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- Great moments in jazz: How Miles Davis plugged in and transformed jazz...all over again
How the tireless musical innovator came to make, in Bitches Brew, one of the biggest-selling jazz albums of all time
Between 1945, when he hustled his way on to New York's new bebop scene as Charlie Parker's teenage trumpeter, and the turbulent year of 1968, Miles Davis couldn't help being hip. Though tentative in the Parker days, he had a characteristically soft sound and coolly-timed patience of phrasing that became steadily more eloquent and assured through the 1950s and 60s, despite big changes in the musical structures around him.
From his personal stylistic breakthrough at 23 in 1949, when he was involved in the gracefully orchestral Birth of the Cool sessions, through the mid-50s years in a devastating quintet with the young John Coltrane, up to 1959's meditative, scale-based Kind of Blue and then the formation of another groundbreaking five-piece with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis was always at the cutting-edge of creative American music.
But by 1968, Davis was into his 40s, and young audiences were listening to Motown soul and funk, to James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone - not to unplugged contemporary jazz, however good it was. Davis was already edging his way toward a funkier sound within the edgy jazz setting of the Hancock/Shorter group. He was beginning to introduce the sound of the Fender Rhodes piano, and then the electric guitar, first with Joe Beck and then George Benson. In spring 1968, the quintet and Benson quietly slipped this revealing track into the otherwise freebop setting that had produced such classic mid-period Davis albums as ESP and Sorcerer.
Paraphernalia from Miles in the Sky
As Neil Spencer revealed in his interview with Davis's new partner of that time, the model and singer Betty Mabry, the trumpeter's musical transformation, influenced by Mabry, was soon to move into overdrive from these toe-in-the-water beginnings. It wasn't in Miles Davis's nature to go into a life-change cautiously. He declared in his autobiography about this period: "Betty was a big influence on my personal life as well as my musical life. She introduced me to the music of Jimi Hendrix - and to Jimi Hendrix himself - and other black rock music and musicians. She knew Sly Stone and all those guys, and she was great herself. If Betty were singing today she'd be something like Madonna; something like Prince, only a woman. She was just ahead of her time."
Davis had hired Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams in the mid-60s because they were innovative young artists who played in ways he didn't know (but soon learned), and a mixture of happenstance and restlessness was making him ready to do the same all over again. By 1968 the quintet was dissolving, with bassist Ron Carter unwilling to go electric, and the others increasingly absorbed in projects of their own. Davis was also spending time with Hendrix (they discussed a collaboration defeated by the guitarist's premature death), and considering how to create a Hendrix sound within a jazz-rooted ensemble.
Two English musicians, bassist Dave Holland and guitarist John McLaughlin, came into the band, as did pianists Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul (initially alongside Herbie Hancock), and the result was a fresh new sound, somewhere between the cool of Kind of Blue and the blues-funk feel Davis was after, on the album In A Silent Way. Then in 1969, following an initially fractious and then productive dialogue between the trumpeter and rock-minded Columbia Records boss Clive Davis, the seeds of a radical new approach took root.
Miles Davis began sketching pieces for multiple keyboards, with rhythm-patterns drawn from funk, but coloured by his old partner Gil Evans' approach to layering, harmony and texture. In August 1969, he brought his sketches and his new circle of musicians into Columbia's 52nd Street studios, and over three days struck a spontaneously jam-like balance between composition, open-ended jazz improv, funk and Latin-rock grooves and studio technology (with the gifted producer Teo Macero) that would transform jazz and contemporary music all over again.
Spanish Key from Bitches Brew
Bitches Brew was released in 1970, and became one of the biggest-selling jazz album in history - a landmark revisited with exhaustively-documented commemorative packages on its 40th birthday this year. Miles Davis's albums usually sold 60,000 or so - this one made half a million. Many traditional Davis fans didn't like it, but it was the diametric opposite of the commercial sell-out the cognoscenti always fears - the leader's blazing trumpet solos, John McLaughlin's razor-edged guitar or Wayne Shorter's plaintive soprano sax confirm this music to be as freewheelingly creative as anything Davis had recorded. It heralded the birth of jazz fusion, triggered solo careers for Zawinul, McLaughlin, Corea, drummer Jack DeJohnette, organist Larry Young and others - and nourished later chemistries of jazz and funk that have led to creative crossovers with hip-hop and other pop forms today. It was a breakthrough in music-making that seismically shifted jazz.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Audio advent calendar: Domino's Christmas playlist
24 December: And so we reach the end. For our final audio advent calendar entry Domino has put together several hours of festive favourites. Happy Christmas!
We finish our audio advent calendar with four hours of Christmas music chosen by Domino to get you through the festive season. Here's what they had to say ...
Christmas Day is loaded with tough decisions: what to wear, what to cook, what to pass off as a last-minute present and, most importantly, how to soundtrack the special day/domestic row. With this in mind Domino set about taking that final concern off your hands.
We've selected four hours of music from across the festive spectrum to keep the family happy: from the stately classicism of John Williams's Home Alone soundtrack and James Brown's Funky Christmas to indie favourites from Sufjan Stevens and the Fall. There's also an extra helping of novelty courtesy of Eazy-E's Merry Muthafuckin' Xmas.
Spruce up your Christmas day with this Domino playlist
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Happy Christmas from Readers recommend
Last time was all about saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new. We're having a week off, but next time …
Momentous times at Readers recommend. The last ever newspaper column has now run and a new guru is warming up and sharpening whatever it is you need to have really sharp to properly steer this wonderful ship. I'd just like to say what a pleasure it's been to bring this column together. There is a remarkable community here that will, I'm sure, push Readers recommend forward for years to come.
So, it's a week off next week – some obscure religious holiday, can't remember it's name – then we're back with a new topic on 7 January. Anyway, the final A-list looked like this: All Things Must Pass – George Harrison; Life Changes – Wu-Tang Clan; Metamorphosis – Ananda Shankar; If He Had Changed My Name – Nina Simone; Where Are We Going? – Donald Byrd; Just the Way You Are – Billy Joel; Grown So Ugly – Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band; Freedom 90 – George Michael; Changes – David Bowie; The Wind of Change – Robert Wyatt and the SWAPO Singers. As far as the B-list, well, that looks like this ...
Black Sabbath – Changes
Who knew Tony Iommi could play the piano so well? Ver Sabs pull back from the brutalist head-squeezing and wring some tears from a tale of painful change. Covered – delightfully – by the Cardigans.
Blind Willie McTell – Don't You See How This World Made a Change
Recorded in New York in 1933, McTell deals with the change brought about by no lesser person than, literally, God. Look at the believers, "marching round the throne with Peter, James and John".
Tindersticks – The Turns We Took
There is more than a hint of Jimmy Webb's Wichita Lineman on this song from the band's 2008 album, The Hungry Saw. "Our song is carried on the wind," Stuart Staples sings, "and we chase so hard we fall." Change brought on by love, people, that's what we want.
The Lovin' Spoonful – The Other Side of This Life
Written by Fred Neil – this is a hymn to constant, rolling change, to never letting the world grow boring around you. "Half the time, I don't know where I'll go," they sing, "I think I'll get me a sailing boat and sail the gulf of Mexico."
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti – Menopause Man
Not just a change, but the change. Neat.
Dusty Springfield – The Summer Is Over
From 1964 and originally a B-Side, The Summer Is Over marks out change as it happens all around us. "The night runs away with the day," she sings, "the grass that was green is now hay." Pop profundity ahoy.
Buddy Holly – I'm Changing All Those Changes
Buddy wishes he hadn't done the things he did and, more importantly, said the things he said. "I made those changes when I thought you were untrue /but now you're gone I found I'm wrong and there's nothing I can do."
Bill Evans – Waltz for Debby
Part of me – a lot of me – wishes that all pop groups looked and sounded like the Bill Evans Trio. But then they wouldn't be pop groups, would they? Do you see my problem? Anyway, if you're talking about change, then how about the change from childhood to adulthood? "When she goes they will cry," Tony Bennett sings on a later version, "as she whispers, 'Goodbye'. They will miss her, I fear, but then so will I ."
The Judds – Grandpa (Tell Me About the Old Days)
A proper smasheroo from 1986 (WARNING: this video contains dubious social comment). The Judds want Gramps to take them back to a world where promises were kept, families bowed their heads to pray and, wonderfully, "daddy's never go away". What? Not even an overnight stag do in Riga? Are you mad?
Moby Grape – Changes, Circles Spinning
Three guitarists, much hype, 10 singles off their debut album and a career that stalled and never recovered. Whatever, this is a succinctly beautiful piece of late-60s psyche-blues pop. "Changes, circles spinning," they sing, "can't tell the finish from the beginning." Well, I can and this is it. The finish I mean. Or is it the beginning?
Thank you for everything. Readers recommend will return after Christmas.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Guardian readers pick the best songs of 2010
Robyn's Dancing On My Own was our track of the year. But you thought Crystal Castles and Scissor Sisters made better songs
This year has been a mixed bag for music. Critics were keen to praise exciting new genres such as cold wave, drag and zef, which were largely ignored by you lot in favour of songs you actually like. These include Scissor Sisters' Invisible Light, Crystal Castles' Not in Love, Gyptian's Hold You, LCD Soundsystem's Dance Yrself Clean and James Blake's Limit to Your Love. So here's a playlist of your picks (sadly, the final two tracks are preview-only – boo!) to get you through the rest of 2010. Merry Christmas!
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать
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