Bitches Brew is a Miles Davis album released in April of 1970. It won the Grammy for Best Large jazz Ensemble in 1971. It appear on numerous “Best of Lists” in many genres. It was a ground breaking and controversial release.
Bitches Brew embraces the popular music trends of the late 1960s to blend funk, rock and jazz in previously unheard ways…well, mostly unheard. Bitches Brew also ushers in a new era in Jazz come to call “Fusion,” but little else other than other Miles Davis albums sound like this.
The fact that one man could play Be-Bop with Charlie Parker, create an alternative cool jazz sound with Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz, lead one of the greatest Hard Bop ensembles with John Coltrane and Red and PC, conceive and perform what he did with Gil Evans, adapt and develop to record some amazingly high level music in the 60s with Wayne Herbie Ron and Tony while also providing them a platform to take acoustic Jazz into a new generation, and then to lead Jazz into this new style constitutes a musical legacy unparalleled in modern music. There may have been better trumpet players, but there were no better leaders. Only potential equals.
Greetings and welcome to my weekly jazz bloggings here on the daily kos intertubes. I try to publish a diary about jazz and other genres of modern popular music every Sunday evening around 10pm EST. I’ve been doing this for nearly a year now and up until I have not diaried about anything that would be considered Jazz-Rock fusion. That changes today with a man who has already been the main subject of about 4 diaries I’ve written so far: Miles Davis.
After World War II, Jazz’s relationship with popular music begins to strain. Without a doubt, Jazz is still the popular music of the day in the latter 40s and into the 1950s. But Be-Bop takes Jazz into new directions and mostly one can’t dance to those directions. It’s interesting to me to consider when questions of musical integrity and “selling out” began to emerge in the context of the modern musical era. Easily we can see tensions around issues of authenticity with Benny Goodman vs Chick Webb in the 1930s, but to Goodman’s credit he did not claim to be the innovator of jazz and he pushed back against racist conventions of the time. There are racial issues embedded in the questions around authenticity and innovation in Jazz.
I bring this up because in some ways, Bitches Brew signifies the rejoining of two paths in Jazz. These are paths in Jazz which begin to diverge in the 40s and 50s, but do much more so in the 60s. One of these paths is Jazz being popular music which to some “waters it down” as it tries to compete in a musical market place that becomes more and more fickle and trendy and infatuated with youth as time goes on. The other is towards a purer artistic expression which positions itself in opposition to commercialism. Jazz continues to balance these two positions to varying degrees. Leaning to much towards the former has led us to the abomination known as “Smooth Jazz”, leaning too much towards the latter has created music with little mass appeal and tendencies towards “technique for technique’s sake”.
Bitches Brew in my opinion balances these two positions, the commercial and the artistic, in an unprecedented manner. And it does so in the Rock and Roll era in the midst of one of pop music’s more creative periods. Musical trends change after Bitches Brew. Musical trends change because of Bitches Brew. But it didn’t exactly come out of nowhere.
From 1963-1968, Miles Davis recorded and released seven studio albums with Herbie Hancock. Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. Six of which also had Wayne Shorter on them. Ron Carter leaves the group after 1968’s “Filles de Kilimanjaro.” I’ve diaried about this quintet a few months ago. In early 1969, Herbie Wayne and Tony joined Miles in the studio with some additional personnel. John McLaughlin joins on Electric guitar, Dave Holland replaces Ron on bass, and Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul are added on electric piano and organ respectively. The resulting album is released on July 30th of 1969 and is titled “In a Silent Way”
This is the recording which marks the beginning of Miles’ “electric” period. I think you can already clearly hear an inclination to rock/funk grooves, though perhaps more subdued than what we get on Bitches Brew. Miles was into Sly and the Family Stone at the time and Jimi Hendrix. He loved James Brown. Miles embraced pop music through the 1960s.
Here is an interview with Miles from 1969 in Rolling Stone magazine. One thing that sticks out is Miles’ awareness of the music industry and the presentation and manipulation of Black artists. This of course had been a long standing feature of the Miles Davis persona.
http://www.forghieri.net/...
"Like, I can't be on none of those television shows, 'cause I'd have to tell Johnny Carson, ‘You're a sad motherfucker.' That's the only way I could put it. If I did that, right away they'd be telling me, ‘You're cursing.' But that's the only way I can say it. I was supposed to be on Steve Allen's show, and I sent him a telegram telling him he was too white, his secretary was too white, his audience was too white. And he wanted me to play for scale! Shit. I can't be standing up there before all those white broads . . . and all of them got maids. I can't be associated with that kind of shit. I got a maid myself. See, whatever they do, they're trying to get those middle-aged white bitches to watch it."
The trends in Jazz in the 1960s, especially by Black artists, leaned either towards the avant guard or towards soul jazz. “Soul Jazz” may have been perceived of as watered down Jazz in the 1960s, but a lot of it is pretty darn good in my opinion. And this sub-genre of Jazz survives today as samples in many a hip-hop beat.
Every one of those tunes is recorded by 1969. All sound like they are in the context of African-American popular music of the 1960s. Which is the weakest tune above? Harold’s? I put that one in there to give an example of Jazz trying to be commercial. I love the cut, but I am not impartial when it comes to Harold Mabern (with whom I took piano lessons) and George Coleman (who is the personification of what it means to be a Jazz musician to me as per my musical training). But maybe Jazz musicians trying to play an R&B pop tune of the 60s sounds a little corny and clichéd.
Bitches Brew may be in some ways related to Soul Jazz the way that Sly and the Family Stone is related to Motown. It breaks away and creates new directions. Missing from most of the above is some sort of musical clue that the musicians are aware that this happened.
And while I’ld be surprised if Miles et al had much familiarity with this, it is worth noting that there is an audience being fed music like this in 1969 and 1970.
And of course this, which Miles absolutely was aware of
Bitches Brew embraces all of this. And make no mistake, Miles will perform at the Fillmore doing Bitches Brew like material. Well, there was a mistake. Miles opened for the Grateful Dead and not the other way around (and don’t flame me Deadheads, you know Phil said the same thing).
What happens to a lot of popular music in the late 60s and early 70s is that artists are more dedicated to making good music than to making hits. And the result is many hits that are darn good music. You could likely construct an argument about the short sightedness of the music industry. The music catalog of the 1960s and 1970s continues to earn. There have always been tensions between the industry and artists, but the industry seems to have come to be dominated by the philosophy of making as much money now and not worrying about investing for the future. While of course there are strong artists to have appeared with lasting value since the 1980s, the “catalog” sales of music from the 1990s and 2000s are weak. I don’t have exact figures, but a symbolic argument could suggest that Elton John’s records from the 1970s sold better in the 1990s than ten year old records by The Killers sell today (I could be wrong about that, my point is that this is the sort of thing that has happened). And The Killers had several hits (and I like them too!). But worse is the sales of techno music. Can you hum one techno melody from the 90s? Will we have a Moby revival?
Rant over. Point is, Miles gets on board with what is going on innovatively in late 60s music. And we can’t discredit how much that may have to do with Tony Williams, Miles drummer who is all of 24 years old when Bitches Brew is recorded and released.
Tony Williams formed “Lifetime” in 1969 with organist Larry Young and British guitarist John McLaughlin. Williams would use the “Lifetime” name for several projects in the years to come, but this original incarnation is perhaps the first “Fusion” band.
Here’s McLaughlin in 2012 talking about recording with Miles.
In addition to the personnel on In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew adds Bernie Maupin on Bass Clarinet, Bassist Harvey Brooks, drummers Jack DeJonette, Lenny White, Billy Cobham (only in the January 1970 session) and Don Alias and various percussion players. Most of the record was recorded on August 19-21, 1969 and then again on January 28 1970. One of the unique things about this record as opposed to previous Jazz recordings is the editing and splicing of the music. Teo Macero, jazz producer who had produced most of Miles’ work since the 1950s, and Miles cut the music up and pasted it back together.
The following is a quote I cut and pasted from Wikipedia, but it’s a quote from Paul Tigen, a dutch author who has written about Miles.
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.
The music brings the rhythm to the forefront. This is the main musical shift in Jazz the music brings. Miles going electric is akin to Bob Dylan going electric with his folk purist fans in surprise and protest, but to contemporary ears sounds like a somewhat logic step. Some folks found the music boring, some found it trite, some found it silly. Others found it liberating.
This is a new direction for Miles and he takes this music to the Fillmore.
Live at the Fillmore was recorded in June of 1970 and the band now is comprised of Steve Grossman on Sxophones, Chick and Keith Jarett on keys, DeJohnette on drums, Dave Holland on bass, and Airto on percussion. Notice? No guitar.
The Fillmore performance comes a few months after the recording session which make up what is to many, Miles’ greatest record of this period: A Tribute to Jack Johnson.
Sonny Sharock is playing guitar on this cut, McLaughlin as well I think….he is on the recording, but I don’t think he is on this track. To be honest, it gives a hint of what we could have had if Jimi Hendrix had lived.
And this sound continues with Miles’ next release, Live-Evil.
“What I say” is a tune featured on the Live-Evil record. Here is the band performing the tune live in Norway
Here they are live at Tanglewood (in color!)
Hmmmm….quite a ways from this
Or even this
Miles Davis. I can’t think of musician who has set more trends, performed in more styles, or was as productive. Even the extensive output of Mr Duke Ellington doesn’t touch the same variety of styles. Miles participated in and led musical trends for decades. His output does even not end with Bitches Brew and the similar recordings, but this seems like a good place to stop for the night.
Thanks for listening everyone. Please support your local Jazz musicians and all local live music. Next week….exactly who invented Jazz to begin with?