Miles Davis: The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (Continued)

<<Previous | Next >>

Miles was always interested in boxing, and as a youngster he used to love to box and to swim. He listened to Joe Louis bouts on the radio, and he noted in his autobiography how the entire neighborhood would go crazy in celebration when Louis knocked out his opponent. Later, in 1952, he approached trainer Bobby McQuillen about taking him on as a boxing student. McQuillen told Davis he wouldn’t work with an addict, and that he should kick his habit first. Inspired in part by the disciplined nature of fighter Sugar Ray Robinson, Miles returned to St. Louis where, with the help of his father, he managed to kick the heroin habit that had temporarily derailed his career. In his essay on Mike Tyson, Gerald Early says of Robinson: “Robinson was the first and only boxer who ever gave the impression of being sophisticated, a cosmopolite—and yet he was unmistakably a black man, perfectly at ease with himself and his blackness.” The same might easily be said of Miles Davis, who made understatement and exactitude highly important elements in the birth and maintenance of his cool persona. “The reason I’m talking so much about Sugar Ray” Miles tells us, “is because in 1954 he was the most important thing in my life besides music. I found myself even acting like him, you know, everything. Even taking on his arrogant attitude. Ray was cold and he was the best and he was everything I wanted to be in 1954. I had been disciplined when I first came to New York. All I had to do was go back to the way I had been before I got trapped in all that bullshit dope scene.”

By ’54 Miles had quit heroin, was back on top with his Miles Davis Allstars recording Walkin’, and was training with McQuillen at Gleason’s Gym in midtown or, sometimes, at Silverman’s Gym in Harlem. He was still working out with McQuillen (now going by the Muslim name of Robert Allah) in 1970 when he recorded these sessions. In fact, Davis may have been in the best physical shape of his life around this time. He was working out consistently, boxing with McQuillen, eating well, and working to stay off drugs. The clear-mindedness, physical exhilaration, and stamina show on Bitches Brew as well as on the live recordings of Miles from 1969 and 1970, and they show clearly on these sessions as well. Miles was playing well, his breath control was excellent, and his trumpet playing had a new, more aggressive attack that fit well with the electronics his bands were using.

“I had that boxer’s movement in mind” says Davis of the music on Jack Johnson, “that shuffling movement like boxers use. They’re almost like dance steps, or like the sound of a train…That train image was in my head when I thought about a great boxer like Joe Louis or Jack Johnson. When you think of a big heavyweight coming at you it’s like a train.” Indeed the first of the two pieces found on the original Jack Johnson album, “Right Off” is a shuffle, the kind of bluesy, swinging beat that Count Basie had championed in Kansas City. But in Paul Tingen’s book Miles Beyond, John McLaughlin remembers that the piece started off as a spontaneous jam session that was recorded. In any event, Miles is referring in this quote to the music that actually ended up on the Jack Johnson album. That music was mostly put down during the session held at Columbia Studio B on April 7, 1970. Reference has been made to a November 11, 1970 session (which was supposed to have yielded the track “Right Off”), but this is inaccurate. From the music recorded on this date plus an unaccompanied trumpet solo by Miles that he had recorded at the end of a session late in 1969, producer Teo Macero constructed the 26 minute 52 second final version of “Right Off.” “Yesternow” utilizes much of the April 7 material as well, but Macero also interjects segments from several different takes of the piece “Willie Nelson,” the unaccompanied Davis trumpet solo, an orchestral interlude, and a segment of “Shhh/Peaceful” from the February 18, 1969 session that yielded In A Silent Way.

The final versions released as Jack Johnson are heard here as the last tracks on the final, fifth CD. But there is a tremendous amount of music to hear before the listener gets to this point, the overwhelming majority of it never officially released before. Just as with Columbia’s previous box sets The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions and The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, tying all of the music here to the single studio album that Davis released in the period is a bit misleading. Much of the music recorded here was never intended for the Jack Johnson project, and a little of it turned up elsewhere, most notably on Live-Evil, Big Fun, Get Up With It, and Directions. However, the breakup of Miles’ studio work into segments is right, just as it was right to include the two pieces featuring Dave Holland and Chick Corea on The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions rather than on the preceeding set of music by the second great quintet, even though those tracks appeared on Filles de Kilimanjaro, the quintet’s final recording.

Nonetheless, Miles definitely had boxing on his mind, as pieces recorded at several of the sessions both before and after those that resulted in Jack Johnson are named after fighters: “Johnny Bratton,” “Archie Moore,” “Duran,” “Sugar Ray,” and “Ali.” He also had in mind the kind of Friday night juke joint where musicians were likely to jam on blues changes and the supercharged funk of James Brown. The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions reveal the most straightforward, funky music of Davis’ entire career. One of the questions that has often been asked is, if Miles wanted to create funky dance music why didn’t he just do it? Why the dense textures, the overlaid tabla rhythms and other trappings that have made his so-called “funk” music seem more like anti-funk? Why couldn’t Miles create something that went straight for the booty, as his former keyboard player Herbie Hancock did on his Headhunters album? The evidence here points to Miles doing exactly that, but of course, he was doing like Miles. Another interesting point is that Miles was very sold on featuring the electric guitar in his band. Since using John McLaughlin on the Silent Way and Bitches Brew sessions, Miles seemed to hear guitar in all of his music. Nonetheless, his band during the period covered on The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions had no guitar. In fact, he still had no guitar at the end of the year when his group recorded their stand at The Cellar Door. Miles invited John to come down and play with the group for one night, and those performances ended up being the ones used for Live-Evil. There’s quite a bit of debate over whether those recordings were representative of the band, with Keith Jarrett going on record as saying that they most definitely were not. When Hancock decided to record a funk album with Headhunters, his band included no guitar at all, only Hancock’s keyboard setup of Fender Rhodes, Clavinet, and a couple of ARP synthesizers as well as some effects. As the seventies wore on the electric keyboard and the electric bass became the calling cards of the new funk sound, with electric guitar often relegated to performing rhythm duties. Miles went against this, abandoning keyboards (or lessening their importance) in favor of guitar, then later adding a second guitar. This made his version of funk sound completely different and out of tune with the prevailing concept of funk in most listeners’ minds.

>>Next: World's Greatest Rock & Roll Album