This week for our adventure in swingsville, I wanted to finish up chronicling the partnership of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. This diary is going to focus primarily only on what Miles and Trane and their associates recorded in 1958 and 1959. Although I’m going to go just a little further and cover all of Coltrane on the Atlantic record label as best I can.
1959 is often considered one of the greatest years in Jazz. I agree, but feel you can’t quite focus in on Trane and Miles without including 1958. Both years are amazing and what lies beyond the orange squiggle is arguably some of the greatest music produced in the 20th century.
There is way too much music to cover, there will be more Miles and Trane diaries to come. But the scope and breadth of it all makes me wonder just how Mr Cheadle intends to represent this material and time in his upcoming film on Mile’s life. I’ll come back to 1959 as well, Miles and Trane weren’t the only ones recording that year!
Please follow through the orange squiggle to what should be the jewel in the crown of American culture…
When we last left our hero’s, Miles had disbanded his quintet with Trane, Red, PC and Philly Joe. Please do visit my previous Miles and Trane diary to see what they did through 1957. Miles and Trane Part One
But lets catch up with the boys. Red is recording often and usually with PC at his side. Art Taylor effectively replaced Philly Joe in the trio gigs.
And PC continues to record with virtually everyone through about 1961.
The trio also continues to record with Trane, which includes my personal favorite Coltrane record on the prestige lable, Soultrane.
Different tunes will pull our different nostalgia strings in different ways. The soundtrack to our lives is a personal thing. I first heard Good Bait in the Spring of 1987. It was my second semester in Jazz college and I had already been listening to Coltrane for 3 or 4 years t this point. But there I sat in my car in one of the few back alleys one can find in the Bergen County NJ suburbs. I had exercised my personal “Colorado Freedom” and simply did not want to go home after my friends had left. Life at home wasn’t exactly happy back then. I put a cassette of Soultrane on that I had gotten from my job at a record store (I probably stole it), and while the music was beyond my abilities to play or even transcribe…it made sense to me in a way that improvisation hadn’t before. Without looking at a chart or anything, it was the first time I really followed Coltrane through the chord changes and could conceive of him negotiating the harmony and creating. And then Red plays, and then PC. There is better Coltrane and certainly more historically significant, but Good Bait is and always be one of my favorites. And so will this one…
“I Want to Talk about You” remained in Coltrane’s repertoire for years and we will revist this tune when I do a dairy on the Impulse years. If you have never heard this tune before but find something familiar about it, it is the same harmony as with “Misty.”
Miles reforms the quintet in 1958 after returning from a brief stint in Paris. Coltrane has kicked his heroin habit this year and Miles welcomes him back. Miles also recruits a sixth member to the group: Cannonball Adderley.
For more Cannonball, please check out this diary I did a few weeks ago focused on Cannonball Bird and Ornette. Three Altos But please do notice, that tune—Nardis—is often said to be written by Bill Evans (though Miles gets the writing credit) and Bill is featured on that recording. Bill Evans, August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980, is one of the most significant pianist in the post world war II period of Jazz. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, it’s still 1958.
But in 1958, The Miles Davis Group release one of the greatest sextet recordings in the Hard Bop style. Its called Milestones
And it even features a piano trio only cut
And a Monk tune….
But that’s not all Miles recorded that year. He continued his partnership with the great arranger, Gil Evans. Together they made an amazing recording of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess.
Miles married his first wife, Frances Taylor, in 1958. They stayed married for 10 years…but don’t forget Miles Davis could be a real asshole and domestic violence was part of their relationship. Miles also fired Red and Philly Joe again shortly after Milestones was recorded. They leave our narrative now as we enter 1959.
Miles and the band record in 1959 what many call the greatest jazz album ever made. It certainly is the best selling. But first, he needs to replace Red. Enter Bill Evans
Bill brings a fairly sophisticated approach to the piano. And he just swings too. It would make sense to give you a Ravel clip here to explore those harmonies and hear them in Bill’s playing, but this is a long diary lol. I will delve into Bill Evans more deeply in another diary, though I might just do that next week.
Miles also brings in another pianist for the record named Wynton Kelly, December 2, 1931 – April 12, 1971. I really love Wynton Kelly and there other things to say about him. I’ll do that more in a few weeks when I get into Wes Montgomery with y’all.
Jimmy Cobb replaces Philly Joe on drums and now the sextet records the ledgendary album, Kind of Blue
One thing that makes this record so significant is its approach to modal playing. Though really only the previous song, So What, is a fully modal tune. The idea behind modal playing is that the improvisation is based off of using a particular scale and not following the chord changes of the composition. So What features 8 bars of D minor, another 8 bars of D minor, 8 bars of Eb minor, and then 8 bars of D minor again. Though it’s really D and Eb dorian mode.
Quite a bit of Rock and Roll jamming is modal. Allmans, Grateful Dead, Phish, the new jam bands like Mo…tons of modal playing. Jerry would play over the chord changes of some of his tunes. But usually if it’s not following a proper blues form, it’s a modal jam.
This tune, like Nardis (perhaps more so), was written by Bill Evans. The recording listed Miles as the composer. Usually in officially printed sheet music and in fake books it is credited to them both nowadays.
Now listen to how different it sounds with Wynton Kelly
BTW…our congress did pass some things unanimously. In 2009 they voted 409-0 in favor of declaring Kind of Blue a national treasure.
And if that wasn’t enough…just a few weeks later Coltrane records his first album for the Atlantic label and changes the game with chord changes. He works out new chord substitution ideas and creates yet another legendary classic, Giant Steps.
OK…that’s the great great Tommy Flannigan on piano. No one ever recorded with chord changes like that before. Trane gave Tommy the music the night before the recording date and he practiced Giant Steps as a ballad. The piano solo is not that great on the recording. Flannigan had no idea what to expect.
All of the tunes on this album are classics. This one is written for Paul Chambers, the bass player on every single clip in this diary so far.
And there is also this classic written for Trane’s first wife.
And then there was this….Sketches of Spain. This is another of the great collaborations between Miles and Gil Evans. This is the classic Concierto de Aranjuez. When I finally finish the Miles Davis narrative in three more Miles diaries, we will come back to this piece. I guarantee you Cheadle puts this one in the film. Many R&B, Rock n’ Roll, and overall pop musicians have cited this record as one of their favorites.
By the end of the year, the legend of Coltrane has grown to stand so strongly on its own without Miles.
And this happened (from Wikipedia)
In August 1959, the Miles Davis Quintet was appearing at the famous Birdland nightclub in New York City. After finishing a recording for the armed services, Davis took a break outside the club. As he was escorting an attractive blonde woman across the sidewalk to a taxi, Davis was told by a patrolman to "move on."Davis explained that he worked at the nightclub and refused to move. The officer said that he would arrest Davis and grabbed him as Davis protected himself. Witnesses said that the patrolman punched Davis in the stomach with his nightstick without provocation. While two detectives held the crowd back, a third detective approached Davis from behind and beat him about the head. Davis was arrested and taken to jail where he was charged with feloniously assaulting an officer. He was then taken to St. Clary Hospital where he received five stitches for a wound on his head. The following October, he was acquitted of the charge of disorderly conduct and was likewise acquitted the following January of the charge of third-degree assault.
Davis tried to pursue the case by bringing a suit against the New York City Police Department, but eventually dropped the proceedings in a plea bargain so he could recover his suspended cabaret card – entertainers awaiting trial were automatically deprived of their cards – and return to work in New York clubs. In his autobiography, Davis stated that the incident "changed my whole life and whole attitude again, made me feel bitter and cynical again when I was starting to feel good about the things that had changed in this country."
Wynton Kelly becomes the regular pianist in the group’s live performances. Miles convinces John to stay in the band for a tour of Europe in 1960. But Coltrane engages in a few more classics on his own…..
Notice, two new legends enter the picture. McCoy Tyner, piano, and Elvin Jones, drums. I’ll elaborate them when I do the Coltrane on Impulse diary in a few weeks.
I’ve always loved “Coltrane’s Sound” as much as Giant Steps and My Favorite Things
And it includes a version of one the most popular American standards
Miles will also perform with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Gil Evans for which there was at least one live recording.
In 1961, Miles got Trane to record some for one more studio album, Someday My Prince will Come.
Meanwhile Coltrane records his album Ole Coltrane, which includes Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard. And this beautiful tune written by McCoy Tyner
Coltrane moves from Atlantic records to Impulse in 1961 and make a string of phenomenal recordings. I’ll deal with those in another diary or two. Miles continues trying different tenor players like Hank Mobley, Sonny Stitt and Sam Rivers. By 1963, Wynton Kelly, PC and Jimmy Cobb leave Miles. Once that happens, Miles reinvents his band again with Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams…but that’s a tale for another day.
Thanks for listening and reading! Im still having blast doing these and will continue for many weeks to come. However I am going to experiment with different posting times and maybe even try moving to post on Mondays instead of Sundays. Any suggestions as to how to get more readers without being blessed by the community spotlight peoples would be appreciated! Thank you all and don’t forget to support you local jazz musicians and all local live music!
