Revolution Jazz: Miles Davis & Show # 707

Article Written by Adam Peltier

In recent years, jazz has unfortunately been regarded as an erudite musical form, something for academics and intellectuals to pursue in a curricular fashion. There is an unfortunate truth to this. The institutionalization of this genre has led jazz to be integrated in conservatories and theory, academizing (and by extension, neutering) this art form. When jazz is not relegated to the esoteric, it is tossed off as chintz, ersatz music meant for elevators and cocktail lounges. What is often forgotten about the genre is how dangerous and volatile it can be. Listen to the right album and you’ll hear it: the syncopation of the drums hammering harder and fiercer than any metal record, the horns lacerating as much as any cut by the Stooges or Velvets, the bass as bellowing and emotive as the most soulful of human voices. Jazz is dangerous, not only in its possibility to defy musical conventions (tonality, melody, and predictable chord changes have all been subverted within this genre, and sometimes simultaneously), but in the volatile performances of its creators. With this said, few jazz musicians have been as dangerous, or for that matter as influential, as Miles Davis.

Davis was a pioneer, not only of jazz music, but of 20th century music in general. Could UK Jungle have developed without the fearless polyrhythms of Dark Magus, ambient music without the sustained vamps of Bitches Brew, or hip-hop without the hypnotic beats of On the Corner? Yes, we may have eventually developed those genres, but it definitely would have taken a lot longer without the constant experimentation of Davis. The man has played a crucial role in almost every major development in jazz since the 1940’s. He treated the genre not as a set of parameters to follow, but a fluid forum to explore an infinity of possibilities.

To appraise the legacy of Miles Davis, it would be too restrictive to simply focus on one album or even a single era of his career. His exercises in “cool jazz” (see Birth of the Cool) from the 1950’s marked a major shift in post-bebop jazz, introducing a range of classical music techniques into both Davis’ sound and the genre itself. ‘Round About Midnight defined the hard bop subgenre, along with the works of fellow legends like Coltrane and Rollins. Kind of Blue not only changed the landscape of jazz again through its use of modality (using musical modes as opposed to standard chord progressions), but the record also remains the best selling jazz album of all time. His late 1960’s collaborations with producer Teo Macero (In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and A Tribute to Jack Johnson) not only invented jazz fusion, but caused an uproar amongst fans equal to the controversy of Dylan’s “electric era”. Then there are his later era experiments in augmenting jazz and electronic music, resulting in groundbreaking and boundary defying records like On the Corner and Doo-Bop. To say the least, it’s hard to pin Davis down as simply a musician of one movement or style. His music was always in flux, never static, never the same. Like the compositions he poured so much energy into, he refused to travel the safe road or follow the path expected of him. Davis was a musical subversive, never resting on his laurels and never satisfied in repeating himself.

There is a great amount of passion in Davis’ music. His compositions contain a lot of sadness, humour, anger, and pride. This pride also acted as a type of armour he had to wear to defend against the arrows of bigotry and racism slung his way. There are numerous accounts of Davis facing discrimination during his career, often in the form violence. Perhaps part of what motivated Davis and his preternatural creativity was the desire to prove that a black American man could not only be a great musician, but THE great musician of the 20th century. Without question, representation of the African Diaspora was a huge element in Davis’ music, as evidenced in his song titles, musical movements, and album artwork. This is also what moved Davis to compose the titular tribute to Jack Johnson, the peerless black American boxing champion. Johnson was quoted for the record as stating “I’m Jack Johnson, heavyweight champion of the world. I’m black. They never let me forget it. I’m black all right! I’ll never let them forget it!” I don’t doubt for a second that Davis saw himself and the music he made in the same light.

Davis took pride in his who he was, and provoked conservative white America and the patriarchal-colonial ideas they stood for. This is part of what made Davis so dangerous: not only his defiance of musical conventions, but his defiance of the conventions of the world he lived in. He was unwavering, unafraid, and brazen. No peer was as bold as Davis was during his life, and no one has been since the artist’s passing in 1991. However, the ghost of the trumpeter lingers and continues to haunt the musical landscape of our 21st century. He can be heard in the harrowing hip-hop of Kendrick Lamar, in the fractured electronics of Jlin, the dreary atmospheres of King Krule, and the fuzzed out noise of Ty Segall. Even those who have never listened to Davis’ music are still indirectly influenced by what he forged. Anyone who found solace in the music of Bowie, James Brown, the Stooges, Prince, Eno, or Hendrix has Miles to thank for that.

Miles Davis truly does deserve to be regarded as a legend. For his groundbreaking work in musical experimentation, his profound influence in numerous musical genres, and his constant defiance of the world he lived in, Davis will always remain one of the greatest and most dangerous of musicians who ever lived.

Miles Davis Play List:

1. Miles Davis All Stars - Milestones (Milestones/Sippin' At Bells - Savoy Records - 1946)
2. Miles Davis - 'Round Midnight ('Round About Midnight - Columbia Records - 1957)
3. Miles Davis - Red China Blues (Get Up With It - Columbia Records - 1974)
4. Miles Davis - Water Babies (Water Babies - Columbia Records - 1976)
5. Miles Davis - Jeru (The Birth Of The Cool - Capitol records - 1957)
6. Miles Davis - Will O' The Wisp (Sketches of Spain - Columbia Records - 1960)
7. Miles Davis - Riot (Nefertiti - Columbia Records - 1968)
8. Miles Davis Quintet - Orbits (Miles Smiles - Columbia Records - 1967)
9. Miles Davis - Come Get It (Star People - Columbia Records - 1983)
10. Miles Davis - Miles Runs The Voodoo Down (Bitches Brew - Columbia Records - 1970)
11. Miles Davis - Moja (Dark Magus - CBS-Sony - 1977)
12. Miles Davis - Chocolate Chip (Doo-Bop - Warner Bros Records - 1992)
13. Miles Davis - Shhh (In A Silent Way - Columbia Records - 1969)
14. Miles Davis - Black Satin (On The Corner - Columbia Records - 1972)
15. Miles Davis - Right Off (Jack Johnson/A Tribute To Jack Johnson - Columbia Records - 1971)
16. Miles Davis - Blue In Green (Kind of Blue - Columbia Records - 1959)

To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for February 3.

Coming Up on Revolution Rock in 2018!

It’s February which means that throughout this month Revolution Rock will devote each episode that airs in February to theme based programming. Dave and co-host Adam have special programming lined up ranging from jazz, punk, post-punk, garage, country, folk and surf. This year’s themed month programming starts off on February 3rd with a program focusing on jazz musician Miles Davis. Revolution Rock airs every Saturday from 7-9 PM on CJAM 99.1 FM in Windsor/Detroit. It can be streamed via cjam.ca and be downloaded via the very same website afterwards.

Revolution Jazz. The Music of Miles Davis
Saturday February 3rd
7-9 PM
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

Miles Davis was a pioneer, not only of jazz music, but also of 20th century music in general. The man has played a crucial role in almost every major development in jazz since the 1940’s. He treated the genre not as a set of parameters to follow, but a fluid forum to explore an infinity of possibilities. To appraise the legacy of Miles Davis, it would be too restrictive to simply focus on one album or even a single era of his career. His exercises in “cool jazz” (see Birth of the Cool) from the 1950’s marked a major shift in post-bebop jazz, introducing a range of classical music techniques into both Davis’ sound and the genre itself. ‘Round About Midnight defined the hard bop subgenre, along with the works of fellow legends like Coltrane and Rollins. Kind of Blue not only changed the landscape of jazz again through its use of modality (using musical modes as opposed to standard chord progressions), but the record also remains the best selling jazz album of all time.

His late 1960’s collaborations with producer Teo Macero (In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and A Tribute to Jack Johnson) not only invented jazz fusion, but also caused an uproar amongst fans equal to the controversy of Dylan’s “electric era”. Then there are his later era experiments in augmenting jazz and electronic music, resulting in groundbreaking and boundary defying records like On the Corner and Doo-Bop. To say the least, it’s hard to pin Davis down as simply a musician of one movement or style. His music was always in flux, never static, never the same. Like the compositions he poured so much energy into, he refused to travel the safe road or follow the path expected of him. Davis was a musical subversive, never resting on his laurels and never satisfied with repeating himself. To celebrate Black History Month, Revolution Rock will feature a program devoted to the music of Miles Davis. This episode will focus on a selection of his recordings throughout his long career.

Rebellious Jukebox: The Music of The Fall and Mark E. Smith
Saturday February 17th
7-9 PM
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

Mark E. Smith was one of post-punk’s great deconstructionist agitators. In his forty year career with The Fall, Smith didn’t so much act as a band leader as much as a sonic provoker. While The Fall has literally hundreds of tracks to its name, the compositions arranged by Mark E. Smith and his ever-rotating roster of musical accomplices rarely felt like songs in the traditional sense. The angular and abrasive music made by the band, led by Smith’s idiosyncratic style of spoken/sung fractured rambling, felt more like odd aural experiments, strange tone poems, and at its most extremes, broadcasts from some alien radio station. Smith, while lazily attributed the status of rock-poet, hardly used language to elucidate or beautify. Smith’s strength was in demonstrating the malleability of language, fracturing familiar phrases, garbling syllables, and patch-working words to create a seemingly new variant of English. If anything, Smith showed the arbitrariness of spoken language, taking a piss of the idea of the songwriter/poet, while paradoxically demonstrating astonishing creativity in his heedlessly irreverent compositions. The Fall have released 31 full-length albums, 32 live albums, 40 compilation albums, and many other variants on the recorded album format. This show will feature a selection of songs from The Fall’s prolific, daunting discography.

Northern Passages: The Sadies Radio Special & An Interview With Travis Good
February 24th, 2017
7-9 PM
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

Miles Davis Kind of Blue & Show # 442

 

Kind of Blue was released by Miles Davis in 1959 and has gone on to be called one of the greatest Jazz albums of all time and one of the most commercially successful Jazz albums ever. But what is it about this album that makes it so great and what is it that makes people respond this way? The road to this album was a long one, Miles had previously released music in a Hard Bop Jazz style prior to this albums release in 1959. After years of playing that particular style of Jazz he began to grow disillusioned and dissatisfied with it, Miles felt as he said in Ashley Khan’s Kind of Blue: The Making of The Miles Davis Masterpiece that the complexity of the chord structures in the songs were limiting his creativity. Here is a quote from Miles Davis from that book that elaborates more on what I am referring to:

"No chords ... gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things. When you go this way, you can go on forever. You don't have to worry about changes and you can do more with the [melody] line. It becomes a challenge to see how melodically innovative you can be. When you're based on chords, you know at the end of 32 bars that the chords have run out and there's nothing to do but repeat what you've just done—with variations."

Miles Davis began to experiment with a new style of Jazz which stripped away this complex structure simplifying what he did, as a result leaving more room for improvisation within each song. Not to get too technical, but the style is based on Jazz Modal scales and structures. This style was first experimented and recorded on 1958’s Milestone. On this album Miles first ventured into the aforementioned Jazz Modal style which he would expand on more on Kind of Blue. Kind of Blue was made up of two recording sessions both done at Columbia 300th Street Studio in New York City. The first three tracks (“So What”, “Freddy Freeloader”, “Blue In Green”) were all recorded on March 2nd, 1959, while the last two tracks (“All Blues” and "Flamenco Sketches”) were recorded on April 29th, 1959. Another interesting fact about this album is that all of the tracks featured on this release are the first recorded takes of the song. This is partially due to two factors one, the band that is found on these recordings and two, the process in which these songs were created and recorded.

For these songs the band had no idea what they were going to sound like prior to recording them, the were only given what was commonly referred to as “sketches” by Miles Davis which were given to the band just before recording the songs. They weren’t told specifically what the songs were going to be, but given a general idea of what was to be played. The band was made up of an all star cast of musicians John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley on sax, Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums and of course Miles Davis on trumpet. The combination of experienced musicians and improvisation on each song captured a certain spontaneity that people identified with. The atmosphere and mysteriousness that is captured on this recording is part of what makes it so beloved, because even non Jazz fans know about it and like it. Kind of Blue was released on August 17th, 1959 and greatly influenced and helped to shape the future of Jazz music and music in general going beyond Jazz having a huge impact on Rock and Classical music genres. Even more than fifty years after its release people are still discovering Kind of Blue and talking about it.

This Week's Play List:

1. John Coltrane – Village Blues
2. Sun Ra – Enlightenment
3. John Lee Hooker – Devil's Jump
4. Leadbelly – Ella Speed
5. Marie Knight – Come On Baby
6. Dave Bartholomew – Hey Hey
7. Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey
8. James Eastwood – Darkest Night
9. Tawny Reed – Needle In A Haystack
10. Chuck Berry – Tulane
11. Albert & Charles Bedeaux– Weird
12. Rudy Greene – Wild Life
13. James Berry – Spider Bite Blues
14. Grant Green – Speak Low
15. Miles Davis – Freddie Freeloader
16. Miles Davis – Blu In Green
17. Otis Redding – You Don't Miss Your Water
18. U-Roy & The Tree Tops – Do It Right
19. Howlin’ Wolf – Moanin’ At Midnight
20. James Brown – I Can’t Stand It


To download this weeks program, visit CJAM's schedule page for Revolution Rock and download the file for February 5. Or subscribe to Revolution Rock as a Podcast.

Coming Up on Revolution Rock in February 2013!

February is once again theme month for Revolution Rock. This year I will doing four themed shows (one for each week in February). Each program will air on a Tuesday from 10:30-Noon and can be streamed/listened to online via www.cjam.ca or on the FM dial at 99.1 FM in the Windsor/Detroit area.

The shows will be as follows:

Revolution Rock Celebrates Black History Month – Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue
February 5th, 2013
10:30 AM - Noon
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

In the last few years I have started off theme month on Revolution Rock by celebrating Black History Month and venturing into genres that aren’t normally featured on the show such as Jazz, Blues, Soul, R&B, Reggae, etc. This year I will be playing a mix of those genres, but also focusing on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue from 1959. I will be playing a selection of tracks from this highly influential and breakthrough album.


Retro Canadian Garage
February 13th, 2013
10:30 AM - Noon
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

While Revolution Rock usually features Garage Rock weekly, this program will feature tracks from Canadian Garage Rock bands from the 60s-80s and perhaps some bands from the 90s. It is specifically a look at Garage Rock from Canada’s past, not present. Expect to hear music from The Ugly Ducklings, The Gruesomes, The Haunted, The Northwest Company, Painted Ship and more!


Sub Pop Rock City
February 20th, 2013
10:30 AM - Noon
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

Sub Pop Records started out as an independent record label in 1986 by Bruce Pavitt and Jonathan Poneman in Seattle, Washington. The label was host to the Seattle Grunge music scene and has released music by Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Nirvana and countless others. Since then the label has expanded their roster releasing several albums by other bands mostly in the Indie Rock related genres.  They have put out releases by bands such as The Shins, Fleet Foxes, Fugazi, Shabazz Palaces, No Age, Jaill and several others. This program will focus on a selection of recordings that have been released by this wonderful label known as Sub Pop.


Revolution Surf (The 7th Edition)
February 27th, 2013
10:30 AM - Noon
CJAM 99.1 FM (www.cjam.ca)

I originally started the annual Surf program seven years ago as an excuse to play only Surf music on the program, I have since then incorporated it with a variety of other genres for that matter into the programs format, but still stick to this yearly special. This year will be no different. This February will mark my seventh annual Surf Rock program on CJAM FM. I will be playing a variety of new and old Surf bands focusing on The Ventures Walk Don’t Run album, which was originally released in 1960. The program will also feature a segment from Derk Brigante formerly of CJAM's Surfphony of Derstruction. He recently made a new postcast which can be heard at his blog here.