Year: 2007

I finally made it to 1975 in my trip through the live recordings made by Miles Davis during his electric period in the early 1970s. Part 1 of this adventure is here and Part 2 is here.

In September 1972, just a few months after finishing the jazz/funk/jam album On the Corner, which appears to have been universally panned, Miles recorded In Concert: Live at the Philharmonic Hall. The only remaining band member from the Cellar Door sessions was bassist Michael Henderson, and the only remaining track from 1970 was “Honky Tonk.”

Filling out the band, were Carlos Garnett on sax, Cedric Lawson on electric piano/synthesizer, Reggie Lucas on guitar, Khalil Balakrishna on electric sitar, Al Foster on drums, Badal Roy on tabla, and Mtume on percussion. The resulting recording is two discs of furious jazz fusion jamming.

Disc 1 (“Foot Fooler”) is comprised of four tracks opening with “Rated X,” which starts as a noisy percussion-driven rhythm with Miles and Garnett chirping and squawking along until Henderson takes over about halfway through at which point the track becomes a fast paced funk jam.

The best part of the first disc is “Theme from Jack Johnson,” a fast tempo guitar driven groove featuring Miles blowing some clipped trumpet lines that sounds for all the world like two world class runners pacing each other through the streets of an urban wasteland. The set wraps up with “Black Satin/The Theme,” a mostly bass oriented groove that features some of Miles’ finer wah-wah playing.

I found disc 2 (“Slickaphonics”) a little less interesting, but still a very cool ride. Especially, the second track, “Right Off/The Theme,” which is a hard bassy funk.

Miles’ next live album Dark Magus recorded at Carnegie Hall in March 1974 leaves the more funk based fusion behind for a different approach, one that suggests a blueprint for the style of dark seething funk/rock/jazz soundscapes and atmospheric pieces that Talking Heads’ eventually delved into during their brilliant Remain in Light/Name of this Band period, where dark and dense grooves drove beneath David Byrne’s often manic vocals. The aptly titled Dark Magus contains some of the densest, most sinister jams on record. It’s truly the most evil groove I’ve ever heard.

The band on Dark Magus features two sax players: Dave Liebman and Azar Lawrence as well as three guitarists: Reggie Lucas, Dominique Gaumont and the insanely shredding Pete Cosey who seems to tear through this material like a wrecking ball. There are four tracks, each broken into two parts: “Moja,” “Wili,” “Tatu,” and “Nne.” Each track runs into the other, each being a fast and furious jam with occasional solos (including a smoldering sax piece in the second half of “Moja”).

My favorite piece is “Wili” because here it all seems to come together and fly apart at the same time culminating in a brooding psychedelic-tinged guitar solo that looks back at the blues and drags it into the glorious stew of Dark Magus, Miles’ most bitchin’ brew.

I’ve been listening to this music for years and each time I hear Dark Magus, I discover new things, moments and interactions between Miles and his band that I’d previously missed. This is music that is not for casual listening, only by sitting down and focusing on it does it come alive, like a living world seen from the ground up rather than the air down.

The last two albums from this period are Agharta and Pangaea, both recorded in Tokyo on February 1, 1975. Cosey, Foster, Henderson, Lucas and Mtume return from Dark Magus joined by Sonny Fortune on sax and flute. Agharta was the first set and represents one of the high points in jazz fusion. Like its predecessor, it’s about rhythm and texture and dominated by Pete Cosey’s tremendous guitar work which ranges from the blues through jazz and psychedelia to funk, sometimes in the same solo. The music has a brighter and more open feel than what was heard on Dark Magus.

Pangaea is the only one of these albums I don’t have. I heard it a few years back and liked it, but haven’t bought it yet since these last two are the only ones Columbia has not remastered and rereleased. Do I sense a box set lurking out there? After Agharta/Pangaea, Miles went on hiatus plagued by a host of health problems and addictions. He resurfaced in the early eighties, and I have no idea what his music was like at that point.

He was accused of selling out after he left straight ahead jazz for fusion, but it isn’t selling out for a musician to follow his muse. Perhaps if he’d taken up singing, the sellout argument would work. He taught young rockers what improvisation is about and he forced jazz musicians to challenge the status quo. Still, I wonder what it must have been like for longtime Miles fans to hear this music for the first time in the early seventies.

It doesn’t strike me as odd at all, but then I grew up listening to artists like Sonic Youth and the Grateful Dead whose extended jams full of noise and drone often pushed the limits of what music is just as Miles once pulled jazz apart at the seams when he looked for something new and found fusion.

Last week, we started listening to Miles Davis’ live electric output from the early ’70s and today, we reach The Cellar Door Sessions, a box set that documents four days (Dec 16-19, 1970) of Miles and his band moving away from the Bitches Brew material and beginning to move in a funkier direction.

The new band consisted of Michael Henderson on bass, Gary Bartz on sax, Keith Jarrett on electric piano and electric organ, and Jack DeJohnette on drums joined by percussionist Airto Moreira on the 17th-19th and guitarist John McLaughlin on the 19th. Over the course of the four night stand they worked out on seven tunes: “Directions,” “Yesternow,” “What I Say,” “Inamorata,” “Honky Tonk,” “It’s About That Time,” and “Sanctuary,” with a Keith Jarrett improv preceding each version of “Inamorata.”

Edited versions of some of the recordings from the 19th were released in 1971 on Live-Evil. The rest were kept in the vault until the 2005 release of The Cellar Door Sessions.

Listening through this is a truly amazing trip. Each rendition of each song is slightly different and over the course of the four days each song that is played more than once evolves as the musicians come to more fully understand what Miles was after.

“What I Say,” with its funky groove and simmering intensity forces a body to move. It’s just impossible to sit still while this is playing, particularly the 21 minute version from disc five that features John McLaughlin on guitar. Ever since I first heard it on Live-Evil (incidentally, it’s the only unedited track on that album) it’s been one of my favorite numbers from Miles’ electric live material.

Other highlights include the disc three version of “Honky Tonk,” a fascinating workout for Jarrett. For the most part, it’s a slow plodding tune but Jarrett’s deft touch on the electric piano (far more interesting than Corea’s blocky chord playing earlier in the year) makes the track. There’s a searching quality as Jarrett seems to explore the song’s structure before taking off in flights of notes that eventually settle like birds landing on a sound wave.

On disc four, Miles leads a beautiful and introspective – if short – “Sanctuary,” the only song remaining from Bitches Brew, that cools things down after a scorching “What I Say.” Miles’ trumpet sounds as haunting as ever and leads nicely into one of Jarrett’s pre-“Inamorata” improv moments. That improv leads to my favorite “Inamorata” whereupon the whole band comes back like an engine revving while Miles and Gary Bartz soar above.

The best of this exemplary set, though, is found on the last two discs when John Mclaughlin sat in on guitar. McLaughlin’s playing is intense and explosive as ever, doing to jazz what Hendrix did to rock. Miles’ music of this period screams for the addition of guitar (including screaming guitar), and most of the material for the three quintessential Miles electric studio albums (In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and A Tribute to Jack Johnson) feature McLaughlin. Guitar (expecially his) is the missing ingredient on all of the electric Miles recordings of 1970 until the last sets of the The Cellar Door Sessions. From that point on, the rest of the released recordings from the early ’70s would feature electric guitar.

After The Cellar Door Sessions, I went back to listen to Live-Evil, which from 1971 to 2005 was the only available recording of this music. All of the live music is edited from the sets featuring McLaughlin. I’ve always enjoyed Live-Evil, but now that I’ve heard the unedited versions, I probably won’t go back to it much. The album is filled out with interesting studio material (is this the evil part?) recorded earlier in the year and available in The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions.

1970 was a year in which Miles Davis managed to alienate most of the jazz world by plugging in and incorporating rock style guitar intensity with funk rhythms and jazz improv. This was music unlike any that had ever been heard before. Was it even still jazz or was it something new? Miles seems to be searching for a way to connect with the times and currents swirling around him, the music in the air and on the radio, but though the sounds, electrified, intense and sometimes sinister were changing his trumpet is as moving as ever. Unfortunately, these recordings were where many of Miles’ longtime fans abandoned him.

It was only starting to get interesting.