It was fun reading Darcy James Argue’s response to our Miles Davis post.
Argue writes well and with conviction. “Get Up With It, On The Corner and the rest …these are among my favorite Miles recordings, period…” DJA is persuasive enough in his post for us to spend a little time poking around our record collection tonight and relistening a bit. Nope. The post-Live Evil records are not our scene. Maybe DJA could write a book—or at least an essay—on Miles Davis’ 1970’s work. Perhaps he can parse it so that we can hear it. We are up for the challenge.
(BTW: the previous Miles post was kind of a transcription of a conversation that TBP had in the van last week. Tonight’s post is Iverson solo—he’s not going to start calling around to the other cats to ask about Pete Cosey.)
There are two things to clear up in the TBP/DJA dialogue.
DJA: “The Bad Plus go on to call Miles 'the hippest music director in history,' which is not a bad way of putting it -- except, I don't think that appellation diminishes his artistry in the slightest!”
Neither do we. This was meant as a compliment. Could we have a few more MD’s like MD, please?
DJA: “But is the drop-off in the quality of his bands from 1971-1975 really as dire as they say?” This is in response to our assertion, “During the ‘70’s, he seemed to lose interest in having the best bands and instead concentrated on becoming a rock star personality.” Well, we stand by our sentence, but more information is needed to make our point clear on this point. Apologies. Here’s the breakdown:
While plenty of great musicians played with Davis in the seventies, Davis didn’t care about them the way he used to. In all of his acoustic groups, the hippest music director in history made the most of his material: many of his sideman’s best playing is on a record with Miles Davis. DJA quotes the session index from ’71-75. Well, indeed, take a look. Of all those great players, which of them contributes their best playing on any of those sessions? One: Pete Cosey, who is barely represented anywhere else in the canon. The others are simply not given space for their voices to speak.
Case in point: the saxophonists Dave Liebman, Bennie Maupin, Carlos Garnett, Azar Lawrence, and Sonny Fortune sort of interchangeably furnish chromatic and pentonic flurries over funky vamps. The Liebman case is particularly interesting. He had already recorded a jazz classic with Elvin Jones: Live at the Lighthouse. Lighthouse is THE album to check out post-Trane saxophonists tearing it up 1972 style (Steve Grossman is on it too). But when Liebman went with Miles, he was relegated to being one of many talented cats who don’t make much of an impression on On The Corner etc.
Davis didn’t make any saxophonist before Bitches Brew a cipher. Even George Coleman, Hank Mobley, and Sam Rivers--all of whom are on just one or two records--got to change the sound of their edition of a Miles band in a way no saxophonist of seventies could.
Another example is Al Foster. No phone calls need to be made: all of us in this band consider him a great master. There is no record that Foster doesn't sound good on. But would anyone say, “You want to check out Al Foster? Check out all those Miles Davis 70’s records.” No. You’d probably say check the Joe Henderson trio records, or some straight ahead stuff with Tommy Flanagan or “Royal Garden Blues” off of Branford’s album. Even the Miles Davis '80’s albums like Star People or Decoy have certain tunes where Foster gets to shine. (The 80's albums have more room for the saxophonists too.) But Foster seems underutilized in the 70's, like being buried in the mix with conga players (maryjane style) on Agharta and Pangea, and, in the worst offense, relegated to uninvolved snare rustles for 20 minutes on Get Up With It.
(Since this was written, we've heard Dark Magus for the first time, where Foster is thankfully more forward in the mix and really hitting.)
Miles had decided that HE was going to make the music, not the BAND. Davis and producer Teo Macero sliced and diced and tried to distill an elixir from mostly non-jazz influences. “James Brown meets Stockhausen” is the common description of this period. Too bad J.B. or Karlheinz weren’t actually in the band, maybe it would have been more happening. To the credit of Davis and Macero, the music is often genuinely weird. The opening organ chords of “He Loved Him Madly” on Get Up With It are awesomely dissonant, and played by Davis himself.
It isn’t music that seeks commercial success, but it is music that seeks to crown the Prince of Darkness a King. Miles cared so little about his musicians at this point that the original vinyl issue of On The Corner was released without a personnel listing. What more needs to be said?
(Possibly Get Up With It didn’t have a personnel listing either—does anyone have the original 2 LP set to check? The cassette issue of Get Up With It Iverson grew up with didn’t have one.)
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Duty does require getting the Cellar Door set at some point, which we haven’t heard yet. (We do like Live-Evil, and Cellar Door is reportedly even better.) DJA promises a review, and we remain open to him teaching us how to hear and like this other stuff too.
He also links to be.jazz, which we looked though tonight. Interesting stuff—obviously a good source of internet action in re: music.
