 9. His romance with Cicely
began in the mid-1960s, and ended four years later when, at his urging,
she resumed her acting career. They were reunited this spring, are now
living together, and both have been hinting at marriage. "I'm happy now,
but I could have been happier years ago if I had married Cicely," says
Miles. "Yet if I had, she wouldn't be a star now. She was too involved
with me to put all her mind and body into her work."
Obviously,
the years of separation did not cool the attraction. "We're two
opposites and I wouldn't have it any other way," says Cicely. "I like
the unpredictability—it keeps the juices flowing. And even though we
were apart, I never felt there was a break in our relationship." A
fitness and health food fanatic, she has limited Miles' drinking to beer
and permits no drugs except those prescribed by physicians. Under her
care, he is fit enough to resume boxing workouts for the first time in
five years, and to put an end to his life in seclusion. "I had enough of
that," he says. "I did what I wanted—stopped for a while, gave the
trumpet and my head a rest. I'll stay active now until I die."
"As
a musician and as an artist, I have always wanted to reach as many
people as I could through my music. And I have never been ashamed of
that. Because I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever
meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing
locked under glass like all other dead things that were once considered
artistic. I always thought it should reach as many people as it could,
like so-called popular music, and why not? I never was one of those
people who thought less was better: the fewer who hear you, the better
you are, because what you're doing is just too complex for a lot of
people to understand. A lot of jazz musicians say in public that they
feel this way, that they would have to compromise their art to reach a
whole lot of people. But in secret they want to reach as many people as
they can, too. Now, I'm not going to call their names. It's not
important. But I always thought that music had no boundaries, no limits
to where it could grow and go, no restrictions on its creativity. Good
music is good no matter what kind of music it is. And I always hated
categories. Always. Never thought it had any place in music."
--Miles Davis on jazz and popular music, from Miles: The Autobiography (1989), p. 205
THE
MUSIC OF MILES DAVIS: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF
RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS
WITH MR. DAVIS
Miles Davis - "Kind of Blue" - 1959 (Complete Album):
Compositions by Miles Davis: 1. So What - 00m00s 2. Freddie Freeloader - 9m26s 3. Blue in Green - 19m19s 4. All Blues - 24m47s 5. Flamenco Sketches 36m23s 6. Flamenco Sketches (Alternate Take) 45m51s
Album Description: Kind of Blue is a studio album by American jazz musician Miles Davis, released on August 17, 1959, by Columbia Records. Recording sessions for the album took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York City on March 2 and April 22, 1959. The sessions featured Davis's ensemble sextet, with pianist Bill Evans, drummer Jimmy Cobb, bassist Paul Chambers, and saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley. After the entry of Evans into his sextet, Davis followed up on the modal experimentations of Milestones (1958) by basing Kind of Blue entirely on modality, in contrast to his earlier work with the hard bop style of jazz.
Though precise figures have been disputed, Kind of Blue has been described by many music writers not only as Davis's best-selling album, but as the best-selling jazz record of all time. On October 7, 2008, it was certified quadruple platinum in sales by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It has been regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz album of all time and Davis's masterpiece.
This is the one jazz record owned by people who don't listen to jazz, and with good reason. The band itself is extraordinary (proof of Miles Davis's masterful casting skills, if not of God's existence), listing John Coltrane and Julian "Cannonball" Adderley on saxophones, Bill Evans (or, on "Freddie Freeloader," Wynton Kelly) on piano, and the crack rhythm unit of Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Coltrane's astringency on tenor is counterpoised to Adderley's funky self on alto, with Davis moderating between them as Bill Evans conjures up a still lake of sound on which they walk. Meanwhile, the rhythm partnership of Cobb and Chambers is prepared to click off time until eternity. It was the key recording of what became modal jazz, a music free of the fixed harmonies and forms of pop songs. In Davis's men's hands it was a weightless music, but one that refused to fade into the background. In retrospect every note seems perfect, and each piece moves inexorably towards its destiny. --John Szwed
The album's influence on music, including jazz, rock, and classical music, has led music writers to acknowledge it as one of the most influential albums ever made. In 2002, it was one of fifty recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 2003, the album was ranked number 12 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Miles Davis/John Coltrane - Konserthuset Stockholm, Sweden-- (1960 FULL CONCERT):
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew (1970) - full album:
Bitches Brew is a studio double album by jazz musician Miles Davis, released on March 30, 1970 on Columbia Records.
Miles Davis - Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet:
Recorded: On 11 May and 26 October 1956 Miles Davis - Trumpet John Coltrane - Tenor saxophone Philly Joe Jones - Drums Red Garland - Piano Paul Chambers - Bass
01 My Funny Valentine 0:00 02 Studio Chatter 6:04 03 Blues by Five 6:29 04 Airegin 16:32 05 Tune Up/When Lights Are Low 26:40
Miles Davis - Workin' --(Full Album)--1956
Miles Davis - Workin' with the Miles Davis Quintet
Recorded: On 11 May and 26 October 1956
Miles Davis - Trumpet John Coltrane - Tenor saxophone Philly Joe Jones - Drums Red Garland - Piano Paul Chambers - Bass
Tracklist:
01 It Never Entered My Mind 0:00 02 Four 5:26 03 In Your Own Sweet Way 12:40 04 The Theme (Take 1) 18:25 05 Trane's Blues 20:29 06 Ahmad's Blues 29:03 07 Half Nelson 36:27 08 The Theme 41:15
Miles Smiles--Full Album--1966:
Miles Davis--Trumpet Wayne Shorter--Tenor saxophone Herbie Hancock--piano Ron Carter--Bass Tony Williams--Drums
Kofi Natambu, editor of and contributor to Sound Projections, is a writer, poet, cultural critic, and political journalist whose poetry, essays, criticism, reviews, and journalism have appeared in many literary magazines, journals, newspapers, and anthologies. He has written extensively about music as a critic and historian for many publications, including the Black Scholar, Downbeat, Solid Ground: A New World Journal, Detroit Metro Times, KONCH, the Panopticon Review,Black Renaissance Noire, the Village Voice, the City Sun (NYC), the Poetry Project Newsletter (NYC), and the African American Review. He is the author of a biography Malcolm X: His Life & Work (Alpha Books) and two books of poetry: The Melody Never Stops (Past Tents Press) and Intervals (Post Aesthetic Press). He was the founder and editor of Solid Ground: A New World Journal, a national quarterly magazine of the arts, culture, and politics and the editor of a literary anthology Nostalgia for the Present (Post Aesthetic Press). Natambu has read his work throughout the country and given many lectures and workshops at academic and arts institutions. He has taught American literature, literary theory and criticism, cultural history and criticism, film studies, political science, creative writing, philosophy, critical theory, and music history and criticism (Jazz, Blues, R&B, Hip Hop) at many universities and colleges. He was also a curator in the Education Department of Detroit’s Museum of African American History. Born in Detroit, Michigan, Natambu currently lives in Berkeley, California with his wife Chuleenan.
