Still Miles Ahead
One of the most influential musicians of the Twentieth Century would have celebrated his 100th birthday this week on 26th May. Apart from being a trumpeter, composer and bandleader, Miles Davis was at the forefront of many styles of jazz, the most hip and fashionable sound until rock ‘n’ roll tried to steal its thunder.
Even then Miles remained relevant, discovering up-and-coming musicians to keep his records and shows fresh and in tune with the times. Over the course of six decades, he released more than 60 studio albums and almost as many live sets. These ranged from bebop and cool jazz to avant-garde and fusion, or jazz rock as some of us prefer to call it.
I got into Miles through a couple of the cooler guys at school in the late Sixties. My oldest friend, Tim Franks, decided he wanted to be a jazz drummer when he acquired his first second-hand kit at the age of 13 and studiously collected every Davis LP from this period onwards. The game-changer was Bitches Brew where Miles audaciously integrated the brass horns of jazz with the guitars and electric keyboards of rock.
Eventually I worked my way backwards to the Fifties and alighted upon Kind of Blue. I’d never been fond of either the trad jazz of my parents’ era or the apparently drug-fuelled bebop which followed in hot pursuit. Here there was something more listenable, Miles’ supreme trumpet performing aerobatics over the piano of Bill Evans, around which much of the album had been planned. Also on board were saxophonists Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley (alto) and fellow modern jazz legend John Coltrane (tenor).
One of the tracks, Flamenco Sketches, is an audio prequel to my favourite Miles Davis album, Sketches of Spain. This was inspired by Spanish composer and Flamenco guitarist Joaquin Rodrigo, with another Evans, Gil, conducting. The sound, re-imagined through Miles’ trumpet, is mournful and reflective, based on an old religious type of Andalusian music. One cut, Saeta, literally means the heart pierced by grief, and the rest of the LP is in a similar vein making it a concept album separate from the rest of his recordings.
Proceeding chronologically another personal favourite is E.S.P. offering the first collection of new material since Kind of Blue. The musicians are also significant, all part of a school who went on to form their own classic bands including Wayne Shorter (Weather Report), Tony Williams (Lifetime) and Herbie Hancock who needs no introduction, especially after his album Future Shock and its massive global hit ‘Rockit’, which paved the way for jazz-hip hop.
The year after E.S.P. saw the same line-up on Miles Smiles (1966) although musically it was much looser, all the performances recorded being first takes. It was part of a very fertile period for this band who went on to make another four albums in the next two years, although some of the best was next to come. It is perhaps best explained by the artist himself in Miles: The Autobiography (Simon & Schuster) which came out just three years before Davis died in 1991.
“1968 was full of all kinds of changes, but for me the changes that were happening in my music were very exciting and the music that was happening everywhere was incredible. These things were leading me into the future and into In a Silent Way, the beginning of a great creative period for me that opened a lot of music in my head. In the next four years I finished about 10 albums.”
Miles would have loved to have worked with James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stewart (Sly and the Family Stone) but they were all too busy with their own projects. “Both Sly and Jimi were great natural musicians, they played what they heard. Plus Jimi came from the blues, like me.”
By this stage Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul had been added to the line-up giving the band three electric keyboard players plus John McLaughlin, the pioneering English guitarist who went on to found the Mahavishnu Orchestra. Joe brought in the tune which named the album although in the book Miles admits he was a little put out by the end result:
“I wanted to make it sound more like rock and Joe’s beautiful melody was hidden by too many chords cluttering it up. He never did like what I did with his composition yet people went on to consider it a classic and the beginning of fusion.”
But then came Bitches Brew which brought in a whole new audience, especially when legendary promoter Bill Graham, owner of the Fillmore East and West theatres in New York and San Francisco became involved. Bitches Brew was all about improvisation – how else could you name a track Miles Runs The Voodoo Down? – and so were the Grateful Dead, led by Jerry Garcia who loved jazz.
“We opened for them at Fillmore West which was an eye-opener for me because there were about 5,000 people there, mostly young white hippies who hadn’t heard of me at all and then we played Fillmore East with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Bill did some important things for music with those concerts. Bitches Brew sold more copies than any other jazz album in history.”
Touring with (Carlos) Santana didn’t do any harm either, the universally adored guitarist behind albums like Abraxas and Caravanserai going on to make the cult classic Love Devotion Surrender with John McLaughlin.
I can’t possibly finish my run down of Miles without mentioning another of those 10 albums which he recorded during those ultra-fertile four years – the jaw-droppingly noise-friendly On the Corner. Miles was fond of this black sheep of the family record too. “It has no label although people thought it was funk because they didn’t know what to call it. On The Corner was actually a combination of some of the concepts of Paul Buckmaster (another composer and arranger famous for working with Bowie, Elton John and later the Stones), Sly and the avant-garde German musical theorist Stockhausen.”
The sleeve ain’t half bad either, a bunch of funky dudes of differing ages and colours grooving and hanging out like there’s no tomorrow. Truth to tell it was the inspiration for my recent memoir My Life With Rock N’ Roll People which covers my 100 biggest interviews. In the same way as I couldn’t be one of them, I could never be one of those funky dudes either. Enough to make you bitch … but in a silent way.
***ends***
