Miles Davis – In a Silent Way (Columbia Legacy)
The music from the beginning of trumpeter Miles Davis’s “electric” period is much-praised, but after the first three albums, acclaim and exposure drop off considerably. Now that Columbia Legacy’s exhaustive box-set exploration of Davis’s oeuvre has extended later into his career than ever with the new box The Cellar Door Sessions 1970, reminding us that he continued to thrive after Wayne Shorter’s departure, it’s as good a time as any to shine the critical spotlight across the entire breadth of Miles’s electric music. This chronological list is one man’s favorites.
With 1969’s In a Silent WayDavis’s interest in the then-new fusion genre reached its first great flowering on two lengthy, flowing tracks. The undulating lines of keyboardists Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul and guitarist John McLaughlin intertwine in a seamless electric mesh, over which Davis and saxophonist Shorter wax eloquent. For a bigger helping, there’s the three-CD The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions.
Bitches Brew (Columbia Legacy)
Upping the ante, this 1969 double album—with an expanded electric band of shifting personnel, including up to three keyboardists (Corea, Zawinul, and Larry Young—took fusion to more avant-garde realms. Though jazz purists were aghast, it actually is as texturally based and colorful in timbre (notably shaded by the bass clarinet of Bennie Maupin) as Davis’s 1950s work with Gil Evans—but it grooves a lot harder. The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (four CDs) is well worth the extra expenditure.
Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It’s About That Time (Columbia Legacy)
Davis’s touring group with Shorter, Corea, Dave Holland on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums, here joined by Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira, was short-lived (parts of 1969 and ‘70) and made no studio recordings. This two-CD set, this band’s only official release, captures the last time Shorter played as a regular member before leaving to co-found Weather Report. Though jazz purists squawked about Corea using electric piano, Holland sometimes using electric bass, and DeJohnette’s rhythms being closer to rock than to bebop, it’s not as though Davis and company were dumbing-down their music for a rock audience—far from it. It’s fascinating to hear the material from In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew played by a regular—and smaller—group. The level of interaction is mind-boggling, the soloing inspired.
A Tribute to Jack Johnson (Columbia Legacy)
This 1970 soundtrack to a rarely seen film about a black boxing champ is also groove-based, especially on the 25-minute “Right Off,” and spotlights McLaughlin as much as the leader. Some of Teo Macero’s production touches, such as abrupt juxtapositions of different music, were radical by the standards of jazz at that time. The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (5 CD) can be a bit redundant at times but is full of fascinating outtakes and alternates.
On the Corner (Columbia Legacy)
This 1972 LP shows Miles equally influenced by the rhythms of Sly & the Family Stone and the looping structures of European avant-gardists such as Karlheinz Stockhausen. When it was originally released, it contained no information about the musicians; now every solo is identified. On one level, the rhythms are repetitive grooves; on another, their polyrhythmic complexity is daunting. The music is aggressively unjazz-like in all its surface textures and the way it was put together in the studio.
Get Up with It (Columbia Legacy)
This vastly underrated double album draws from 1970-74 sessions. It’s full of stunning tracks: the atmospheric, monumental 32-minute dirge “He Loved Him Madly” (a masterful tribute to then-recently deceased Duke Ellington); the sunny, accessible, Latin groove “Maiysha” and; the funky “Honky Tonk,” “Calypso Frelimo” (another 32-minute marathon), and “Billy Preston”; the low-down “Red China Blues,” complete with harmonica); the twistingly polyrhythmic workout “Mtume”; and the blistering blare of “Rated X.” With as many as three electric guitarists (including skronk-master Pete Cosey) weaving multi-layered patterns along with various horns, the rock-solid basslines of Michael Henderson, and arsenals of drums, this set (Davis’s last studio recordings before his 1975-81 hiatus) repays the deepest listening.
Agharta (Columbia Legacy)
Made in the throes of pain – Miles had a serious hip ailment and various other medical problems – this double album recorded live in Japan in 1975, just before his five-year sabbatical, wasn’t issued until several years later. Keyed by the coruscating guitars of Cosey and Reggie Lucas, with the versatile Sonny Fortune reaching his apex as a saxophonist and flutist, it’s a shattering, cathartic outburst.
Pangaea (Columbia Legacy)
Agharta was recorded at an afternoon concert; this is the evening concert from the same day.
We Want Miles (Sony International)
Recorded at 1981 concerts after Davis’s comeback, this was like a compromise between his dense 1970s work and his airy acoustic jazz; it even found him returning to an old repertoire staple, “My Man’s Gone Now,” in an intensely brooding 20-minute version. Guitarist Mike Stern helps Miles return to the blues with some primal blasts, while electric bassist Marcus Miller and drummer Al Foster lay down grooves that partake of both funk and bebop. Here’s hoping Legacy puts this overlooked classic in print in the U.S. (although it can be tracked down as an import).
Aura (Columbia Legacy)
Miles Davis’s electric music still gets nowhere near the respect accorded his acoustic recordings.
Aura is a wonderful aberration from the latter part of Davis’s career, reuniting him with McLaughlin in a big-band setting, composed by Danish composer/trumpeter Palle Mikkelborg, that looks back to the great large-group settings Gil Evans penned for Davis yet at the same time is more modern and electric. There would be more fine music from Miles – Tutu, his jazz-pop collaboration with bassist/producer Marcus Miller, and the soundtrack The Hot Spot, which put Miles in a blues context with John Lee Hooker and Taj Mahal – but never again did Davis play music that inspired him to this peak level of performance.
