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d i s s i d e n t
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a r t i s t : Miles Davis
t i t l e : The Best Of
d a t e : 2003
l a b e l : TIM
g e n r e : Jazz
r l s. d a t e : Jul/2003
t r a c k s : 13
b i t r a t e : 192kbps
s i z e : 68,7 MB
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Throughout a professional career lasting 50 years, Miles Davis
played the trumpet in a lyrical, introspective, and melodic
style, often employing a stemless Harmon mute to make his sound
more personal and intimate. But if his approach to his
instrument was constant, his approach to jazz was dazzlingly
protean. To examine his career is to examine the history of
jazz from the mid-'40s to the early '90s, since he was in the
thick of almost every important innovation and stylistic
development in the music during that period, and he often led
the way in those changes, both with his own performances and
recordings and by choosing sidemen and collaborators who forged
new directions. It can even be argued that jazz stopped
evolving when Davis wasn't there to push it forward.
Davis was the son of a dental surgeon, Dr. Miles Dewey Davis
Jr., and a music teacher, Cleota Mae (Henry) Davis, and thus
grew up in the black middle class of east St. Louis after the
family moved there shortly after his birth. He became
interested in music during his childhood and by the age of 12
began taking trumpet lessons. While still in high school, he
started to get jobs playing in local bars and at 16 was playing
gigs out of town on weekends. At 17, he joined Eddie Randle's
Blue Devils, a territory band based in St. Louis. He enjoyed a
personal apotheosis in 1944, just after graduating from high
school, when he saw and was allowed to sit in with Billy
Eckstine's big band, who was playing in St. Louis. The band
featured trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and saxophonist Charlie
Parker, the architects of the emerging bebop style of jazz,
which was characterized by fast, inventive soloing and dynamic
rhythm variations. It is striking that Davis fell so completely
under Gillespie and Parker's spell, since his own slower and
less flashy style never really compared to theirs. But bebop
was the new sound of the day, and the young trumpeter was bound
to follow it. He did so by leaving the Midwest to attend the
Institute of Musical Art in New York City (renamed Juilliard)
in September 1944. Shortly after his arrival in Manhattan, he
was playing in clubs with Parker, and by 1945 he had abandoned
his academic studies for a full-time career as a jazz musician,
initially joining Benny Carter's band and making his first
recordings as a sideman. He played with Eckstine in 1946-1947
and was a member of Parker's group in 1947-1948, making his
recording debut as a leader on a 1947 session that featured
Parker, pianist John Lewis, bassist Nelson Boyd, and drummer
Max Roach. This was an isolated date, however, and Davis spent
most of his time playing and recording behind Parker. But in
the summer of 1948, he organized a nine-piece band with an
unusual horn section. In addition to himself, it featured an
alto saxophone, a baritone saxophone, a trombone, a French
horn, and a tuba. This nonet, employing arrangements by Gil
Evans and others, played for two weeks at the Royal Roost in
New York in September. Earning a contract with Capitol Records,
the band went into the studio in January 1949 for the first of
three sessions which produced 12 tracks that attracted little
attention at first. The band's relaxed sound, however, affected
the musicians who played it, among them Kai Winding, Lee
Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis, J.J. Johnson, and Kenny
Clarke, and it had a profound influence on the development of
the cool jazz style on the West Coast. In February 1957,
Capitol finally issued the tracks together on an LP called
Birth of the Cool. Davis, meanwhile, had moved on to co-leading
a band with pianist Tadd Dameron in 1949, and the group took
him out of the country for an appearance at the Paris Jazz
Festival in May. But the trumpeter's progress was impeded by an
addiction to heroin that plagued him in the early '50s. His
performances and recordings became more haphazard, but in
January 1951 he began a long series of recordings for the
Prestige label that became his main recording outlet for the
next several years. He managed to kick his habit by the middle
of the decade, and he made a strong impression playing "'Round
Midnight" at the Newport Jazz Festival in July 1955, a
performance that led the major label Columbia Records to sign
him. The prestigious contract allowed him to put together a
permanent band, and he organized a quintet featuring
saxophonist John Coltrane, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul
Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones who began recording his
Columbia debut, 'Round About Midnight, in October. As it
happened, however, he had a remaining five albums on his
Prestige contract, and over the next year he was forced to
alternate his Columbia sessions with sessions for Prestige to
fulfill this previous commitment. The latter resulted in the
Prestige albums The New Miles Davis Quintet, Cookin', Workin',
Relaxin', and Steamin', making Davis' first quintet one of his
better-documented outfits. In May 1957, just three months after
Capitol released the Birth of the Cool LP, Davis again teamed
with arranger Gil Evans for his second Columbia LP, Miles
Ahead. Playing flⁿgelhorn, Davis fronted a big band on music
that extended the Birth of the Cool concept and even had
classical overtones. Released in 1958, the album was later
inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, intended to honor
recordings made before the Grammy Awards were instituted in
1959. In December 1957, Davis returned to Paris, where he
improvised the background music for the film L'Ascenseur pour
l'Echafaud (Escalator to the Gallows). Jazz Track, an album
containing this music, earned him a 1960 Grammy nomination for
Best Jazz Performance, Solo, or Small Group. He added
saxophonist Cannonball Adderley to his group, creating the
Miles Davis Sextet, who recorded the album Milestones in April
1958. Shortly after this recording, Red Garland was replaced on
piano by Bill Evans and Jimmy Cobb took over for Philly Joe
Jones on drums. In July, Davis again collaborated with Gil
Evans and an orchestra on an album of music from Porgy and
Bess. Back in the sextet, Davis began to experiment with modal
playing, basing his improvisations on scales rather than chord
changes. This led to his next band recording, Kind of Blue, in
March and April 1959, an album that became a landmark in modern
jazz and the most popular disc of Davis' career, eventually
selling over two million copies, a phenomenal success for a
jazz record. In sessions held in November 1959 and March 1960,
Davis again followed his pattern of alternating band releases
and collaborations with Gil Evans, recording Sketches of Spain,
containing traditional Spanish music and original compositions
in that style. The album earned Davis and Evans Grammy
nominations in 1960 for Best Jazz Performance, Large Group, and
Best Jazz Composition, More Than 5 minutes; they won in the
latter category.
By the time Davis returned to the studio to make his next band
album in March 1961, Adderley had departed, Wynton Kelly had
replaced Bill Evans at the piano, and John Coltrane had left to
begin his successful solo career, being replaced by saxophonist
Hank Mobley (following the brief tenure of Sonny Stitt).
Nevertheless, Coltrane guested on a couple of tracks of the
album, called Someday My Prince Will Come. The record made the
pop charts in March 1962, but it was preceded into the
bestseller lists by the Davis quintet's next recording, the
two-LP set Miles Davis in Person (Friday & Saturday Nights at
the Blackhawk, San Francisco), recorded in April. The following
month, Davis recorded another live show, as he and his band
were joined by an orchestra led by Gil Evans at Carnegie Hall
in May. The resulting Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall was his
third LP to reach the pop charts, and it earned Davis and Evans
a 1962 Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Performance by a Large
Group, Instrumental. Davis and Evans teamed up again in 1962
for what became their final collaboration, Quiet Nights. The
album was not issued until 1964, when it reached the charts and
earned a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz
Performance by a Large Group or Soloist with Large Group. In
1996, Columbia Records released a six-CD box set, Miles Davis &
Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, that won
the Grammy for Best Historical Album. Quiet Nights was preceded
into the marketplace by Davis' next band effort, Seven Steps to
Heaven, recorded in the spring of 1963 with an entirely new
lineup consisting of saxophonist George Coleman, pianist Victor
Feldman, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Frank Butler. During
the sessions, Feldman was replaced by Herbie Hancock and Butler
by Tony Williams. The album found Davis making a transition to
his next great group, of which Carter, Hancock, and Williams
would be members. It was another pop chart entry that earned
1963 Grammy nominations for both Best Instrumental Jazz
Performance by a Soloist or Small Group and Best Instrumental
Jazz Performance by a Large Group. The quintet followed with
two live albums, Miles Davis in Europe, recorded in July 1963,
which made the pop charts and earned a 1964 Grammy nomination
for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or
Soloist with Small Group, and My Funny Valentine, recorded in
February 1964 and released in 1965, when it reached the pop
charts. By September 1964, the final member of the classic
Miles Davis Quintet of the 1960s was in place with the addition
of saxophonist Wayne Shorter to the team of Davis, Carter,
Hancock, and Williams. While continuing to play standards in
concert, this unit embarked on a series of albums of original
compositions contributed by the band members, starting in
January 1965 with E.S.P., followed by Miles Smiles (1967 Grammy
nomination for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small
Group or Soloist with Small Group [7 or Fewer]), Sorcerer,
Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky (1968 Grammy nomination for Best
Instrumental Jazz Performance by a Small Group or Soloist with
Small Group), and Filles de Kilimanjaro. By the time of Miles
in the Sky, the group had begun to turn to electric
instruments, presaging Davis' next stylistic turn. By the final
sessions for Filles de Kilimanjaro in September 1968, Hancock
had been replaced by Chick Corea and Carter by Dave Holland.
But Hancock, along with pianist Joe Zawinul and guitarist John
McLaughlin, participated on Davis' next album, In a Silent Way
(1969), which returned the trumpeter to the pop charts for the
first time in four years and earned him another small-group
jazz performance Grammy nomination. With his next album,
Bitches Brew, Davis turned more overtly to a jazz-rock style.
Though certainly not conventional rock music, Davis'
electrified sound attracted a young, non-jazz audience while
putting off traditional jazz fans. Bitches Brew, released in
March 1970, reached the pop Top 40 and became Davis' first
album to be certified gold. It also earned a Grammy nomination
for Best Instrumental Arrangement and won the Grammy for
large-group jazz performance. He followed it with such similar
efforts as Miles Davis at Fillmore East (1971 Grammy nomination
for Best Jazz Performance by a Group), A Tribute to Jack
Johnson, Live-Evil, On the Corner, and In Concert, all of which
reached the pop charts. Meanwhile, Davis' former sidemen became
his disciples in a series of fusion groups: Corea formed Return
to Forever, Shorter and Zawinul led Weather Report, and
McLaughlin and former Davis drummer Billy Cobham organized the
Mahavishnu Orchestra. Starting in October 1972, when he broke
his ankles in a car accident, Davis became less active in the
early '70s, and in 1975 he gave up recording entirely due to
illness, undergoing surgery for hip replacement later in the
year. Five years passed before he returned to action by
recording The Man With the Horn in 1980 and going back to
touring in 1981. By now, he was an elder statesman of jazz, and
his innovations had been incorporated into the music, at least
by those who supported his eclectic approach. He was also a
celebrity whose appeal extended far beyond the basic jazz
audience. He performed on the worldwide jazz festival circuit
and recorded a series of albums that made the pop charts,
including We Want Miles (1982 Grammy Award for Best Jazz
Instrumental Performance by a Soloist), Star People, Decoy, and
You're Under Arrest. In 1986, after 30 years with Columbia, he
switched to Warner Bros. Records and released Tutu, which won
him his fourth Grammy for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance.
Aura, an album he had recorded in 1984, was released by
Columbia in 1989 and brought him his fifth Grammy for Best Jazz
Instrumental Performance by a Soloist (on a Jazz Recording).
Davis surprised jazz fans when, on July 8, 1991, he joined an
orchestra led by Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival to
perform some of the arrangements written for him in the late
'50s by Gil Evans; he had never previously looked back at an
aspect of his career. He died of pneumonia, respiratory
failure, and a stroke within months. Doo-Bop, his last studio
album, appeared in 1992. It was a collaboration with rapper
Easy Mo Bee, and it won a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues
Instrumental Performance, with the track "Fantasy" nominated
for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo. Released in 1993, Miles &
Quincy Live at Montreux won Davis his seventh Grammy for Best
Large Jazz Ensemble Performance.
Miles Davis took an all-inclusive, constantly restless approach
to jazz that had begun to fall out of favor by the time of his
death, even as it earned him controversy during his lifetime.
It was hard to recognize the bebop acolyte of Charlie Parker in
the flamboyantly dressed leader with the hair extensions who
seemed to keep one foot on a wah-wah pedal and one hand on an
electric keyboard in his later years. But he did much to
popularize jazz, reversing the trend away from commercial
appeal that bebop began. And whatever the fripperies and
explorations, he retained an ability to play moving solos that
endeared him to audiences and demonstrated his affinity with
tradition. At a time when jazz is inclining toward academia and
repertory orchestras rather than moving forward, he is a
reminder of the music's essential quality of boundless
invention, using all available means.
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01-Jeru [03:12]
02-Venus De Milo [03:11]
03-Conception [04:02]
04-Deception [02:48]
05-Bopplicity [03:01]
06-Godchild [03:09]
07-Rocker [03:05]
08-Yesterdays [02:26]
09-Hibeck [03:06]
10-Ezz-thetic [02:53]
11-My Old Flame [06:34]
12-Budo [02:34]
13-Bluing [09:53]
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49:54 min
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