As jazz musicians started realizing that rock and electric bands were stealing their audiences, Miles Davis, who’s alternately been called most important musician in the history of jazz, the man who transformed jazz, and even the man who changed music itself, took the music in a new direction when he invented jazz fusion. In fact, during his lifetime, Miles didn’t change music just once, he did it five times.
Fusion started happening in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like trad jazz, it uses acoustic instruments like trumpet, trombone, saxophone, piano, guitar, bass, and drums, but to all that, fusion also adds heavy use of synthesizers, electric piano, drum machines, and effects-saturated electric guitars.
IN THIS EPISODE:
Santana: Welcome
Interview: Teo Macero; Miles Davis' legendary record producer.
The Free Spirits (featuring Larry Coryell) - Girl of the Mountain
Gary Burton
Norwegian Wood
I Want You
Steve Marcus
Tomorrow Never Knows
Interview: Larry Coryell talks about his early days in '60s New York City
Miles Davis
So What
Stuff
Tout de Suite
Mademoiselle Mabry
In a Silent Way
Interview: John McLaughlin talks about playing with Miles Davis
Interview: Teo Macero
Jimi Hendrix
Little Miss Lover
Miles Davis
John McLaughlin
Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
Time After Time
Interview: Miles Davis talks about Prince
As jazz musicians started realizing that rock and electric bands were stealing their audiences, Miles Davis, who’s alternately been called most important musician in the history of jazz, the man who transformed jazz, and even the man who changed music itself, took the music in a new direction when he invented jazz fusion. In fact, during his lifetime, Miles didn’t change music just once, he did it five times.
Fusion started happening in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like trad jazz, it uses acoustic instruments like trumpet, trombone, saxophone, piano, guitar, bass, and drums, but to all that, fusion also adds heavy use of synthesizers, electric piano, drum machines, and effects-saturated electric guitars.
IN THIS EPISODE:
Santana: Welcome
Interview: Teo Macero; Miles Davis' legendary record producer.
The Free Spirits (featuring Larry Coryell) - Girl of the Mountain
Gary Burton
Norwegian Wood
I Want You
Steve Marcus
Tomorrow Never Knows
Interview: Larry Coryell talks about his early days in '60s New York City
Miles Davis
So What
Stuff
Tout de Suite
Mademoiselle Mabry
In a Silent Way
Interview: John McLaughlin talks about playing with Miles Davis
Interview: Teo Macero
Jimi Hendrix
Little Miss Lover
Miles Davis
John McLaughlin
Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
Time After Time
Interview: Miles Davis talks about Prince
FUSION SCRIPT
Santana – Welcome
Welcome back, friends! I’ve been looking forward to getting together with you again.
This month, we’re picking up a thread in the story of American music that we last thought about in June of 2021, when we explored jazz from its early beginnings through to the rise of the Free Jazz movement. Jazz is America’s true original art form, and for the first sixty years of the 20th century, it was the king of American popular music, with the Blues, R&B, and early Rock music all evolving from it or beside it; all these genres coming out of the American South, and slavery. That all started changing as rock music grew in popularity and complexity. Music fans started switching their allegiances from jazz towards the newer music. A lot of it was easier to follow and relate to.
If you haven’t already listened to that jazz episode from June, 2021, Jazz: In Defense of Equality and Justice For All, you might want to check it out!
As jazz musicians started realizing that rock and electric bands were stealing their audiences, Miles Davis, who’s alternately been called most important musician in the history of jazz, the man who transformed jazz, and even the man who changed music itself, took the music in a new direction when he invented jazz fusion. In fact, during his lifetime, Miles didn’t change music just once, he did it five times.
Jazz Fusion is a form of jazz that includes elements of rock, funk, R&B, electronic music, and more recently, even hip-hop, for instance the brilliant inspiration of Kendrick Lamar and his album To Pimp a Butterfly.
Fusion started happening in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Like trad jazz, it uses acoustic instruments like trumpet, trombone, saxophone, piano, guitar, bass, and drums, but to all that, fusion also adds heavy use of synthesizers, electric piano, drum machines, and effects-saturated electric guitars. In fusion’s earliest days, the late pioneer jazz critic, and one of the founders of Rolling Stone magazine, Ralph Gleason said, “This music is new. This music is new and it hits me like an electric shock and the word “electric” is interesting because the music is to some degree electric music… Electric music is the music of this culture and in the breaking away (not the breaking down) from previously assumed forms a new kind of music is emerging.”
While being heavily influenced by rock, and especially progressive rock – a genre we’ll talk more about in a later episode – Fusion stays true to jazz DNA by way of it’s harmonic sophistication and a major emphasis on improvisation.
Before jazz fusion could become a thing, a number of pieces had to come together. First, we’ve already mentioned that the sound is a major step away from trad jazz due to the electronic nature of the instrumentation. Rock and roll, R and B, Chicago Blues and Funk were already underway before jazz musicians such as Miles Davis started bringing these sounds into their new compositions. These new sounds were reliant on 20th century technology that birthed electric pianos, guitars and basses as well as synthesizers of all sorts – keys, drums, guitar-synths, and even synthesized horns. The second big development on the way towards fusion was the development of the newer genres. A third, necessary ingredient was the rise of post-production editing. In his groundbreaking album, In a Silent Way, Miles Davis began a journey that he would bring to its full realization in the next album, Bitches Brew. To create this music, Miles actually had to invent a completely new approach to composition. For both albums, he asked his band members to join him in the studio where he gave them only the thinnest sketches and directions for what he was after and mostly the music was born in jam sessions. After the jams, his producer was mainly left with the recordings and very little direction even from Miles himself to put together the tracks.
Here's Teo Macero, the record producer from Columbia records who worked with Miles on Bitches Brew, to talk with us about his experiences working in the studio with Miles.
By the late ‘60’s, many jazz musicians were concerned about their shrinking audiences, as there had been a big shift away from jazz, and toward funk, rock, and R&B. Certainly, the most adventurous musicians wanted their music to remain as vital and relevant to the next generations as it had been back in the days of bop, hard bop, and free jazz. Ironically, it was those same genres that had aliented some jazz fans away from the music, because those forms were harder to understand, and generally kind of alienating.
A word of warning, before we dive right in: Fusion, or Jazz Rock as others have called it, can be a terrifying stretch of river, but the view through the rapids is worth the sudden drops and swirling currents! Like any run through the rapids, you’ll want a guide the first time – that’s my job in today’s episode. Like the folk music fans who yelled “Judas” at Dylan when he first went electric, you should have heard the hissy fits from the jazzers and hep cats when Miles Davis went on stage in the mid-60s and started playing along with a bunch of crazy muthas with Afros who fed their instruments through wah-wah pedals! But in the words of another famous fusion musician, the fusion guitarist, Larry Coryell, “If music has something to say to you—whether it’s jazz, country blues, Western or hillbilly, Arabian, Indian, or any other Asian, African, South American folk music— take it. Never restrict yourself.” Like we’ll see, jazz fused itself with many types of music during this period.
Welcome to Season Two, Episode Eleven: Electric Walls of Sound: Jazz Fusion
ONE: Early Fusion
By the late 1960’s, jazz musicians were feeling like they were on the outside, looking in. Their audiences were diminishing, and a lot of the most exciting music was coming from outside their world. Where artists like Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gilespie, Max Roach, Charles Mingus and Django Reinhart had once been the absolute of creative genius in jazz music, that ground was now held by the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Ginger Baker. It’s likely that, had he lived, Jimi Hendrix would have become one of the most important fusion guitarists, along the lines of John McLaughlin, who fronted the Mahavishnu Orchestra, one of the bands we’ll hear in today’s episode.
The Free Spirits
Before Miles Davis important breakthroughs into fusion, there were a few leading edge jazz musicians who were already beginning to point the way. One of these was the guitarist, Larry Coryell. Coryell is recognized as the godfather of jazz fusion – which I’m going to refer to as fusion from here forward. Coryell founded a jazz group he called the Free Spirits, and which included Bob Moses on drums, Jim Pepper on tenor sax, bassist, Chris Hills on bass and Chip Baker on rhythm guitar. These musicians were friends, and living together in run-down shack of a tenement building on New York’s lower east side. Until the Free Spirits, the world of jazz and rock were totally separate. They were the earliest pioneerts in jazz fusion, playing in a style that put exploration, energy, electricity, intensity, virtuosity, and volume up front.
About those earliest days in fusion, Coryell has said, "I got to the city, and all this rock'n'roll, blues, and pop music - was just as popular as jazz. I got into the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan. We were all into the Beatles. The world was into the Beatles! I was not pursuing jazz stuff exclusively. I was doing everything, and a lot of that included trying to write songs. I wanted to try to create a new type of music that would express my generation. I was imagining what it would be like if John Coltrane met George Harrison."
Their bass player, Chris Hills, said, "Coryell was the most technically advanced guitar player around. He comfortably played all the R&B/rock and jazz styles, Pepper brought a unique harmonic concept, a wonderful sound to the bass, and he also had his wonderful Indian heritage. Moses somehow rhythmically merged the diverse influences of world percussion, R&B, and jazz, including [the greats like Ed Blackwell, Elvin Jones, Rashied Ali, and beyond. Chip’s rhythm guitar was the anchor and he was the best human being. In a band of soloists, he gave us a much-needed supporting role, and he wrote wonderful lyrics. I think my role was being one of the first to improvise jazz/rock bass lines. I could lay down this spontaneous groove that responded to everyone else.”
At the time, the thing that was most unique about the Free Spirits was that all the other bands played very arranged music, without much improvisation. The Free Spirits were all about playing mostly improv with very little arrangement. They borrowed heavily from the most extreme avant-garde jazz but blended it into an overall sound that was very accessible.
Their original songs, early on, were based on vocals, even if the song structures were unconventional, with interesting melodies, tempo changes, and unique arrangements. Their composition, Girl of the Mountain, which Baker and CoryelI wrote in a single afternoon, is a great example of their spontaneity.
"Girl of the Mountain" had special meaning for Larry, as it "was written for his first high-school sweetheart. Coryell got her pregnant when they were both still in high school, and that child was given up for adoption as a little girl. Years later, the little girl grew up and came to find Coryell, not knowing anything about him or his music. She now lives in Denver, is married, and is the mother of Corryell’s grandson. They’ve all reunited, living happily ever - a beautiful ending to a rocky start.
Gary Burton
After the release of Out of Sight and Out of Sound, both Coryell and the band’s drummer, Bob Moses, left to form a quartet with vibraphone player Gary Burton. Coryell had been introduced to Burton by a tenor sax man named Steve Marcus. Remember this name. The album they released in 1967 was called Duster.
Burton was a young musician who was as much into the rock scene as he was into jazz. He’d already recorded several Beatles, like this 1966 cover of Norwegian Wood from his album, the Time Machine. He also covered several Bob Dylan’s songs, like this one, I Want You from Blonde on Blonde, on his album, Tennessee Firebird, in 1967. About his music, Burton said in the Duster album’s liner notes, “I'm young, and I like being young. I feel like having long hair, I enjoy rock music, and feel it has an extremely important role in the future of music. It's alive and timely. But I'm not trying to ‘prove' anything with my music or the group. I am only concerned that we play what we are. In its time, Duster sounded provocative and challenging. It's hard to hear it like this now, I know. Still, think how Coryell’s blues-inflected electric guitar was mixed with the gain (or distortion) ‘up’ would have sounded to a jazz audience in those days. There were passages of freeform jazz in it. One-Two-1,2,3,4
Here’s Gary reminiscing about how he and Larry Coryell began their collaboration together:
This is where Steve Marcus re-enters the story. Early in his career, he’d played with big-band giants including both Woody Herman’s and Stan Kenton’s bands. Like Coryell and Burton, Marcus came out of New York City’s jazz scene.
Starting In the late 1960s, he started moving into fusion, and put a band together that we now recall as an early supergroup in the fusion/ jazz-rock world. It was called Count's Rock Band and it featured ex-Free Spirits players Larry Coryell again, as well as Chris Hills on bass, and Bob Moses on drums. The band had two keyboard players, John Handy and the pianist Mike Nock – actually it was Nock that introduced Coryell and Marcus. Nock played in a band called Fourth Way. Gary Burton even shows up on tambourine as well. Count’s Rock was around long enough to release three albums together. The group's sound has been described as the meeting of free jazz and acid rock. Mike Nock said, "Our idea was to play contemporary jazz over rock grooves."
Their first album was called Tomorrow Never Knows, and was a collection of rock interpretations, including Another fusioneer, saxophonist Steve Marcus, had a big-band heritage, having played with both Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, and he was also a part of the New York City scene that had spawned the Free Spirits. In the late 1960s he put together an ensemble that in retrospect is a sort of supergroup of early jazz-rock, Count's Rock Band, including former Free Spirits Larry Coryell on guitar, Chris Hills on bass, and Bob Moses on drums, as well as John Handy and Fourth Way pianist Mike Nock on keyboards; Gary Burton even shows up on tambourine as well. The group's sound has been described as the meeting of free jazz and acid rock. Mike Nock said, "Our idea was to play contemporary jazz over rock grooves." The first album, Tomorrow Never Knows, was released in 1968. It featured the Beatles psychedelic title track, as well Rain from Rubber Soul, the Byrds’ Eight Miles High, Mellow Yellow by Donovan and two other tracks, including a Coryell composition, Half A Heart. It was a really excellent album with outstanding interpretations. Most importantly, it opened the door to everything that was about to come next.
The way this band came together, with the players introducing each other over a span of several years totally reminds me of my college days when I was playing saxophone in a band that played clubs around Orange County and L.A. We went through a number of bass players, always meeting people who were playing shows, or else in our audience, and when we found the right people, we brought them into the fold. I imagine these guys meeting at jam sessions, being impressed by each other’s chops, talking about the music they were each listening to, and seeing the opportunities to be explored. Very cool! Here’s Larry Coryell on a telephone interview talking about those early days in the late 1960’s in New York city.
I want to pivot now, away from these earliest fusion recordings, to talk about the jazz trumpeter, Miles Davis. Like other topics we’ve covered before, Miles is a musician someone could create a whole episode, a season, or even an entire podcast series about. His influence on modern western music has been that important. Like fusion itself, Miles entire career incorporated most of the evolution of jazz. Miles was always about bold, fearless experimentation. From his earliest days, playing bebop alongside alto sax player, Charlie Parker, and fellow horn player, Dizzy Gillespie clear through the end of his life in 1991 at which point he’d progressed through cool jazz, third stream, jazz fusion, rock, and funk. I talked a lot about Miles in that episode from June 2021, and remind you to check it out for more background on jazz.
Anyway, Miles Davis was one of the most personal, gifted and influential trumpet players to grace the second half of the 20th century. His albums are touchstones for many music lovers. Miles was always evolving, always pushing boundaries. From his first album in 1951, The New Sounds, to Kind of Blue (1959) and Sketches of Spain (1960), through the electric pandemonium of Bitches Brew (1970) and Pangaea (1975) and on to slightly more recent albums like Tutu (that won a Grammy in 1987, four years before Miles passed away), people talk about the first time they heard Miles, or the first time they heard their favorite Miles album, in the same way people talk about where they were when they heard that JFK or John Lennon was assassinated. These were personal turning points in their lives.
Besides these early fusion bands and recordings I’ve been sharing so far, most musicians point to a few important Miles albums; In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and Pangea. It’s interesting to look back at his career. You can clearly chart the course he took as he moved into fusion.
Stuff – Miles Davis from Miles in the Sky
The first phase involves the development of his two quintets. He had two, one in the mid ‘50s, but the more important one was in the early ‘60s. One thing about Miles that ran clear through his entire career – he constantly surrounded himself with the greatest players on their respective instruments, and he very often discovered young talent who went on to have massive careers of their own. This was definitely the case with his second quintet. I’m talking about players like Herbie Hancock (master piano and keys player) and Wayne Shorter, the great tenor sax player, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums. Miles recorded the albums ESP, Miles Smiles, Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky, and Filles de Kilimanjaro with this band. Their crowning achievement is The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel, recorded in 1965. After Miles, Tony Williams was the most important player in the quintet. He joined the Second Great Quintet when he was just 17 and immediately had huge impact on the music. Miles actually said that Williams was, “the center of our sound revolved around.” His drumming has a quality of abstraction, especially on Filles de Kilimanjaro where he provides a rhythm but not a conventional beat. Because of this approach, his work was more interesting.
Miles second phase properly began with Kilimanjaro and Silent Way. These two albums foreshadowed the radical departure he was about to leap into with Bitches Brew. In them, he replaced chord-based jazz with a modal approach, and the introduction of electric instruments, including guitars, keyboards, and synths. In Kilimanjaro and Silent Way, Miles began exploring electric jazz-rock.
With Miles in the Sky, Davis had begun to incorporate electric instrumentation into musc, and the pieces themselves remained abstract jazz, not too different from what he’d been doing for a few years already. However, with Filles de Kilimanjaro, he began to turn the corner to a highly experimental direction. Kilimanjaro was the result of Miles listening and returning to tighter song forms and clearer melodies, and continuing with the new mix of sounds he had debuted on Miles In The Sky: trumpet and saxophone with Fender Rhodes electric piano, electric bass, and drums. Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro really work as a couplet in that way. In 1968, these albums sounded hip, and timely, drawing from soul, rock, and electric blues. Actually, they still sound pretty great! Ron Carter’s rich, slinky bass lines would have been right at home on a Motown recording, Herbie Hancock’s subtle, dance-like patterns on the Rhodes were the textural, and dynamic perfect complements, which says a lot about Herbie’s talent, since he was still pretty new in his transition from an acoustic piano to a Rhodes. About his time playing with Miles, Hancock said, ““It wasn’t so much about what Miles said that taught me. It was mostly what he did that taught me. He didn’t have to say a lot about music in order to be an influence on you. Just by his playing…you learned a lot.”
Herbie also explained that, “Miles was such a great listener and had a great ability to be able to use the ideas that came from what the other sidemen played. He would integrate all of that in his own solos and make it sound like true intervention. He would react to what we were playing. That was one thing that really impressed me about Miles’ playing. I’ve tried to incorporate that in my own music.”
Even the cover art of Kilimanjaro was working hard to distance the new music from traditional jazz. An alternative name to describe the music was provided on the front: “Directions In Music by Miles Davis.”
Kilimanjaro is a transition record in more ways than one. It’s really Miles ‘swan song’ for his more traditional jazz connections – In a Silent Way would be his first jazz-rock album, AND, it’s also an album that sees a baton pass from the Second Great Quintet to his new fusion band. Mid way through the recordings, both Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter parted ways with Miles. So, “Touts de Suite” – the track we’re listening to here - “Petits Machins (Little Stuff)” and the title track to the album are all from Miles last session with the Quintet. However, a very young and brilliant Chick Corea—an up and coming, well regarded keyboardist from Boston—and bassist Dave Holland, whom Miles encountered in London, joined that September and played on the album’s final two cuts, “Frelon Brun” and the song I’m playing you now, “Mademoiselle Mabry”. Davis and his arranger, Gil Evans directly quote Jimi Hendrix “And the Wind Cries Mary” in the opening chord sequence.
Years after Kilimanjaro, Miles gave another nod to the influence that rock and R&B had on this album when he mentioned the influence that James Brown had on his composition during as he transitioned from pure acoustic jazz through this, and the next album, In a Silent Way.
In A Silent Way is thought by many to be the first true jazz fusion album. To create it, Miles recruited a new band including Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams on drums, Chick Corea also on keys, John McLaughlin on electric guitar and Dave Holland on bass guitar. A third keyboard player, the Austrian Josef Zawinul rounded out the band.
The entire album was recorded in one three hour session.
Herbie Hancock remembered that, “Miles knew it was about risk taking, and encouraging the musician to capture the moment, how you’re feeling in that moment, and having the daring and conviction to go for it, even if you don’t make it.”
Miles Davis urged the musicians on, looking for the unconventional. For instance, he reportedly told John McLaughlin to play like he’d never used a guitar before. And yet, he also wanted them to play in this broad scope, and relaxed pace. He was coached them to play in a minimalist way, but without feeling like they were restrained.
Here’s John McLaughlin to share his memories of that historic session with Miles.
His choice of Teo Macero as producer for the project was critical to the success of the project – Miles had worked with him many times already, including the albums Kind of Blue, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain, actually some of my favorite Miles Davis albums.
The individual tracks on In a Silent Way were forged out of a three hour jam session, Macero used the studio like an instrument in its own way. Cutting sections out, moving pieces around, pulling from multiple takes to create a single finished track, mixing them in inventive new ways. In doing this, Miles and Macero were, again, decades ahead of the rest of the music industry. Think about it – they were doing this with analog tape. This was way before today’s use of digital. Today, you can literally put the cursor on a section of a sound file, and copy, split, paste, move things around as easily as you can do with a Word document. But back in the day, people were actually cutting analog tape with a razor, and splicing things together with sticky tape. These recordings were actually produced on four track, or at the most eight track systems! Again, today, there are basically an infinite number of tracks that can be created.
To produce music at this high level of artistry, Macero required and had a musician’s sensitivity, and impeccable taste, and empathy for what Miles was trying to create. At this point in Miles career, Teo Macero was to him as George Martin was to the Beatles. The relationship was that close and that important. Let’s listen to Teo Macero describe his working process with Miles now: Teo Macero
Here’s an interesting point that links what Miles was doing with other movements in 20th century art: In my December, 2021 episode, I told you about Musique Concrete and some of the composers who were working in that medium. Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry were two Europeans who were composing with the use of pre-recorded sounds which they would pass through various filters and manipulate, playing them forwards or backwards, making them longer or shorter, making them repeat and loop for instance. What Miles and Teo were doing followed in that same way. John Lennon had also used this technique on a number of his Beatles-era compositions, including Rain, Tomorrow Never Knows, Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, with the circus calliope sound effects, and Revolution 9. Pink Floyd was another band using techniques like that – it’s very important in Dark Side of the Moon, for example. And now, here was Miles Davis using the technique in an entirely different way.
With his next album, Bitches Brew, Miles literally tore up THEE manuscript that jazz as we knew it had been composed on, unleashing a musical hurricane. If James Brown was an inspiration for the first two electric albums, Jimi Hendrix was the launching pad that Miles exploded off of for ‘Brew’. One easy way to hear the obvious way Miles was referencing Hendrix in 1970 with Bitches Brew is to go back and listen to Little Miss Lover from Axis Bold as Love. As you listen to this track, try and imagine Miles soloing over the top of it. (segue into John McLaughlin from Bitches Brew). Jimi Hendrix was every bit the pioneer in rock guitar that Miles was in jazz trumpet, and Miles had real respect for Jimi. In fact, prior to his tragic death at the young age of 27, Davis and Hendrix had been planning to record an album together. I can only imagine how mind-blowing that would have been, and the music world has another reason to lament Jimi’s sad early passing. Let’s listen to an excerpt from the track Miles Runs the Voodoo Down from Bitches Brew now.
Bitches Brew was sort of a point-of-no-return for Miles. Up until this album, he had kept his feet in both camps. Neither Kilimanjaro nor Silent Way were so polarizing as to alienate his jazz audience, and both had enough Rock, R&B and Funk in them to widen his appeal to a younger audience. Neither was Brew an impulsive jump that came out of nowhere. Throughout his career, Miles always made calculated steps – if you looked back at any point in his evolution, you could see the steps he’d taken to get to his latest act of creation. About the making of Brew, Teo Macero said 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.” Still, for many of his older fans, Bitches Brew was just a bridge too far, a leap they couldn’t make with him. The jazz industry itself saw his move as a betrayal, as jazz at the time was ‘on the ropes’, with a shrinking audience and shrinking revenues. Knowing this would be part of the total response, and doing it anyway, was a really ballsy move, I think. At the same time, rock critics were thrilled; they saw Bitches Brew as a reinforcement of their worldview at a time when the influence of the rock music press was increasing.
Bitches Brew grew out of In a Silent Way. They both feature circular grooves, John McLaughlin’s angular guitar playing, and a dominant Fender Rhodes electric piano sound. At the same time, Miles wrote in his autobiography about how he wanted to expand from where Silent Way had left off, both in terms of length, and the size of his band. He went from eight to 13 musicians, and from his three-hour recording session during the recording In a Silent Way, he progressed to a three day studio booking. That final, third day included a massive eleven-piece band; three keyboardists, electric guitar, two basses, four drummers/percussionists and a bass clarinet. The bass clarinet was another inclusion that gave the album its very distinctive sound and massive bottom end.
Besides ensuring that his place in modern music was secure, Miles was working to open opportunities in jazz for the younger generation. His fusion albums, and the music he composed after fusion, were gateways for younger music fans to discover jazz. By identifying, hiring and mentoring young talent, he helped launch the careers of many musicians who became hugely influential in their own rights. This just shows how sharp his instincts were. Even as he aged, he remained open-minded to new sounds that continued to broaden his own art. In the late 1980’s, he had several late-career hits with Michael Jackson’s Human Nature and Cindy Lauper’s Time After Time. Here he is, in a late 1980’s interview, talking about his appreciation for Prince.
Because he was fearless in where he took his music, Davis never felt the need to be contained or limited by the expectations of his audience. Actually, he deliberately intended to subvert all the old rules. As a result, a lot of his fans and critics grew frustrated with how unpredictable he could be.
Actually, I remember as a teenager in the 1980’s watching him appear on various tv shows, like the Grammy’s for instance. At the time, I was really into his Third Stream period, where he’d collaborated with Gil Evans. My young ears just could not relate to what he was putting out, and I wished he’d go back to a more traditional, relatable sound. This wouldn’t change for a long time, even though at the time, I was really into some of the prog bands, like Yes, King Crimson, Rush, and early Genesis. It wasn’t until many years later that I gained an appreciation for what he was doing.
I’ll always remember seeing him in concert in August, 1991, the day after my birthday, at the Hollywood Bowl. He played an unforgettable set of original compositions and covers by Prince, Cindy Lauper, Scritti Politti and Grace Jones that night. Like in most of his sets, his attention was totally on the music. He played facing his band, and walking around the large Hollywood Bowl stage listening to what his band was putting down from every conceivable perspective. I was lucky to be there – it was his very last concert. Less than three weeks later, he died of pneumonia and a stroke.
Well, this brings us to the end of another episode in the American Song podcast series.
We’ll continue this month with a second episode that will talk about some of the great musicians that came out of Miles Davis’ pioneering bands, including Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Jaco Pastorius, and the bands Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra. This episode is available now, at your favorite podcast streaming service! As always, if you’re curious to learn more about the people and music we talked about today, you can hop on over to my Facebook page, American Song Podcast. I always post the links to the research that backs up what I shared with you and you’ll find a few other surprises there, too!
This is Joe Hines, and I’ll see you next time!