The Underappreciated Miles Davis

Kim Kleinman, Contributing Writer

‘Tis the season to celebrate Miles Davis’s massive contributions to jazz. He is our Picasso, reimagining himself and what the music could be time after time. For many of us, he was our introduction to jazz, providing so many pathways to explore. He defined repertoire, how ensembles should work together, how the trumpet sounds, and what cool is. Since most of these essays for his 100th birthday are discussing  favorite moments in the music, let me instead confess some of what I have missed so far in his canon. The bright side of this dark admission is the treasures I have ahead of me.

“Bitches Brew” was my first album and it confused and delighted me in equal measure. The thick swirl and power appealed as an extension of the long guitar solos that came from the blues rock and psychedelia I was listening to in 1969. But it was even better, hinting at something bigger—an uncharted territory to explore as systematically (or not) as I could.

Today, I wish I knew so much better his early 1950s work, the Second Great Quintet, and the nuances of the electric era. 

I quickly learned Miles’s connection to Charlie Parker and I learned my Bebop 101. As for Miles himself, “Birth of the Cool” was about as far back as I got. I missed much including the differently magical arranging of Gil Evans, John Lewis, and Gerry Mulligan and, how Mulligan and Lee Konitz were as much part of his musical conception as were Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Above all, I wish I had absorbed those early Prestige albums where Miles led sessions, not bands, and contributed to the discussion of where bop would go next with the likes of Stan Getz, Konitz, Jackie Maclean, Sonny Rollins, J.J. Johnson, Milt Jackson, and Horace Silver.  I think it would have helped to hear him develop as a trumpeter, separating that element of his art from the leader who configured bands with which he could reshape the music. Having a better grasp on his talent from the earliest recordings, I could better trace the continuities of his playing from bebop through his late 1970s hiatus from recording and performing.

It is as a bandleader I know Miles best. The caliber of talent he nurtured was comparable only to the various Jazz Messengers Art Blakey developed. The albums with John Coltrane to close out the Prestige contract (“Cookin’,” “Workin’,” “Relaxin’,” and “Steamin’”) to make possible the very first Columbia masterpieces were formative to my listening.  That’s what a jazz band should sound like, from the very trumpet/tenor sax/rhythm section format, the parade of soloists, the mix of standards and jazz compositions, even which standards were worth playing.  I have read how much Miles valued Ahmad Jamal for emphasizing the space between notes, so I have listened for that quality among the nuances in the line from Red Garland, Wynton Kelly, Bill Evans, and young Herbie Hancock in the piano chair.

Oddly, after the Coltrane years, I ended up listening far more to George Coleman with the Hancock/Ron Carter/Tony Williams band than to the more famous Second Great Quintet with Wayne Shorter. With Coleman, Miles kept mining a longstanding core repertoire while honing the rhythm section and taking on a grittiness and edge. On the evidence of “Live at Plugged Nickel” with Shorter in the band, that repertoire was so entrenched by 1965 that Williams convinced the others to play against their habits and expectations of one another, an “anti-music” that would make things fresh, particularly since they didn’t tell their leader. But this band’s studio albums, which I didn’t get to know at the time, were where groundbreaking compositions from all five of them, particularly Wayne Shorter, were powerfully debuted. Shorter and Herbie Hancock were at prolific stages of their writing careers. I knew Hancock’s Blue Note albums from this period better than I knew Shorter’s and missed that their music was even better with Miles.

I did hear Shorter with Miles in that earliest stage of the electric era starting with “Filles De Kilimanjaro” and “In a Silent Way” before “Bitches Brew.” The band kept changing and I bought the albums in real time through “Agartha” in 1975. Already that thick guitar sound was far removed from the spare “Jack Johnson” and “On the Corner” was yet another way for Miles to play electric music. That I also picked up collections like “Big Fun,” with material from multiple sessions and I was on the way to losing track of just how pronounced this evolution was. Then I mostly missed the last decade of his career making significant works like “Tutu” and “Amandla” complete mysteries to me.

But, taking into account the late 1970s hiatus, Miles recorded electric music as long (1968-1975, 1980-1991) as he did acoustic (1949-1968). Seeing a performance recently by the Miles Electric Band drove home the point that the electric period comprised music as varied as “Birth of the Cool” differed from “Live At the Plugged Nickel” in his acoustic era.  

I have holes in my knowledge of Miles in both phases of his career. I’ll celebrate this landmark anniversary of his birth by doing some catching up with the early Prestige albums, the later Warner Brothers one, and the Second Great Quintet on Columbia.