Álbum: Bitches Brew
Año: 1970
Género: Jazz / Fusión
Duración: disco 1: 47:05, disco 2: 58:51
Nacionalidad: EUA
Lista de Temas:
Disco 1
1. Pharaoh's Dance
2. Bitches Brew
Disco 2
1. Spanish Key
2. John McLaughlin
3. Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
4. Sanctuary
5. Feio (bonus track)
Alineación:
- Miles Davis / Trompeta
- Wayne Shorter / Sax soprano
- Bennie Maupin / Clarinete bajo
- Joe Zawinul / Piano eléctrico
- Larry Young / Piano eléctrico
- Chick Corea / Piano eléctrico
- John McLaughlin / Guitarra
- Dave Holland / Contrabajo
- Harvey Brooks / Bajo eléctrico
- Lenny White / Batería
- Jack DeJohnette / Batería
- Don Alias / Batería y congas
- Jumma Santos (Jim Riley) / Shaker y congas
Disco 1
1. Pharaoh's Dance
2. Bitches Brew
Disco 2
1. Spanish Key
2. John McLaughlin
3. Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
4. Sanctuary
5. Feio (bonus track)
Alineación:
- Miles Davis / Trompeta
- Wayne Shorter / Sax soprano
- Bennie Maupin / Clarinete bajo
- Joe Zawinul / Piano eléctrico
- Larry Young / Piano eléctrico
- Chick Corea / Piano eléctrico
- John McLaughlin / Guitarra
- Dave Holland / Contrabajo
- Harvey Brooks / Bajo eléctrico
- Lenny White / Batería
- Jack DeJohnette / Batería
- Don Alias / Batería y congas
- Jumma Santos (Jim Riley) / Shaker y congas
Sobre
el disco dicen:
... para muchos oyentes durante este período [fines de los 60], el
término “fusión” tenía un significado muy limitado y
específico. Describía los diversos intentos de combinar el jazz con
el rock. El disco de Miles Davis Bitches Brew
supuso a finales de los sesenta un evento señalado en este sentido.
Este sonido teñido de rock emergente amplió sustancialmente el
público de jazz. Se puede sospechar que desempeñó un papel
decisivo en estimular un mejor entorno financiero para todos los
estilos de jazz durante los setenta. Los aficionados que se acercaron
al jazz a través de la fusión pronto se vieron atraídos por otros
estilos de música improvisada. En consecuencia, la base económica
del jazz se amplió y estabilizó durante este período, después de
años de estancamiento y declive. Abrieron sus puertas nuevos clubes,
proliferaron los sellos discográficos de jazz y los músicos
expatriados volvieron de sus exilios en el extranjero.
Las ventas de Bitches Brew
proporcionaron una medida impresionante de este cambio de las cosas.
Las producciones de mediados de los años sesenta, pese a toda su
aclamación crítica y perdurable significado, eran vendidas en
cantidades por debajo de las cien mil unidades. Pero Bitches
Brew vendió cuatrocientos mil
ejemplares en su primer año. Davis acogió a esta nueva audiencia
con ganas: grabó prolíficamente en los dieciocho meses siguientes,
asombrando a los ejecutivos de Columbia que previamente se habían
encontrado con dificultades a la hora de atraerlo al estudio; se pone
en evidencia ocupándose de las funciones publicitarias de la
compañía y participa en espectáculos televisivos; acepta actuar en
templos del rock como en Fillmore West y Fillmore East, incluso
cuando eso significaba servir como telonero para otra banda. Davis
también estaba trabajando ahora con una amplia gama de músicos y
sonidos —por
ejemplo, en las sesiones Bitches
Brew
Davis tiene doce músicos a sus órdenes, diez de ellos en la sección
rítmica. Sólo Wayne Shorter era un vestigio del quinteto de
mediados de los sesenta.
Algunos
críticos acusaron a Davis de venderse. Pero lo más notable de
Bitches Brew
era lo poco que Davis trató de acercarse a las corrientes más
imitativas del pop-rock. Todos menos uno de los temas duraba más de
diez minutos —prácticamente
garantizado que Davis estuviera poco tiempo en antena—. Las
canciones estaban muy estudiadas para evitar el comercialismo fácil.
Los oyentes que buscaban arreglos rigurosos, ganchos melódicos,
sencillos compases bailables o letras memorables era probable que
quedaran decepcionados. Ésta era una música cruda, sin
filtraciones, laberíntica, discursiva y a menudo rígida. La
amplia sección rítmica creaba una textura densa, espesa. Y el líder
de la banda permanecía tímido, solía dejar a los músicos que
trabajaran sobre largos y estáticos acompañamientos improvisados
antes de entrar con la trompeta. Incluso entonces, las líneas del
metal de Davis estaban muy lejos de ser solos en el sentido
convencional. En su lugar, parecían sólo una capa más de sonido,
situada en la cima de todo ese remolino acústico. Este disco puede
ser, como muchos afirman, el padre de la fusión entre el jazz y el
rock. Pero aún siendo así, es bastante difícil vislumbrar su
parecido paterno con los discos de Grover Washington y Spyro Gyra con
más arreglos que sustancia.
Ted
Giogia, Historia
del Jazz,
Turner/FCE, Madrid, 2002, pp. 488-489.
Bitches Brew is a studio double album by jazz musician Miles
Davis, released on March 30, 1970 on Columbia Records. The album
continued his experimentation with electric instruments previously
featured on his critically acclaimed In a Silent Way album.
With the use of these instruments, such as the electric piano and
guitar, Davis rejected traditional jazz rhythms in favor of a looser,
rock-influenced improvisational style.
Bitches Brew was Davis's first gold record; it sold more than
half a million copies. Upon release, it received a mixed response,
due to the album's unconventional style and experimental sound.
Later, Bitches Brew gained recognition as one of jazz's
greatest albums and a progenitor of the jazz rock genre, as well as a
major influence on rock and funk musicians. The album won a Grammy
Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album in 1971. In 1998, Columbia
Records released The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, a
four-disc box set that included the original album as well as the
studio sessions through February 1970.
Recording sessions took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio over
the course of three days in August 1969. Davis called the musicians
to the recording studio on very short notice. A few pieces on Bitches
Brew were rehearsed before the recording sessions, but at other
times the musicians had little or no idea what they were to record.
Once in the recording studio, the players were typically given only a
few instructions: a tempo count, a few chords or a hint of melody,
and suggestions as to mood or tone. Davis liked to work this way; he
thought it forced musicians to pay close attention to one another, to
their own performances, or to Davis's cues, which could change at any
moment. On the quieter moments of "Bitches Brew", for
example, Davis's voice is audible, giving instructions to the
musicians: snapping his fingers to indicate tempo, or, in his
distinctive whisper, saying, "Keep it tight" or telling
individuals when to solo.
Davis composed most of the music on the album. The two important
exceptions were the complex "Pharaoh's Dance" (composed by
Joe Zawinul) and the ballad "Sanctuary" (composed by Wayne
Shorter). The latter had been recorded as a fairly straightforward
ballad early in 1968, but was given a radically different
interpretation on Bitches Brew. It begins with Davis and Chick
Corea improvising on the standard "I Fall in Love Too Easily"
before Davis plays the "Sanctuary" theme. Then, not unlike
Davis's recording of Shorter's "Nefertiti" two years
earlier, the horns repeat the melody over and over while the rhythm
section builds up the intensity. The issued "Sanctuary" is
actually two consecutive takes of the piece.
Mati Klarwein created this artwork for Bitches Brew's gatefold
cover.
Despite his reputation as a "cool", melodic improviser,
much of Davis's playing on this album is aggressive and explosive,
often playing fast runs and venturing into the upper register of the
trumpet. His closing solo on "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down"
is particularly noteworthy in this regard. Davis did not perform on
the short piece "John McLaughlin".
There was significant editing done to the recorded music. Short
sections were spliced together to create longer pieces, and various
effects were applied to the recordings. Paul Tingen reports:
Bitches Brew also pioneered the application of the studio as a
musical instrument, featuring stacks of edits and studio effects that
were an integral part of the music. Miles and his producer, Teo
Macero, used the recording studio in radical new ways, especially in
the title track and the opening track, "Pharaoh's Dance".
There were many special effects, like tape loops, tape delays, reverb
chambers and echo effects. Through intensive tape editing, Macero
concocted many totally new musical structures that were later
imitated by the band in live concerts. Macero, who has a classical
education and was most likely inspired by '50s et '60s french musique
concrète experiments, used tape editing as a form of arranging and
composition.
"Pharaoh's Dance" contains 19 edits – its famous
stop-start opening is entirely constructed in the studio, using
repeat loops of certain sections. Later on in the track there are
several micro-edits: for example, a one-second-long fragment that
first appears at 8:39 is repeated five times between 8:54 and 8:59.
The title track contains 15 edits, again with several short tape
loops of, in this case, five seconds (at 3:01, 3:07 and 3:12).
Therefore, Bitches Brew not only became a controversial classic of
musical innovation, it also became renowned for its pioneering use of
studio technology.
Though Bitches Brew was in many ways revolutionary, perhaps
its most important innovation was rhythmic. The rhythm section for
this recording consists of two bassists (one playing bass guitar, the
other double bass), two to three drummers, two to three electric
piano players, and a percussionist, all playing at the same time. As
Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill explain, "like rock
groups, Davis gives the rhythm section a central role in the
ensemble's activities. His use of such a large rhythm section offers
the soloists wide but active expanses for their solos."
Tanner, Gerow and Megill further explain that
"the harmonies used in this recording move very slowly and
function modally rather than in a more tonal fashion typical of
mainstream jazz.... The static harmonies and rhythm section's
collective embellishment create a very open arena for improvisation.
The musical result flows from basic rock patterns to hard bop
textures, and at times, even passages that are more characteristic of
free jazz."
The solo voices heard most prominently on this album are the trumpet
and the soprano saxophone, respectively of Miles and Wayne Shorter.
Notable also is Bennie Maupin's ghostly bass clarinet, which was
perhaps the first use of the instrument in jazz not heavily indebted
to pioneer Eric Dolphy.
The technology of recording, analog tape, disc mastering and inherent
recording time constraints had, by the late sixties, expanded beyond
previous limitations and sonic range for the stereo, vinyl album and
Bitches Brew reflects this. In it are found long-form
performances which encompass entire improvised suites with rubato
sections, tempo changes or the long, slow crescendo more common to a
symphonic orchestral piece or Indian raga form than the three-minute
rock song. Starting in 1969, Davis' concerts included some of the
material that would become Bitches Brew.
Bitches Brew was a turning point in modern jazz. Davis had
already spearheaded two major jazz movements – cool jazz and modal
jazz – and was about to initiate another major change (like Davis'
album Filles de Kilimanjaro, the album's cover also sports the
phrase "Directions In Music By Miles Davis" above the
title). Some critics at the time characterized this music as simply
obscure and "outside", which recalls Duke Ellington's
description of Davis as "the Picasso of jazz." Some jazz
enthusiasts and musicians felt the album was crossing the limits, or
was not jazz at all. One critic writes that "Davis drew a line
in the sand that some jazz fans have never crossed, or even forgiven
Davis for drawing." Bob Rusch recalls, "this to me was not
great Black music, but I cynically saw it as part and parcel of the
commercial crap that was beginning to choke and bastardize the
catalogs of such dependable companies as Blue Note and Prestige.... I
hear it 'better' today because there is now so much music that is
worse." Donald Fagen, co-founder of Steely Dan, called the album
"essentially just a big trash-out for Miles" in 2007: "To
me it was just silly, and out of tune, and bad. I couldn't listen to
it. It sounded like [Davis] was trying for a funk record, and just
picked the wrong guys. They didn't understand how to play funk. They
weren't steady enough."
On the other hand, many fans, critics, and musicians view the records
as an important and vital release. In a 1997 interview, drummer Bobby
Previte sums up his feelings about Bitches Brew: "Well,
it was groundbreaking, for one. How much groundbreaking music do you
hear now? It was music that you had that feeling you never heard
quite before. It came from another place. How much music do you hear
now like that?"
The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave Bitches Brew a four-star
rating (out of four stars), describing the recording as "one of
the most remarkable creative statements of the last half-century, in
any artistic form. It is also profoundly flawed, a gigantic torso of
burstingly noisy music that absolutely refuses to resolve itself
under any recognized guise." In 2003, the album was ranked
number 94 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums
of all time (however, it went down one spot 9 years later). Along
with this accolade, the album has been ranked at or near the top of
several other magazines' "best albums" lists in disparate
genres.
Thom Yorke, lead singer of English band Radiohead, noted the album as
an influence on their 1997 album OK Computer: "It was
building something up and watching it fall apart, that's the beauty
of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK
Computer."
A master at dangerous play
'Bitches Brew' changed jazz history
-- and proved again that Miles Davis was the Proteus of 20th century
music.
I first heard “Bitches Brew” the
year it came out, in 1969. It was shocking. The opening sidelong
notes of Miles Davis’ trumpet in “Pharaoh’s Dance,”
insinuating themselves into a restless polyrhythmic jungle of
percussion, oddly knowing keyboards, a seething electric guitar and
an uncanny bass line that seemed to go everywhere and nowhere at
once, announced an alien world, shot through by darkness, whose
beauties were indistinguishable from its terrors.
Listening today to “Bitches Brew,”
the complete sessions of which Columbia has just released in a
four-CD box set, is still shocking. With its maniacal loose-jointed
precision, its self-attuned formlessness, its refusal to answer any
of the questions it asks, its sense of tendrils rising up out of an
unknowable earth, it is a chaotic symphony of the modern — an
electric version of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”
“Bitches Brew” may be the
strangest landmark in jazz history. It wasn’t the first fusion
album — that honor is shared by Gary Burton, Tony Williams’
Lifetime and the Fourth Way, among others. But it stands alone. The
double album with the frightening extraterrestrial Nubians on the
cover marked the first time a first-generation bop master, a giant
whose pedigree went back to Bird, Diz and Max Roach, had ventured
into the mysterious electric forest. And Miles didn’t just add a
few rock elements to his music — he invented a whole new form. And
it was bolder and just plain weirder than any fusion before — and
probably since. “Bitches Brew” should carry a label: “Warning:
Master at Dangerous Play.”
Miles had changed history. But for
the greatest creator of improvisational music in the 20th century,
changing history was par for the course.
In 1968, Miles was evolving so fast
even he couldn’t catch up to himself. At age 43, he stood at the
top of the mountain. For four years, he had led what was probably the
most formidable quintet in the history of jazz. This astonishing
unit, featuring Tony Williams, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock and Wayne
Shorter, completely changed the landscape of jazz. Miles’ so-called
second great quintet moved beyond the bebop formula to explore
radically new territory. On classic albums like “ESP,”
“Nefertiti” and “Miles Smiles,” the quintet made music that
had the intensity and risk-taking quality of avant-garde free jazz,
while still remaining in touch with tonality. The result was the jazz
version of high modernism — music that neither collapsed into the
chaotic, anti-formal gestures of wild men like Cecil Taylor or
Ornette Coleman, nor retold the technically dazzling but familiar
stories of bebop. The group took group improvisation further than it
had ever been taken.
But Miles wasn’t content to rest
there. In 1968, he released “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” an album so
perfect in its out-there idiosyncrasy that no one has even tried to
make anything like it since. In this album — on which “Bitches
Brew” stalwarts Chick Corea and Dave Holland made their Miles
debuts — jazz seemed to have been boiled down into the most
intimate, elusive and enigmatic of essential parts. At once lyrical
and off-kilter, it had the weight of a classical composition — and
was as airy and insubstantial as a soap bubble. Miles said two of his
big influences at this time were Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, and
after the fact you just might be able to tell — but it was a
strange and convoluted line of transmission. You can feel the same
open spaces behind this music that you can in his classic “Kind of
Blue,” but it’s a less comforting space now, uncannier, more pop,
more machinelike, more electric. It’s the first hint of the chill
of those heights Miles was about to explore.
A few months later, Miles jumped
into the unknown, breaking completely with tradition with the
revolutionary “In a Silent Way.” He’d taken these astonishing
leaps at least twice before — with “Birth of the Cool” and with
the Ravel-like tonalities and modal improvising on “Kind of Blue.”
But it is still breathtaking to reflect that Miles went from
“Nefertiti” to “Bitches Brew” in only two years. It’s as if
James Joyce had evolved from the 19th century mastery of “Dubliners”
to the modernism of “Ulysses” to the avant-garde explorations of
“Finnegans Wake” in 24 months.
A trance lullaby of velvet sound,
inspired by the ethereal, open-ended compositions and playing of Joe
Zawinul (who was also the single most important catalyst in “Bitches
Brew”), “In a Silent Way” drifted down endlessly upon the
listener like a comforting cloud. It was the first jazz album that
didn’t really sound like “jazz” at all. (Miles always hated the
word “jazz,” regarding it as limiting, and placed the words
“Directions in Music by Miles Davis” on the album’s cover, as
he would on “Bitches Brew.”) But it didn’t sound like rock
either, although the rock revolution, with its heavy bass lines and
simple harmonies, clearly influenced it. Miles was going even deeper
into the note than before, slowing everything down even more. He had
always been jazz’s great stopper of time, his deceptive, muscular
simplicity working against the form’s innate tendency to spin out
into technique. Now, having laid the ground over the last two years
of experimentation, he had completely changed the form. There was no
going back.
And then, in the summer of 1969, he
struck, with a savagery and audacity that still makes the hairs on
the back of your neck stick up when you hear it. “Bitches Brew”
was like “In a Silent Way’s” evil outer-space brother. It
seemed to blast in from some particularly frozen and unspeakable part
of the cosmos, burn up everything in its vicinity and then roar off
in an angry red and black glow. It is a terrifying and majestic piece
of work. Even its imperfections — and it may be the most
intentionally imperfect masterpiece ever recorded — are an
essential part of its vision. Miles’ guiding spirit of freedom
turned accident into a new kind of beauty.
The most remarkable thing about
“Bitches Brew” is the infinite variety it derives from such
simple, almost amorphous musical structures. There are only six
“tunes” — the word is laughable here — on the double album,
but those six contain multitudes. “Pharaoh’s Dance,” the
ungraspable Zawinul composition that opens the album, is the most
complex and multifaceted, literally stitched together out of dozens
of component sound-parts. Miles had been using editing as a
compositional technique for several years, but now he took the
technique to new levels. In Bob Belden’s informative essay on the
sessions that accompanies the box set, he describes how “Pharaoh’s
Dance” was pieced together out of no less than 19 edits — a
post-recording technique that may have been unprecedented in its
time. Miles experiments with staccato phrasing in a single mode here,
restricting himself to jabbing at the edges of the rhythm. Strange
pleasures, like the demented hip-hop-like atonal bass line that
enters at 9:00, rise up and vanish. John McLaughlin’s incisive
guitar, here as throughout the album, simultaneously adds edgy
melodic color with jagged, lightning-fast runs and holds the loose
and baggy monster together. And the explosive flexibility of drummers
Jack DeJohnette and Lenny White, the eccentric, noodling intelligence
of keyboardists Corea and Zawinul and the odd insinuation of bass
clarinetist Bennie Maupin (whose eerie sound is one of the album’s
signatures) push the wild parade on.
“Bitches Brew,” the gloriously
terrifying title track, is also a virtual orchestral suite, from the
monstrous echo-and-reverb-laden trumpet line that comes riding in out
of some electronic purgatory to its peculiar shift into a
finger-snapping rubato section. “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” is a
straighter tune, driven by a wonderfully funky New Orleans rhythm
laid down by percussionist/drummer Don Alias, with propulsive offbeat
support from the twin bass team of Dave Holland and Harvey Brooks.
Miles attacks his solo in a more coherent, extended way before
yielding to a maniacally inspired Corea solo. “Sanctuary,” the
lovely Shorter composition, is the most conventional tune on the
album, building to a powerful climax.
The album’s masterpiece, however,
is “Spanish Key.” For all of their demented beauties, the three
other long tunes lack melodic unity; they don’t hit a single
target. Somehow, on this tune, everything came together — dynamics,
harmony and melody, all kicked along by a propulsive beat. A series
of long modal teases that builds to a truly exultant head, “Spanish
Key” combines Miles’ earlier melodicism with the ferocious
rhythmic power of his new team. You can hear “Sketches of Spain”
in here, and “Kind of Blue,” that haunting Miles sound someone
once described as sounding like a little boy who’s locked out and
trying to get in — but the sound is blown up to the passionate
grandeur of rock. Shorter felt it: His solo here is a logical,
passionate triumph. If there was one direction one could wish Miles
had followed out of this album, it would be that of “Spanish Key.”
But Miles was too restless to go
back inside, back to tunes and sounds, however stirring, that had a
beginning, middle and end. He wanted to experiment with coloration,
simple figures and rhythm, and that’s what he did. Most of those
experiments, however, lacked either the majestic coherence of
“Spanish Key” or the weird, sui generis brilliance of “Pharaoh’s
Key” or “Bitches Brew.”
Which is the weakness of this box
set. Once you get past the “Bitches Brew” cuts, the musical
quality declines, sometimes precipitously. There were eight “Bitches
Brew” sessions recorded over several months, and all of the music
from them is found here, but the spirit only really spoke on the
three August sessions that ended up on the album. The next-best tunes
are “Great Expectations” and “Orange Lady,” simple and
haunting experiments in color and repetition (with sitar and tabla
added) that appeared on Miles’ 1974 album “Big Fun.” But even
these tunes are below the “Bitches Brew” standard, and by the
time you get down to previously unreleased tunes like “Corrado”
and “Feio” — well, everything Miles did is worth listening to,
but there’s a reason why some things make it out of the can first.
It’s interesting to hear Miles’ version of David Crosby’s
pretty “Guinevere” (a shorter edit of which is available on the
1979 compilation “Circle in the Round”), but it ain’t worth 50
bucks.
Columbia is planning to release No.
5 in its wonderful series of boxed Miles soon, featuring the “In a
Silent Way” period, the bridge between “Filles de Kilimanjaro”
and “Bitches Brew.” It wouldn’t have been as comprehensive for
Miles collectors, but it would have offered more value to have
combined those selections with the six “Bitches Brew” cuts and
the two from “Big Fun” and released the rest separately. Compared
with the extraordinary richness of the second Quintet box (No. 4 in
the series), “The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions” doesn’t quite
measure up.
But if the sessions don’t all show
Miles at his best, they still show a master at work — and a master
whose legacy was more than just his art. Davis was that rarest of
creators: an artist who combined mastery with ceaseless exploration.
What he left us with was not just
magnificent art, but something stranger and harder to define — the
gift of creativity itself. His career affirms limitlessness, the
irrepressibility of invention, the infinite ways that humans can
express their lives.
With “Bitches Brew,” Miles
changed the future of jazz. Not everyone liked the future he ushered
in: “Bitches Brew” not only was Miles’ bestselling album ever,
converting thousands of rock fans, it was also the most denounced.
Miles’ traditionalist critics were outraged — it was Dylan at
Newport again. Miles, as usual, ignored the critics. And his fellow
musicians followed him: Out of these sessions came musicians who
would form the leading fusion groups that would take the music in new
directions in the ’70s. Zawinul and Shorter’s Weather Report,
McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, Hancock’s Headhunters, Corea’s
Return to Forever — all were Miles’ children.
But Miles himself had gone as far as
he was going to. Who would have thought, in 1969, that “Bitches
Brew” would be Miles’ last great achievement — that he would
never again turn himself, and the music of his time, inside out? For
many reasons, he was to lose that precarious balance, fall into the
dead-end of funk aggression and mere street hipness — the free fall
started with “On the Corner” and, with some interesting
exceptions, never stopped. It didn’t matter: He had given us
enough, more than enough. And during those three August days, he did
it again. He ran the voodoo down. And as he did, he waved high the
banner of freedom — his own, and now, forever, ours.
Six months after recording In a
Silent Way, Miles recorded what was to become the defining document
of the jazz-rock movement, Bitches Brew. Released in 1970, Bitches
Brew became the fastest selling album in jazz history. With its
mixture of jazz, rock and electronics, it inspired countless
imitations.
In 1969, jazz music was widely
regarded as old music made by irrelevant “stiffs” in suits.
Certainly very few members of the hippie counterculture would admit
to owning a jazz recording. Even Miles Davis, jazz’s only superstar
and not long before regarded as the coolest man on the planet, had
become one of yesterday’s men. All this changed in August 1969,
when In A Silent Way was issued, and even more so in April 1970, with
the release of Bitches Brew . These two albums established Miles
Davis as the first major jazz artist to crossover to a rock audience
and jazz-rock as a hip kind of music to listen to. Oh, and in the
process In A Silent Way and
Bitches Brew changed
the direction of the history of music, no less.
In A Silent Way, recorded
during a single session on February 18th, 1969, announced this new
direction with a whispering. Because of its gentle cyclical grooves
and peaceful atmosphere the album became one of the blueprints of
what later became known as ambient music. It still sounds
astonishingly modern today. Although jazz lovers generally speaking
didn’t know what to make of it, the album quickly gained a solid
reputation with large sections of the hippie community as the perfect
album to get stoned to. The Complete In A Silent Way
Sessions 3-CD boxed set,
released in the fall of 2001, includes several previously unreleased
tracks and further illustrates the pioneering nature of the original
In A Silent Way album.
Bitches Brew, recorded during
three hot summer days in New York, August 19-21, 1969, was the Big
Bang of jazz-rock. Musicians had been experimenting with combinations
of jazz, rock, soul, and folk music since the early 1960s, but
Bitches Brew was the
first album that translated the concept to the masses. A double LP
featuring long, abstract tracks resistant to radio play, it was never
expected to sell in large numbers, but it became Miles’s first gold
album and is still a best-seller. Downs Beat called it “the most
revolutionary jazz album in history,” but other jazz commentators
have called it a “sell-out,” “a bunch of noise,” or
“dollar-sign music.”
Composer/keyboardist Joe Zawinul
made no secret of the side he’s on in jazz’s civil war when he
commented: “That’s because these guys are idiots. They don’t
have a clue.” Bitches Brew was
never controversial in the rock world, where it was generally
received very positively. Rock lovers recognized mystery and mastery
in the boiling cocktail of African-sounding cyclical grooves offset
by the preacher-like intensity of Miles’s trumpet, whipping the
large ensemble (in one case twelve players) into a frenzy.
Although very different in mood, In
A Silent Way and Bitches
Brew are companion albums,
emerging from the same musical concept of multiple electric keyboard
players, an understated John McLaughlin on electric guitar, and
repetitive bass lines and grooves. Almost all the players involved
have since attained legendary status as key players in some of the
greatest jazz-rock bands of all time, such as Weather Report,
Mahavishnu Orchestra, and Return to Forever. Saxophonist Wayne
Shorter, keyboardists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul,
Britons John McLaughlin on guitar and Dave Holland on bass, and
drummer Tony Williams all accompanied Miles on In A Silent
Way. With the exception of Tony
Williams and Herbie Hancock they were also present during the
recording of Bitches Brew,
complemented by Jack DeJohnette and Lennie White on drums, Bennie
Maupin on bass clarinet, Larry Young on organ, Don Alias and Jim
Riley on percussion, and Harvey Brooks on electric bass.
An important part of the legend of
In A Silent Way and
Bitches Brew concerns
the extensive post-production that was involved in their making.
Producer Teo Macero, who had worked with Miles since the late 1950s,
played a central role. His influence in Miles’s music can be
likened to that of George Martin with The Beatles. Macero was the one
who tied the many disparate musical segments together, and edited
them into a new whole, in some cases virtually recomposing the music.
In A Silent Way, for
instance, contained less than 27 minutes of musical material in its
pre-edited form, and was cleverly looped by Macero to extend the
music to 38 minutes. And the two opening tracks of Bitches
Brew, “Pharaoh’s Dance,”
and “Bitches Brew,” are completely restructured courtesy of 17
and 15 edits respectively.
In A Silent Way and Bitches
Brew were far ahead of their
time, making it amazing that these visionary albums caught the public
mood immediately after their release. In fact, they were so unusual
that even the musicians involved often had no idea what was going on
when things were going down. Herbie Hancock recalled about the In
A Silent Way session: “After
we finished we walked out of the studio, and while we were standing
in the hallway John came over and whispered to me, ‘Can I ask you a
question? I answered, ‘Sure’. He then said, ‘Herbie, I can’t
tell... was that any good what we did? I mean, what did we do? I
can’t tell what’s going on!’ So I told him, ‘John, welcome to
a Miles Davis session. Your guess is as good as mine. I have no idea,
but somehow when the records come out, they end up sounding good.’
Miles had a way of seeing straight through things and knowing that
over time people would figure out what was really happening.”
And Joe Zawinul remembered: “After
the Bitches Brew sessions
Miles took me home in a limousine, and I didn’t say anything. He
asked, ‘Why don’t you say anything?’ and I said, ‘Because I
didn’t like what we just recorded.’ We had played a lot of stuff
that was OK, but I was not impressed. Several months later I walked
into the CBS offices, and through some closed doors I heard some
enormous, fantastic music. I asked ‘Wow, what is that?’ and a
secretary replied, ‘Well, Mr. Zawinul, that’s you playing with
Miles on Bitches Brew!’”
There was an inexplicable magic that
went into the making of In A Silent Way and
Bitches Brew, with
only Miles and Macero having any inkling of what was happening. The
two recordings are evidence of their visionary abilities, as well as
Miles’s talent for drawing extraordinary performances out of his
musicians.
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