Miles Davis, Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970)
---. Live Evil (Columbia, 1971)
---. On the Corner (Columbia 1972)
---. Get Up With It (Columbia 1974)
---. Agharta (Columbia 1975)
---. The Columbia Years 1955-1985 (Columbia 1988)
Various, CBS Jazz Masterpieces Volume I (Columbia 1986)
Stevie Wonder, Innervisions (Tamala Motown 1972)
---. Songs In the Key of Life (Tamala Motown 1976)
Miles
I love jazz. I've often thought that if I had to stop listening to either jazz or pop (just to reduce these things to their most constituent parts) I would probably stop listening to pop before jazz. I only have a vague memory of why it is that I started listening to jazz regularly: my parents had some jazz records growing up. My dad was a big George Benson fan and my mother had a soft spot for Chuck Mangione's live record Land of Make Believe. I remember hearing both of those records early on in my listening life, although both were quite different than the jazz I would go on to love as I became a teenager. The first decade of my life coincided with the last period in which jazz had an impact on popular music. Grover Washington Jr., the aforementioned Benson and Mangione, the CTI label, Quincy Jones, jazz vocalist Al Jareau all of them, and many others, had charting albums often played on radio stations that didn't regularly play jazz music. As I came to find out, jazz fans didn't particularly like this music. An artist like Freddie Hubbard was obviously deeply respected by jazz fans, but not for the albums he made on CTI by the late 70s. It was the same for Quincy Jones, who would eventually leave jazz entirely to make world historically successful records with Michael Jackson. So when I started getting into "real" jazz around the age of 14, I had to convince myself that I fell in love with the music in spite of these jazz records from the 70s,
My first exposure to the history of jazz came from a series of samplers released by CBS/Columbia records (https://www.discogs.com/master/467848-Various-Columbia-Jazz-Masterpieces-Sampler-Volume-I) on cassette. Looking at the track listing, it's as good an overview of one label's jazz catalog as could be expected. It's lucky that the label happened to have one of the greatest jazz catalogs in history. The only piece of music I recognized was "Take Five" from the Dave Brubeck Quartet, due to the fact that one of the local TV stations used it as background music to announce school closings on snow days (ergo, happy memories from childhood). I've always loved Dave Brubeck, even though he can be seen as a middle of the road jazz composer and musician. It was particularly significant for me that David Lynch decided to soundtrack one of the more moving and happy scenes in Twin Peaks: the Return with "Take Five." Like Vince Guaraldi's jazz soundtrack to the Charlie Brown specials, Brubeck might be the first jazz musicians someone like me would have heard growing up in the 1970s and 80s.
Though familiar, "Take Five" wasn't my favorite piece on the sampler. There are two Miles Davis pieces on the release. I'm sure I was taken with the opening track "So What," an undeniably catchy piece that doesn't really go anywhere for most of its runtime, showcasing the soloing capabilities of each player. It serves its premier spot well, offering a tutorial on what jazz is: a musical foundation upon which players can solo on their instrument until the main theme is repeated. Again, as brilliant as "So What" is, it wasn't my favorite Miles on the sampler. That was "Saeta," the piece of music which followed "Take Five." "Saeta" opens with a drone on a series of brass instruments, a gentle cymbal crash and what sounded like an "exotic" instrument mournfully winding its way around a melody. However, in the background drums start to quietly be heard, marching along side of other percussion, until they overwhelm the other music. Accompanying the marching drums is much louder, harsher brass instruments that eventually overwhelm everything. The only thing I could compare it to was hearing an imaginary movie. A solitary figure wandering through the desert, only to be overtaken by a marching army. Once the march had established itself in the foreground another solitary voice, this time played by Davis' trumpet, announces itself. Is this part of the marching army, still lurking in the background with the droning brass? A new solitary figure emerging from the landscape? It was unclear but that also made it thrilling. I hadn't heard music like this before: and after all of these voices, instruments, scenes play out before the listener in the span of five or so minutes, they all recede into the background, vanishing, once again, over the horizon from whence they came.
I enjoyed most of the other music on the sampler, especially Billie Holliday's "You've Changed," but I couldn't shake "Saeta." I had to hear more of Davis' music. The sampler was part of a reissue campaign that CBS/Columbia did of jazz records that had been out of print for a while. I don't know the whole story about the campaign (jazz fans have very strong negative opinions about the series) but as someone who had a limited budget and spotty access to original pressings of these albums (it probably wouldn't have meant anything to me then anyways) the Columbia Jazz Masterpieces Series ("Digitally Remastered Direct from the Original Analog Tapes" as each bordered cover let the listener know) was a godsend for getting into jazz. As part of this series, as well as marking his move from Columbia to Warner Brothers, Columbia records released a box set of Miles Davis' music for the label in 1988. I got it for the holidays that year. I still think it's one of the best box sets that has ever been released.
1988 was the early days of the box set boom which arose with the marketing of compact discs in the 80s and early 90s. Eventually CD box sets would take a chronological approach to cataloging the work of the respective artists and bands, but the early box sets were a bit different and, arguably, more interesting. An important, early example of this is Bob Dylan's Biograph. Rolling Stone in its original review of the box set in 1986 makes special note of its eschewing of chronology in favor of thematics (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/biograph-103365/) demonstrating that mapping the consistency of Dylan's music over the then twenty-four year long career was more interesting than chronicling its development. Columbia, also home to Davis' recordings over a thirty year period, decided to do something similar for Miles. The four CDs or cassettes are organized thematically "Blues," "Standards," "Originals," "Moods" and "Electric." The first three categories are pretty self explanatory, but it was the last two cassettes that really made an impact. "Saeta" was on the mood cassette and the volume ended with "It's About That Time," another atmospheric trip into another world of sounds. This was music to be played at night, when the barriers between objects and self become blurred. Where sounds come from both the recording you're listening to and the dark, unknowable night. I suffered from insomnia as a kid and music was my companion most nights well into the morning. After discovering Davis' music, it was more or less the soundtrack for the experience.
The "Electric" volume was the real mind-blower and life-changer. I should say that some of the electric volume met that criteria. Now knowing Davis' catalogue as well as I do, it's noteworthy that his short 80s period on Columbia Records is overrepresented in the volume. As much as I've tried to get into them, I've never connected with the albums Miles made in the 1980s. It has as much to do with changing production and studio sounds as it does with Miles' playing or his sidemen. It's also tough because the music Miles made before taking hiatus in 1975 is so uniquely powerful that almost anything would be a disappointment. And it was the music Miles made during that period, the five years before he stepped away from music in the mid 70s, that I first heard on that cassette. The fourth volume starts off with three minutes and thirty seconds of pure fire, "Sivad." The editors made the choice of including only the opening part of the piece, perhaps thinking that anything beyond that might try the listener's patience.
Edited or not, I had never heard music like this. I couldn't tell what most of the instruments were except for the bass and drums. I assumed the central instrument was Miles' horn but it sounded almost unrecognizable fed through, as I later found out, a wah wah pedal. There was also a repeating sound which seemed like a frog or corpse groaning that was made a Brazilian instrument named the Cuica played by Airto Moreira. There also seemed to be an over-amplified organ but it didn't matter because the whole thing became a wall of sound wherein all the instruments blended together, metamorphosing from one instrument to another as the piece went on.
At the end of the first side of the cassette seemed to be the conclusion to "Sivad" at the beginning of the side. However, this piece was entitled "Honky Tonk" and came from a completely different album than "Sivad." I was even more intrigued. To make things even more perplexing, both Live Evil, the album which has "Sivad," and Get Up With It, the album which has "Honky Tonk" were both out of print. "Honky Tonk" was a more conventional blues number than "Sivad" but still had sounds that seemed to come out of nowhere: there was the Cuica making those sounds again, there seemed to be a guitar fed through a wah wah weaving in and out of the background and again whatever keyboards were being played sounded like they were coming from another planet.
The real mind melt, however, came on the second side: "Thinking One Thing And Doing Another." Like the other unearthly transmissions from the other end of the universe I heard on the first side, "Thinking One Thing And Doing Another" was from a record, On the Corner, was out of print. Let me be that old man for a second: my children have no idea how good they have it with regard to music discovery. Yes, they have it bad, very, very bad in many ways, but, as old people like me who listen to a lot of music like to say, it's so easy to hear almost any piece of recorded music (released and unreleased) today. When I first discovered these pieces on the Miles Davis box set, unless you were lucky enough to live near a used record store and that place knew what to buy, it was unlikely that you would get to hear out of print records. Before the reissue of On the Corner in 1993 and the U.S. reissues of Live-Evil and Get Up With It in 1996, the only way to hear those records was through expensive Japanese import CDs. I knew what the covers of these albums looked like before I ever heard them. That wasn't uncommon. Armed with under ten minutes of music from each of these albums, I could only imagine what the rest sounded like. So what did "Thinking One Thing And Doing Another" sound like? The piece faded in as if, much like "Saeta" suggested when I first heard it, there was some group of people or army advancing towards the listener. Except, unlike "Saeta" which suggested an organized military march overwhelming the solitary voice of the trumpet, there was no solitary voice to overwhelm. This was just a mass of people, disorganized, in some ways less threatening but in other ways much more threatening. The whole beast of a sound slinking its way down a sidewalk or street, shrieking--sometimes forcefully pushing its way forward, other moments stopping to let its various auditory tentacles fly off in every direction. There was a drum, but also a tabla dribbling percussion off the side. Miles' horn embedded itself within this collective, except for three minutes in when it sounds mournful, the same as any solo from the twenty years of his career up to that point. Had Miles been swallowed by this beast? Did he need help getting out?
I eventually found a used copy of On the Corner in Key West sometime in the early 90s. In 1995 I traveled cross country by train, staying at various places while looking at graduate schools I had gotten into. In Madison, Wisconsin I stayed with a grad student who, to my shock, had a copy of Get Up With It that she had purchased for $3 and didn't really like. When I told her that I would pay her $20 for it she surprisingly said no. However, I did get a chance to hear it in her living room while she was out. Unsurprisingly, it was even better than I could have imagined. Get Up With It is essentially a compilation of various sessions Miles had recorded between 1971-1974. It was one of two records like this he released in 1974, the other being Big Fun. I like Big Fun, but for some reason I always knew that it was a compilation of various sessions and thus always seemed less important. Besides, Big Fun doesn't end side two with "Rated X." In the 90s, the rediscovery of this track by readers of the Wire and their curatorial hand in the Virgin Ambient series of CDs, specifically the Jazz Satellites series selected by Kevin Martin (https://www.robertchristgau.com/get_album.php?id=760)--about which series I will eventually write something for my other music blog (https://languageoftheonagainoffagainfuture.blogspot.com), demonstrated how "Rated X" seemed to presage any number of electronically processed confrontational pieces of music from Public Enemy to drum and bass. When I first heard it, I had to make sure something wasn't wrong with the turntable or speakers, that I was actually hearing what I was hearing and that these sounds came from planet earth in 1974.
The second side of Get Up With It is flawless: beginning with "Maiysha," the most beautiful melody Davis wrote during his electric period and moving through the aforementioned "Honky Tonk," the music guides you through its labyrinthine sounds only to abandon you just as you feel your feet on solid ground with the blues structure of "Honky Tonk." If "Rated X" is everything within the spectrum of sound being dialed up into the red for a full aural assault, something the Bomb Squad would take from it in their 1980s productions for Public Enemy, then side one of Get Up With It is the inverse: the removal of all but the traces of sound for a half an hour.
The title of this post comes from the opening lyrics to Stevie Wonder's song "Sir Duke" (more on that in the second part). It concretizes in words the central paradox of music: an insular world nearly impossible to easily translate from sound to words (despite words being a central part of what much music consists) that is, nonetheless, a universal language that humans (among other creatures) understand innately. "Sir Duke," in the schematic laid out by the lyrics of "Sir Duke," is as close to a language everyone can understand as can exist in music. It's Wonder's fourth biggest chart hit, behind "I Just Called to Say I Love You" (another song about a universal language and its preferred medium) and just above his first number one "Fingertips (Part II)" yet another song about a universal musical experience (clapping your hands to the beat). It's probably my favorite pop song of all time: I heard it a lot on the radio growing up and have never tired of it. But, in terms of sound, it's diametrically opposed to Miles Davis' "He Loved Him Madly."
I bring these two pieces of music together because, of course, they are both tributes to "the king of them all, Sir Duke." The titular Duke is, again of course, Duke Ellington (I'm going to punt my Ellington discussion to the second part of this essay), a figure who looms over jazz music larger than almost any other person. In fact, Ellington looms so large over music in general that Wonder in 1976 could write a tribute to Ellington (who passed away in 1974) in a different genre of music and have one of the biggest hits of his career. Again, it goes to show the cultural imprint jazz used to have. "He Loved Him Madly" is a tribute to Duke Ellington as well. In the gatefold of Get Up With It the right side features a black and white photograph of Davis along with the musicians on each track, the left side is completely black except for "For Duke" in white letters almost engulfed by the darkness. The music on "He Loved Him Madly" is, in many ways, the complete opposite of the music Ellington made during his lifetime, which Wonder mimics in his hit song. Most of the first half of the piece consists of guitar with delay, haunting organ fed through a wah wah pedal and rolling drums which never seem to find the beat (along with percussion fills augmenting the drums). Though Davis plays trumpet on the track it's barely perceptible, with the main voice being Dave Liebman's flute. The whole piece is an ambient dirge, a musical piece designed to represent the absence felt from Ellington's death. Davis is famously reported to have said "it's not the notes you play, it's the notes you don't play" which matter. "He Loved Him Madly" is an entire piece based around the notes you don't play as a nod to Ellington's absence. How could one play music when the man for whom music was life is gone?
This philosophy, the technique of making one's music both an extremity of sound ("Rated X") and the absence of almost any sound ("He Loved Him Madly") Davis would take with him and his bands into the first shows of 1975 after the release of Get Up With It in November (an album whose second half was almost exclusively recorded with his then touring band). It's all over Agharta, the first of two double live albums he recorded that February in Japan. They would be some of the last notes Miles would play for five years. Though it's perhaps too easy to say that the absence and the silence the listener hears on "He Loved Him Madly" anticipates Davis' own silence in the then coming years, it nonetheless is as much tied to Davis' mythos and art as Ellington's bright swagger and swing is tied to his.
