LATE NIGHT THOUGHTS ON MILES DAVIS
(Continued)

IV

One of these motifs is surely that of loneliness. What is it like to hear sounds and music in a way that others do not, in a way that is totally out of step with many of one's contemporaries? Miles' tone has been written about extensively, always with the emphasis on its gracefulness, its mannered sound, as if it were almost too refined for jazz. But there is power behind Miles' sound. Not the power of a player like the legendary Buddy Bolden or Louis Armstrong, or the high note antics of a Dizzy Gillespie. Miles' strength comes from a core of absolute self-assurance, as strong and certain as his tone is, at first listen, gentle and shaky. Miles' trumpet is often the solitary voice rising above the ensemble, singing out when open, conspiratorial and intimate when muted. His interaction with the ensemble is always key, too, whether on the Gil Evans-charted albums or the electronic gumbo of In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. So where's the loneliness? In the absolute individualism of the voice that rises out of the crowd, that knows it must rise out of the crowd and be heard, yet in doing so loses something that only anonymity can grant. To constantly set out on new paths, leaving old, comfortable and mastered ones behind, demands an almost Buddha-like discipline and detachment. But in communicating with the listener, Miles allows us all to share in his lonely, superhuman journey.

V

Of the second Quintet albums, I think Miles Smiles has to be my favorite. This group was still the prototype for the small jazz ensemble when I was playing in jazz groups in high school, even though it had been nearly ten years since they had stopped recording. The recordings on Miles Smiles are all first takes, or at least first complete takes. Miles and the group would rehearse the melody of the song and develop the feel of the number from this work on the melody. Miles would then count down and the group would launch into the number, tape machines running. If the number came together and Miles was happy with it, he'd launch into his solo. If it just didn't feel right, he'd stop the group and they'd start over. Once he'd successfully launched into his solo, the group knew they were recording the take for the album. As Bob Belden says in his liner notes to the 6-CD box set of the group's recordings: "Wayne and Herbie did not have the luxury of stopping the band. So when Miles finished, Wayne and Herbie had to be on top of the music. Every performance on Miles Smiles was put together this way. That's why there are no additional complete performances from these two sessions. Even Kind of Blue had one alternate take." If the electronic experiments that Miles would be recording within two years of these sessions still don't make sense to you, listen to the Quintet's recording of Eddie Harris' "Freedom Jazz Dance" from this album. It's all there-the percussive energy, the fragmented, inventive, energetic solos, the bass work that is as much a front-line character in the piece as it is part of the rhythm section. The energy is already there, influenced by the avant-garde jazz of Ornette Coleman's quartet and others. Miles simply redirected the energy away from the complex rhythmic interplay, relying instead on the groove, as funk does, to create a trancelike state that exudes energy simply by gathering momentum. On this tsunami of electronic energy, the horn players, who were not soloists in the normally understood sense of the word, would ride like musical surfers.

VI

In fact, Miles had laid the groundwork for Bitches Brew quite a bit earlier, both with his quintet and with the group he worked with on In A Silent Way. Filles de Kilimanjaro had also moved into electric territory with the aid of Chick Corea and Dave Holland, but it was still a quintet album. In fact, the Miles Davis Quintet stayed intact until just before the recording of In a Silent Way. Some tracks from Bitches Brew, like "Spanish Key" and "Sanctuary" had already been performed by the Quintet in 1968, albeit in vastly different versions. Overall, though, Miles wanted to return to the method he had used on Kind of Blue, providing sketches for the musicians that they hadn't seen before and expecting them to use these sketches as a jumping-off point in terms of mood and style. There were some rehearsals for the recordings on Bitches Brew, but they simply helped provide the framework for the large group and lengthy tracks that Miles envisioned. Actually, the whole recording process could be seen as a rehearsal, as the release of the 4-disc Complete Bitches Brew Sessions makes clear. Miles would point to John McLaughlin or Chick Corea and they would do their thing until Miles stopped the group or decided to alter the soundscape, functioning as a conductor would. In terms of putting the whole thing together, there was a secret weapon: producer Teo Macero. He had carte blanche as far as assembling the recorded sections in any way that would shape them and allow them to gel as compositions. The use of judicious edits was by no means new in the jazz recording world; it was at times employed to shape an unruly improvised solo and keep compositions moving in the way they were intended. Many times they were also done to keep recordings within the time constraints of the main musical medium of the time-the 12" LP record. Often these edits could be somewhat heavy-handed and what was cut wasn't always necessarily inferior material-check out Mingus' Tijuana Moods, later released by RCA as New Tijuana Moods with unedited versions of most of the tracks to see what I mean. But Macero was allowed to become essentially a performer on Brew. He used editing to create whole new motifs and add form to the music that made it much more than simply a jam session. The musicians were as surprised by the final result as anyone else, because, like a movie crew, they had only seen the dailies and had no idea how the final edit would fit together. In this way, Bitches Brew is not only a jazz and rock album, but also an avant-garde classical album and a literary album, as it utilized methods employed by John Cage as well as mimicking the literary "cut-up" technique utilized by writer William S. Burroughs.

VII

It's late and I'm listening to the track "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down". What amazes me is that this doesn't sound like jazz recorded nearly 32 years ago. It could well be released today. It contains elements (particularly in Miles' solos) familiar to jazz fans of the 1950s and early 60s; it has a liberal sprinkling of free jazz energy and rock/funk groove. It has the spiritual and rhythmic essence of African and Caribbean music, and it has the freewheeling, joyous chaos of New Orleans second-line parade music. In short, it is a microcosm of the experiences, influences, stylistic peculiarities, and limitations of the group of musicians creating it, and I know of no better definition of jazz in this century or any other. Thanks, Miles.

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--MIB--