By-passing ‘Bitches’ Brew’ I thought I had finally lost Miles Davis somewhere around ‘On the Corner’. I should have known better: people of Miles’s stature don’t just disappear through holes in the artistic ground, even when they seem to go whoring after strange gods.
Having been a devoted Miles admirer at least since ‘Birth of the Cool’, and certainly all through the late 1950s and early 1960s when such masterwork as ‘Kind of Blue’ seemed, coming after the Gil Evans-Miles Davis ‘Miles Ahead’ (though not immediately after) to be extending the language in a genuinely creative way rather than merely making new effects. Miles’s subsequent flirtings with ‘rock’ were perhaps inevitable, in view of the direction he was moving, but I could never see it as anything like as creatively valid. In a sense I was wrong there, too, for Miles has clearly been intent in pulling all sorts of strains and strands together in a way which suggests in the most positive manner the creative force is burning as strong as ever and that the music Miles is currently making is about the most important and illuminating around. Stanley Dance has argued that since Duke’s death, Earl Hines is now the world’s greatest jazz musician. I would never lift a finger to suggest that Fatha was and is anything but the most, in all senses; but deeper considerations, and this new two-LP package in particular, obliged me to advance the name of Miles Davis and not to be deflected by anything. Maybe the term ‘jazz’ is no longer broad enough to cover this kind of music anyway, and maybe it was never meant to be. Certainly in the sense in which Hines operates it seems to have little to do with that in which Miles now works. But then Duke himself was never happy being constrained with the narrow confines of ‘jazz’. He preferred to call it American Negro music (or something like that), and I think it is also nearer to what Miles is doing, and always has been doing.
Even if we have had the vision of Miles clouded to some extent (it is no doubt our own fault) by some things he has done recently, listening to ‘Big Fun’ it is impossible for any ears not hopelessly furred to miss the direct line of evolution from ‘Miles Ahead’, through ‘Milestones’, ‘Kind of Blue’ and ‘Miles in the Sky’. As it happens an album from the ‘Milestones’ period (1958) is also out from CBS this month, so you can follow the connection.
‘Big Fun’ is a four part, or four section, or four movement, offering, one piece to a side in a two-disc set. The lineups will give some idea of what to expect; but only a little idea. There is too much that is complex and far ranging for full and detailed analysis in a review. Again personnels tell a good deal: Great Expectations has Indian ingredients; IFE is African in direction; Go Ahead John is more or less straight jazz with rock foundations (here Miles does some marvellous duetting with himself by double taping – I presume); Lonely Fire seems to bring all the various strands together and is a memorable example of the smouldering, subdued but intense lyricism that has always been Miles’s specific hallmark. It is all Miles music at its very best. I think this set will surely be another landmark, something which Miles has achieved more than once, so much so in fact that it’s almost become a habit. It might even be the issue of the decade. It assuredly explores new and valuable dimensions of our music, most broadly considered.
Discography
(a) Great Expectations (27½ min) – (b) IFE (21½ min) – (c) Go Ahead John (28½ min) – Lonely Fire (21½ min)
(a) Miles Davis (tpt); Khalil Balakrishna, Bihari Sharma (sitar, tambura etc); Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea (elec-pno); Ron Carter (bs); Harvey Brooks (fender-bs); Steve Grossman (sop); William Cobham (dm); Airto Moreira (perc): John McLaughlin (elec-gtr)
(b) Miles Davis (tpt); Michael Henderson (bs); Carlos Garnett (sop); Lonnie Smith (pno); Bennie Maupin (clt/flt); Al Foster (dm); Mtume (African perc); William Hart (dm); Sonny Fortune (sop/clt); Harold I. Williams Jr. (pno/sitar); Badal Roy (tabla).
(c) Miles Davis (tpt); Steven Grossman (sax); John McLaughlin (gtr); Jack DeJohnette (dm): Dave Holland (bs).
(d) Miles Davis (tpt); Dave Holland (bs): Bennie Maupin (bs-clt); Wayne Shorter (sax); Chick Corea (elec-pno); Harvey Brooks (fender-bs); William Cobham. Jack DeJohnette (dm); Joe Zawinul (elec-pno/Farfisa); Airto Moreira, Khalil Balakrishna (Indian instruments).
All recorded NYC, c.1973.
(CBS 88024 (2 discs) £2.99)