Of all album releases-- pop, jazz, rock, whatever—of the past forty years or so, surely Miles Davis’ On the Corner has continued to stand as one of the most (if not the most) controversial of all time. Part of that stems from the old ‘this ain’t jazz’ argument that all Davis releases from at least In a Silent Way on up were greeted by the jazz community. But there is more to it than that. Recorded and released in 1972, there was barely any acknowledgement of On the Corner as any kind of real musical achievement until into the 1990s, and even then it was relatively scarce. The album was treated as a kind of challenge by Davis to listeners, maybe even a smack in the face, a ‘fuck you’ to pretty much everyone, even those who had admired Davis’ electric work up to this point. Kind of the Metal Machine Music of the jazz world, which makes one wonder what these listeners made of subsequent Davis work such as Get Up With It and the double live sets Pangea and Agharta. Probably most of them had stopped listening by then.

Only through the dual filters of hip-hop and electronica has Davis’ vision come into sharper focus. In addition, Bill Laswell’s reworking of Davis’ electronic work, including tracks from On the Corner, while not to everyone’s liking, made it easier for modern listeners to ‘hear’ the music by moving much of the clutter to the background. Columbia Legacy’s most recent Davis box set, The Complete On the Corner Sessions covers the music recorded during these sessions that span 1969-1972 and released on the albums On the Corner, Big Fun, and Get Up With It. Big Fun was culled from a variety of material Columbia had in the vaults at the time, which was a lot, since Davis was recording constantly. Because of the editing that he and Teo Macero subjected the original sessions to in order to create a finished track, there was massive amounts of music that went unreleased. Big Fun includes material recorded in the months after Bitches Brew was released, music recorded during the On the Corner sessions, and one track, “Go Ahead John,” which was done during the Jack Johnson Sessions. Get Up With It collected material recorded from 1970-1974, and every track from that album is included here with the exception of “Honky Tonk,” which was included on The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions.

In addition , this was a tumultuous time for the United States, poised between the Vietnam and post-Watergate eras, and for African-Americans in particular. Through disciplined exercises in civil disobedience, spirituality, unity, and outright militancy, black people had made more progress in a short time than ever before in American history. That led to the inevitable frustration at the barriers that remained, that refused to yield. While there were a few outbreaks of violence in the wake of this anger, much of it was channeled into community activism and the arts. As a musical leader and a respected artist, Miles Davis felt that he needed to expand his audience within the young black community. These young people no longer listened to jazz, but they did listen to musicians such as James Brown and Sly Stone. It’s not hard to imagine that Davis felt he could be a positive influence on the lives of young black men and women in much the same way. He has said that he wanted to build a young black audience to join the young white audience he had gained with Bitches Brew and subsequent live concerts, and to get out playing of the small jazz clubs that did not offer a chance to make enough money from performing live. Like many longstanding musians, Davis was beginning to learn that the key to continuing his career indefinitely was to continue to perform live on a regular basis. After his semi-retiremenent of 1975-1980, Davis would come to think of the albums as mere snapshot souvenirs of what he was doing at the time for fans to take home, while the real ‘meat’ of his musical development at the time was done in live performance. But at this time records were still important as a means of driving listeners into the concert hall.

In Davis’ autobiography, Miles, he talks about On the Corner being largely a product of the environment within black America at the time:

Of course, Miles then immediately launches into his discussion of how he was influenced in the creation of this music by Karlheinz Stockhausen and Paul Buckmaster, and how Buckmaster stayed at Miles’ house during the sessions and had some influence over them. Buckmaster relates the tale differently, with most of his contributions being largely ignored by the musicians. That’s what makes people find it hard to take Miles at face value; he enjoyed playing head games with people. But I think Miles hits strongly on the real inspirations and the exhilaration of the time, when black people in America were asserting themselves financially, in terms of fashion, in politics, in the entertainment world, and, as had long been the case, in music. In the 1970s more than ever, there was a mass realization of the fact that blues, jazz, r&b, soul, and rock, all rose from a small set of roots and were largely part of the same heritage, but had been broken into separate categories for separate audiences as a marketing scheme by the music industry. In his introduction to Isaac Hayes’ performance at the Wattstax Festival (also held in 1972), Jesse Jackson said:” Today on this program you will hear gospel and rhythm and blues and jazz. All those are just labels. We know that music is music.” During this time music merged freely and without regard for genres and borders, with both profound and banal results. On the Corner, it is safe to say from this perspective in the next century, is among the more profound results.

>>Complete On the Corner Sessions, Continued