Date: Jun 1, 1972 – Jun 6, 1972 (recording)
Release: Columbia/Legacy #63980
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An electrified and multidimensional burst of ass-shaking funk straight from the master himself. If Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix took a space ship to India together, they very well might have come up with something approximating On The Corner.
This utterly unique and unprecedented recording was savaged by a lot of the critics of its day. They blasted Miles for creating a new “anti-jazz” that fundamentally violated the genre’s integrity. Reviled as the jazz anti-Christ, his playing on this recording was indeed demonic. His trumpet spits out wah-wah distorted licks of fire and nastiness, and he grinds on the organ like it was a cheap date. He masterfully tangles and intertwines the varied sounds of the sitar, conga, electric guitar, tabla, organ, and electric bass to create thickly-layered rhythms of dazzling complexity. He throws in some heavy licks on top of it all, hitting hard with quick and punchy bursts from his horn that make the groove throb.
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Date: Feb 6, 1970 – Dec 19, 1970 (recording)
Release: Columbia/Legacy #65135
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There’s something about the way this music hits me. It’s not as if I haven’t been exposed to lots of hard, loud music – in fact, compared to some of the stuff that now gets called “fusion,” Miles Davis’ version can often seem quaint on the surface. At the time of the shows documented on this 1970 set, he was playing with a new band (something he was doing more often than in any period of his life theretofore), and playing music that, while broached in the previous couple of years by himself and very few others, was rather unheard of to most music listeners of the time, and certainly the canonical jazz guard.
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Date: August 19, 1969 – February 6, 1970
Release: COLUMBIA #65570
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No other musician in the 20th Century explored the possibilities of music as fiercely as trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis. He frustrated critics and fans alike as he opened himself up to unexpected directions in musical thinking while continuously shaping and refining his remarkable skills on trumpet. Critics tried and tried to squeeze his musical journeys into a box called “jazz,” but Miles would have none of it. And then, in August of 1969, Miles decided he’d put all of us in an impenetrable box and dare us to break out.
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Date: 1968
Release: Columbia/Legacy #65362
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I never waited as impatiently for a boxed set to be released as I did for this one. I assumed that the only thing that could possibly be better than In A Silent Way was The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions, because there would be so much more of it. Now that I have it all to enjoy (!), I’m finally able to appreciate the full magnitude of the original release of In A Silent Way. After withstanding three decades of overplay, In A Silent Way remains a mysterious, urgently necessary, life-affirming masterpiece that stands outside anything Miles or anybody else has ever recorded. When I first got the box, I had the insane expectation that I was about to hear some unreleased music on par with the original album. Looking back, I don’t know how I could even think such a thing was possible. Maybe it’s because I vividly imagine a bunch of record label executives huddled together late at night in smoke filled rooms listening to the best music ever while secretly conspiring to keep it eternally locked in the vaults for their own sinister pleasure. But whether or not such theories hold their water, I have come to accept the old single-disc version of In A Silent Way for what it has always been: COMPLETE.
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Date: June 11, 1964
Release: West Wind #2063
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Recorded less than 3 weeks before his tragic death at the age of 36, Naima ranks among Eric Dolphy’s greatest creations. Brilliantly opening the album with an unaccompanied statement on bass clarinet, Dolphy stretches out on a lengthy version of John Coltrane’s immortal “Naima.” His spirited playing on Jaki Byard’s “Ode to Charlie Parker” is a prime example of how Dolphy helped transform the flute into a respectable jazz instrument. The 19-minute Dolphy original, “Springtime,” sadly shows us just how much he had left to say, even though his time was set to run out. As was so often the case in his later years, Naima features some of Dolphy’s finest solos recorded with a mostly European band playing well below his level. The fine French rhythm section on Naima prudently handles this mismatching of talents by holding down a restrained African-infused beat behind Dolphy’s soaring runs on flute, alto, and bass clarinet. And while he is joined by trumpeter Donald Byrd and Nathan Davis on tenor, musicians who prove more than capable of keeping up with him, it is Dolphy’s mighty voice that dominates throughout. This tough to find European CD is well worth the search.
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Date: September 17, 1970 (recording)
Release: Prestige #24182
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With his towering physique and monstrous chops, Charles “The Burner” Earland dominated the jazz-organ bars once scattered across the cities of the “Chitlins Circuit”. From the late-60′s through the early-80′s, Earland gigged heavily throughout the black urban ghettos of the North, South and Midwest, conquering tough to please crowds with the blistering inferno of his fingers on the keys. It was in these rollicking live settings that Earland’s crowd-pleasing chops burned their brightest. As former Earland reedman Roy Nathanson told me shortly after the organist’s death in 1999,
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Date: December 19 – 21, 1966
Release: RCA 66551-2
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Before it spilled out onto the world, Duke Ellington‘s music existed in an inaccessible world of creative genius, a solitary realm deep inside his soul where uncharted sounds swirled wildly. His gift lay in his ability to move inside himself, explore, and return from solitude to forcefully express his inner musical visions. Duke was on intimate terms with his soul, and he understood how to conjure up emotional landscapes that could be felt by anyone else with hearts and ears. He didn’t simply commit his ideas to paper, but wrote out parts with the individual voices of his musical partners in mind. He knew how to get the very best out of saxophonists Johnny Hodges and Paul Gonsalves, how to push and direct them so that they could flower in the fertile realm of his ideas.
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Date: June 25, 1961
Release: Riverside #3RCD44432
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Ah…Bill Evans. Everybody loves Bill Evans, right? But who was he really? Clean-cut, mild-mannered, Clark Kentishly bespectacled with track marks up and down his arms, he tapped out aching incantations to bewitch us forever. An impenetrably enigmatic guy, Bill Evans the man remains irrelevant, a messenger for something bigger than his own biography. So do yourself a favor and forget about what people have to say about Mr. Bill. Just turn down the lights and let the music do its thing.
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Date: Sept 1963 – Oct 29, 1964 (recording)
Release: Verve #9210
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“Of all the people I knew, Gil Evans was one of the only ones who could pick up on what I was thinking musically…a person is lucky if he’s got one Gil Evans in his life, someone close enough to you to pull your coattail when something’s going wrong. Because who knows what I would have done or become if I hadn’t had someone like Gil to remind me?”
-Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, Miles: The Autobiography
Those who only know Gil Evans though his collaborations with Miles Davis will be astounded when they discover The Individualism of Gil Evans. The five recording sessions that went into the making of this album yielded music as compelling as anything Evans created with Miles. And that’s no minor feat, considering just how instrumental the trumpet playing genius was in helping Evans push the limits of jazz orchestration on such classics as Sketches Of Spain and Porgy & Bess. Forever known by his partnership with Miles, The Individualism of Gil Evans was the only album that the composer/pianist recorded as a leader during the period of 1961-1968, years when jazz clubs were closing, but, as evidenced here, the music was far from dying.
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Date: February 13, 1962
Release: VERVE 341 521 413-2
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Driving music designed for sun-drenched drives in sleek convertables along winding coasts with the one you love by your side. Jazz Samba is the album responsible for importing the Brazilian Bossa Nova craze to America in 1962. What makes this musical genre so infectious is the delicate tension between its intricate rhythms and its deceptively light-handed melodic approach. It’s the music of tropical drinks and lazy afternoons, and of all the Bossa Nova albums to be recorded in the ’60s, this is the definitive one.
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