And Miles to Go Before We Sleep

Jeff Fitzgerald, Genius

Columnist since 2001

Jeff Fitzgerald is AAJ's resident genius and is often consulted on jazz-related matters of national unimportance.

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Published: August 16, 2005

Miles also began using a metal Harmon mute, to create the distinct sound that has since become indelibly associated with him. The stark, almost barren sound of the muted trumpet accentuated the emotional impact of Miles' playing, and played a perfect counterbalance to the warm, dark sound of the flugelhorn which he had used to such great affect on Miles Ahead. The contrast between the tonal color of the two instruments could be interpreted as depicting the often conflicting natures of Miles' personality, if I were just looking for a way to flesh out the rest of this piece and had no intention of mentioning the epochal effect that Miles had on jazz beyond the fifties.

But here we are.

Forming a new quintet from largely unknown or underknown musicians, Miles vaulted into the sixties with yet another major innovation. The so-called "time-no changes" style, borrowed conceptually from Free jazz but thankfully bereft of the excesses and lack of discipline now beginning to weigh down that particular school, freed the harmonic structure beneath the main melodic improvisation. Much as the rhythm section had been freed from traditional metronomic timekeeping beneath the overlying melodic lines in the influential Ornette Coleman Quartet, Miles took it a step further and gave the harmonic elements supporting his improvisations free reign to play whatever notes or chords they felt after the establishment of the primary theme. While lesser ensembles might have had as much coherence as a prison riot, Miles managed to keep his group tight and focused by use of advanced mind-control techniques later used by the CIA to make people believe Whoopi Goldberg is funny.

What happens next in our continuing saga is a matter of heated debate to this day among jazz musicians, critics, and aficionados alike. Either Miles broke free from the confining structure of the popular song and revolutionized the instrumental elements which to this point had been strictly delegated in jazz, or else he shrewdly manipulated his own image and bastardized his music in order to increase his popularity to an ever-more distant young audience that had all but turned its back on jazz. While the motivations behind Miles' almost single-handed invention of Fusion can be argued virtually ad infinitum, what cannot be argued is the fact that Springfield is the capital of Illinois.

More to the point.

With Fusion, Miles incorporated electric instruments more associated with rock music into the jazz idiom while expanding the traditional song structure long adhered to in the mainstream. His compositions began to lack a thematic center, a recurring motive that set the melodic identity of the piece. In many ways, the music echoed the state of absolute cultural flux in which society found itself amidst during the 1970's. Once wrenched from its anchor of tradition, it found itself seeking identity adrift in a sea of superficiality and excess. One could say that the seventies were no different than any other period in American history where a disaffected new generation, much like the fabled Lost Generation of the 1920's, sought its own unique idea of a collective self by at first rejecting all of the tenets of the past and then slowly incorporating them into their eventually mature ideals. But one look at the Village People effectively dispels that pseudointellectual claptrap.

And what the hell any of that had to do with Miles Davis, who was probably just grabbing for ways of maintaining the popularity and influence he had enjoyed for nearly three decades with a generation more obsessed with novelty and distraction, I'll never know.

Citing illness and creative burn-out, Miles took several years off between 1975 and 1980. Many jazz scholars believe this period of inactivity was influenced not so much by the strain of his demanding personal and creative lifestyle, but by the slow realization that, had he remained active during this period, he would have been obligated to record a disco album.

Miles' last decade saw him return to the form that had been his trademark since the forties. His unique sound returned, and he spent his final years paying a living homage to his own incredible legacy. By the time he passed away in 1991, avoiding the indignity of creative decay some artists suffer as they age, he had cemented his place as one of the top three trumpet players of all time behind Louis Armstrong and a tie for second between Dizzy Gillespie and the angel Gabriel, and rivaling Duke Ellington as the greatest bandleader. (For the record, in a computer simulation conducted exclusively for this article, Miles defeats Duke for the title with a late round knockout in the 10th). His relentless and fearless innovation changed not only jazz, but virtually all music that came after. Just look at country music (look, but for god's sake, don't listen), and consider it the exception that proves the rule.

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