MILES DAVIS: SEVEN STEPS
THE COMPLETE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS
1963-1964

In 1959 Miles Davis released what is arguably the most influential jazz album of all time, the introspective, meditative Kind of Blue.On that album Davis and his sextet created a jazz recording that emphasized overall mood over the form of any individual tune. Instead of basing their work on the complex harmonic structures that had been the standard in jazz since the inception of bebop, they worked instead with modes, which were scales that had been the basis of medieval and renaissance music.

Neither major nor minor, each different mode created a different ambience. Davis and company based their improvisations on long passages based on the tones of a single mode. This allowed the soloist greater freedom, because he no longer had to conform to the twists and turns of conventional chord changes, allowing his solo to flow more freely from a melodic standpoint. In addition, since modal music tended to be more static, rhythm became more important, both as an element in the soloist’s arsenal and as laid down by the rhythm section. The group on Kind of Blue included Julian “Cannonball” Adderley on alto sax, John Coltrane on tenor, Bill Evans on piano (with Wynton Kelly filling in on one track) and Paul Chambers and Bill Cobb on bass and drums, respectively.

Following the breakup of this group, Miles worked with a group that utilized the Kind of Blue rhythm section made up of Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, and Wynton Kelly. To this he added tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, who Davis didn’t find a particularly inspiring bandmate and who fared poorly in fans’ eyes because he followed John Coltrane’s tenure with Davis. This group is heard primarily on the Live At the Blackhawk collection, though Mobley also appears on Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall and Someday My Prince Will Come.

Much has been made of the fact that Miles never wanted, at any point in his lengthy career, to repeat himself, didn't want to go back and revisit what he had already done. He is not the only jazz musician or artist to express this idea: Lester Young said he didn't want to go over what he had already done with a "repeater pencil". But prior to the creation of his second great quintet, Miles was repeating what he had already done, and appeared to be stagnating. "After the breakup of his great sextet including Bill Evans, John Coltrane, and Cannonball Adderley" writes Harvey Pekar, "Miles seemed to have reached a plateau in his career. He continued to employ top-notch sidemen, including Hank Mobley and (George) Coleman, and to make excellent albums. On them, however, Miles often seemed content to record standards ('My Funny Valentine', 'Stella By Starlight', 'Autumn Leaves') and compositions that he'd made famous in the past ('Walkin'', 'So What')." Why was this? There is some indication that Miles wanted to go further with the modal explorations of Kind of Blue but for some reason did not or could not. He had exhausted his other options: The partnership with Gil Evans had petered out with the debacle of Quiet Nights. Miles did not want to return to the straight bop playing that marked the first great quintet. He had feelings that bebop as practiced by Charlie Parker and his contemporaries was a southwestern style with its roots in Kansas City, and that hard bop, with stylistic influences that included gospel and R&B, was the real sound of the east coast. He wanted to move toward more freedom, away from the harmonic structures of bebop and the great American songbook, but he didn’t want to abandon form altogether. He also wanted to use the language which he saw as a quintessentially African American language, an amalgam of gospel, R&B, and the blues. Miles had helped spearhead the hard bop movement (and revived his career following his bout with heroin addiction) with his 1954 recording of “Walkin’,” setting in motion the antithesis of the cool style he was pioneering by the decade’s end.

Coltrane had released Giant Steps and Ornette Coleman’s Shape of Jazz To Come had set the jazz world on its ear in 1959, the same year as the release of Kind of Blue. Miles wanted to incorporate some of the freedom and excitement of free jazz, and he had already embraced the harmonic freedom of modalism, but he also wanted the earthiness of hard bop. At all phases of his career, Miles knew when he wanted things to change, but he initiated that change slowly, and this is often reflected by the slowness with which his repertoire changed. So, although Pekar is right in pointing out the fact that Miles did not change much about his style of playing and his repertoire in 1963 and 1964. That all changed in 1965 when the pieces of the second great quintet fell into place and they went into the studio to record the album E.S.P., which featured new material by Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, and Wayne Shorter. Seven Steps: The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis, 1963-1964, the 7 CD box set that comprises the latest of Sony Music’s reissues of Davis’ work, covers the period 1963-64, when Davis was searching for this new direction. The set shows how, slowly over the time period covered here, the group coalesced into the second great quintet, with several detours along the way.

 

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