| Reviews Biography For the uninitiated, the world of jazz can seem huge. Jazz is like a huge, sprawling live oak tree. Its millions of different leaves are recent artists from Kevin Eubanks to Henry Threadgill and John Zorn. Its roots, spreading out in a circle equally as wide as the branches, are somewhat more hidden and mysterious, reaching back to jazz's underground genesis about a century ago in African America. And if jazz is an oak tree, there are artists with names like Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong who form the tree's massive trunk. And growing from this trunk are a few huge branches as big around as a man's chest that have names like John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and of course, Miles Davis. Miles Davis (or just "Miles") was certainly one of the biggest branches on the jazz tree. His recording career spanned almost 50 years, and his music is easily some of the most influential and essential in the genre. Part of what made Davis so important is that his music was always changing. Rather than do the same thing for 50 years, Davis was constantly on the cutting edge - creating and defining whole new styles of jazz (Cool, Third Stream, etc.) which lived on long after he had moved on to other things. One of these styles would come to be known as fusion. Fusion - the melding of jazz with rock (and soul and funk and classical Eastern music in Davis' case) - was born in the late '60s and flourished in the '70s. Its history, critical reception and eventual artistic and commercial decline mirror that of progressive rock in a substantial way. In fact, the two are actually very closely linked, as developments in jazz and rock fed off of each other during this time like never before or since. Many musicians and bands during the '70s operated in both styles, effectively blurring the lines between the two so well that it is virtually impossible to tell where jazz stops and rock starts in much of their work. While names like Soft Machine, National Health or Mahavishnu Orchestra may spring to some of our readers' minds first, one of these was certainly also Miles Davis. Nearly all of those who would become the top fusion musicians of the '70s first played in Davis' bands: John McLaghlin, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Billy Cobham, Tony Williams, Herbie Hancock, Larry Young. Most of these would go on to form their own highly successful bands. Davis himself, however, was as prolific as ever during this period. His "electric" period covers roughly six years, but includes at least 13 albums, many of them two-LP sets. The most famous and influential of these are Live Evil, A Tribute to Jack Johnson, In a Silent Way, and of course, the famous "great divide between jazz tradition and jazz mutation," Bitches Brew. Less famous, but just as interesting are Dark Magus, Pangaea, Get Up With It, Big Fun and Agharta. All of these albums show Davis increasingly expanding his vision by drinking in the popular music of the day (especially Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone), reaching back to his African roots and then recapitulating all these influences in his own context. While 1969's In a Silent Way is relaxing, melodic and introspective, 1974's Dark Magus performances (released in 1977) are harsh, loud, angular slabs of double fuzz guitar, dissonant organ chords and multi-layered polyrhythms. Davis alienated a lot of his old fans and infuriated jazz critics along the way, but he opened up a whole new world of music - one that has literally only begun to be fully appreciated in the last few years. This has prompted two recent remix albums and the re-release of many albums that have been out of print in the USA for years. Many Critics accused Davis of selling out in the '70s. This may seem ludicrous to us now, given the poor reception the albums got at the time. One listen to most any of these albums proves that this music is anything but commercial. It is true, however, that Davis was trying to reach a younger, hipper audience at this time. The psychedelic, cartoonish art on the covers of albums like On the Corner or Live Evil will reveal that. Davis was, in fact, desperately trying to connect with the young black crowd. He apparently felt enough blacks and whites his own age appreciated him enough, but he wanted to reach out to the younger generation of his people. This, unfortunately, was an almost total failure - at least at the time. Thirty years later, however, it seems he may just be starting to get his wish, as a whole new generation of black and white kids are discovering Davis through the influence he has made on the urban, dance and avant-garde rock music of the 21st century. - Scott Hamrick [Janruary 2003] A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1970) [CD - Columbia - 1997] A Tribute to Jack Johnson is one of the earliest of Miles Davis' so-called "electric" or fusion albums. It came only about a year after the massively influential and huge-selling Bitches Brew (400,000 copies the first year) and preceded all the other monstrous double albums that would characterize so much of Davis' '70s output. At first glance, Jack Johnson almost doesn't seem to be in the same category with these albums. The freaky cover art, 11-piece bands and platform shoes that featured in one way or another on many of those albums are all absent here. One could say Jack Johnson is like a last look back at the old Miles before the man dove head first into the avant-garde acid funk of his next several albums. That's not to say this is not a very progressive album, however. To listen to Jack Johnson is tantamount to witnessing the very birth of jazz-rock. Bitches Brew may have been electric, but the rock element in it was still rather diluted when compared to Jack Johnson. This album is an unabashed manifesto of what one could expect to come out of the next several years of jazz fusion, but this was just the beginning. Davis' trumpet playing on this album is cleaner, tighter and more energetic than much of he would do for the next five years. Subsequent releases found Davis acting more and more as a bandleader and a multi-instrumentalist. On Jack Johnson, he still seems content to just be one of the greatest trumpet players in the world. Davis' backing band is lean and mean here too. Herbie Hancock (keyboards), John McLaughlin (guitar), Steve Grossman (sax), Billy Cobham (drums) and Michael Henderson (bass) form a rock-solid group of just the essentials. The cacophonous polyrhythms and wall-of-fuzz guitar solos of future albums had not crept in yet, so as good as those albums are in their own ways, this can seem like a breath of fresh air in comparison. A Tribute to Jack Johnson is a single record containing two sidelong tracks. "Right Off" - as opposed to "right on" - is a mid tempo rocker that swings just a bit. John McLaughlin practically owns the track with his inspired, yet uncharacteristically restrained rhythm guitar that is equal parts rock muscle and jazz sophistication. He keeps things moving nicely while Davis, Grossman and Hancock offer up a series of long solos for trumpet, sax and organ. Towards the end he leads the band through some unpredictable key and rhythm changes that take the piece in a new direction and then bring it back full-circle to the same riff with which he opened the track. McLaughlin caps it all off with a wonderfully searing solo. Somewhere in the middle of this track producer Teo Macero interrupts the groove by interjecting a brief snippet of some other Davis recording (a smoky trumpet solo), presumably to keep things from getting monotonous, but this actually seems somewhat unnecessary. This is minor complaint, however. Side two is "Yesternow," whose title is another wordplay. This is a more subdued, atmospheric piece than the first. It's not quite a great as "Right Off," but it still grooves nicely while incorporating varying rhythms and riffs throughout its duration. Once again, Teo Macero feels he has to fade in a completely different piece of music during the proceedings. This time, strangely enough, it's actually a short section of "Shh/Peaceful" from In a Silent Way. This fits in better than the first track's interjection, but the logic for this kind of cut-and-pastery is again elusive. The piece fades out slowly and falsely with some weird analog delay feedback-type noises slowly creeping in. It bears mentioning that A Tribute to Jack Johnson is the soundtrack to a film of the same name about the 1908 heavyweight-boxing champion. The final seconds of the album are comprised of words that are supposed to be Jack Johnson's, but could very well be construed as the mission statement for Miles Davis' music of the '70s: "I'm black, they never let me forget it. I'm black alright, I'll never let them forget it." A Tribute to Jack Johnson can actually seem slightly tame when compared to what would follow, but it is almost uniformly excellent and comes highly recommended as a starting point for Davis' fertile fusion period. - Scott Hamrick [Janruary 2003] Click Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info Get Up With It (1974) [CD - Columbia - 2000] Get Up With It is one of the more diverse and successful albums from Davis' "electric" years. It was released in 1974, one year before he began his 5-year hiatus. Like several other Davis albums from this time period, the performances on Get Up With It are culled from a wide range of studio dates. The oldest track on the album dates back to 1970. The backbone of this double LP set is the two 32-minute tracks "He Loved Him Madly" and "Calypso Frelimo." The former is an ode to Duke Ellington, who died shortly before the track was recorded. This brooding, highly atmospheric track is unmistakably melancholic and mysterious, yet it is beautiful in its own way. The latter track begins and ends as a busy, energetic track with a tropical feel that makes good use of a short, memorable melodic themes. Its middle section is relaxed and focuses on a slow groove. While "He Loved Him Madly" and "Calypso Frelimo" are commonly cited as being the best pieces on Get Up With It, some of the others are possibly even more interesting and push the envelope even further. "Maiysha" is a very fun track and a real standout on this album. It takes the Brazilian bossa nova sound popular in the late '60s and early '70s and sets it on its ear. Tropical sounding melodies for trumpet and guitar are meshed with dense, odd organ chords (complete with wah pedal) to create a sort of psychedelic "Girl From Ipanema" sound. The short, intense "Rated X" is remarkably futuristic in its use of incredibly heavy and repetitive percussion - like techno/rave music, but with real drums. What keeps this track interesting is a constant stream of grating, sometimes dissonant, high-pitched organ chords courtesy of Davis. Also, producer Teo Macero has his finger on the mute button throughout the track, cutting everything but the organ out and back in several times. This kind of thing is not unusual for Macero, as he played a very large part in organizing and extensively editing Davis' '70s recordings, often cutting and pasting different pieces together to create new ones. "Mtume," which follows in Davis' tradition of naming pieces after his sidemen, is in a similar vein as "Rated X" but with a slightly more lighthearted and very memorable melody appearing and reappearing throughout. Again, this is repetitive and funky with a heavy accent on Mtume's deft percussion skills. His unique percussion creates images of a street performer banging on empty bottles on a big city street corner for spare change. Freaky, distorted organ chords that come out of nowhere to occasionally drown everything else out keep things unpredictable. Davis' trumpet playing takes a back seat on many of the tracks on this album. Throughout his fusion period, Davis relegated himself more and more to playing organ and directing his sidemen. There is some great trumpeting on this album, however, as on "Calypso Frelimo" and "Billy Preston," but much to his old fans' irritation, it is often processed with lots of reverb or wah pedal. Like most of Davis' '70s albums, if one approaches Get Up With It with an open mind and no preconceptions about Davis' past work, this album truly is, like another one of his album titles, "Big Fun." - Scott Hamrick [Janruary 2003] Click Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info Dark Magus (1977) [CD - Columbia - 2001] Perhaps more fully than any other of Miles Davis' '70s fusion albums, Dark Magus represents Davis' departure from traditional jazz and his arrival, well, somewhere else - somewhere few musicians will ever dare to tread. Entirely recorded live on March 30, 1974 at Carnegie Hall in New York, this two-disc set shows Miles Davis and his rather large band exploring the furthest reaches of something that can well be described as free-form acid funk. Much of this set is loud, repetitive and largely dependent on heavy-handed polyrhythmic percussion. No less than three guitarists are heard here and the resulting wall of fuzz and wah-wah is overtly inspired by Jimi Hendrix's more extreme flights of fancy. It's hard to imagine this sort of performance happening at Carnegie Hall, but Miles Davis was pretty much a legend by this time. He could probably have played to sold out crowds in any venue in the world whether the audience understood what he was doing at the time or not. The first track on Dark Magus, "Moja (Part 1)" sets the tone for the album, beginning with some rather ham-fisted open hi-hat bashing (courtesy of drummer Al Foster) that lets the listener know instantly this is no ordinary jazz album. The rest of the track is basically a solo spot for Davis' pained trumpet playing. He honks, squeals and creates some elephantine sounds via the ubiquitous wah pedal. In the background the rest of the band sounds like some giant, ugly, clumsy, but very fast multi-limbed creature that is running, tripping over itself, getting up and running some more. The overall atmosphere is dark, oppressive and possibly just a bit scary, but it's also fun and adventurous for those who can handle it. "Moja (Part 2)" finds the band taking things down a notch and experimenting with some more atmospheric grooves throughout which percussionist James Mtume interjects some primitive drum machine which he slows down and speeds up without regard for the tempo the rest of the band is playing in. This is a very cool and unique idea that pops up regularly throughout the album. Of course, this is only after a searing sax solo by Dave Liebman and a soaring, free-time guitar solo by one of the three guitarists. The rest of the album carries on in similar territory as the first two tracks. The accent here is on groove, whether slow or fast. Rhythms upon rhythms over which Davis, the guitarists or the saxophonists could do their thing were pretty much the name of the game that March night. Sometimes one can see how this album's sound and feel are reflexive of what bands like King Crimson or possibly even Magma were doing in their live shows at the time. Of course, both of those bands were coming from a much more European angle than Davis' afro-centric approach, but Magma's obsession with repetitive rhythm, King Crimson's brand of collective improvisation, as well as the maximalism and dissonant tendencies of both bands are mirrored here. Dark Magus is probably not the best album with which to be introduced to Miles Davis' fusion work, as this is pretty strong stuff. It's not as weird as say, Henry Cow, but it is incredibly intense in its relentless pursuit of long-winded and noisy rhythmic jams. This album's weakness lies in a certain lack of variation across its two discs, as a lot of the material on here begins to sound the same after awhile. Those already familiar with some of Davis' work from this time period are encouraged to investigate it, however, and see just how far out Miles could go. - Scott Hamrick [Janruary 2003] Click Here for Tracklist and Lineup Info