By Pico
Miles Davis is takin' it to the streets.
In late spring of 1972, Davis broke a two year hiatus from the studio to act upon his most daring idea of his 45 year recording history: to create music that finally is completely absent of any jazz aesthetic and replace it with “street" sensibilities. An idea to jettison most instrumental wankery in favor of moods and heavy grooves (a counter move in 1972 if there ever was one). And, an idea to abandon discernible melody in favor of bass riffs and relentless repeating figures and beats. Songs with no beginning and no end. The end product of this idea became known as On The Corner, one of his most controversial albums of all time. But unlike his other controversial albums, most people even today can't embrace it.
To put this vision into vinyl, Miles enlisted the help of an acquaintance he met three years prior; the premier orchestral conductor for rock stars, Paul Buckmaster. The British cellist, whose arrangements had already by this time figured in prominent records by David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and Elton John, always harbored a love for the avant-garde and jazz. So when he got the call from Miles, he enthusiastically embraced the opportunity. In the process, Buckmaster encouraged Davis to assimilate some of the music theories of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German composer who pioneered the use of electronic instruments in classical music and formulating alternative song structures. Whether it was conscious or not, Miles moved more toward Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, requiring most of the musicians to play with as little preconceptions as possible and listen closely to each other.
As Buckmaster consolidated his ideas and composed scores, Miles rounded up another stellar set of supporting musicians for the task: John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Lonnie Liston Smith, Jack deJohnette, Billy Hart, Dave Liebman, Bennie Maupin, Al Foster, Michael Henderson, Don Alias and many more.
Just as significant, Indian players were used (Badal Roy, tablas; Khalil Balarishna, electric sitar; Colin Walcott of the band Oregon, sitar). The Indian experimentations actually begun toward the end of 1969 until Miles took a break from the studio a few months later. But now, there were more earnestly employed.
Never before or since had Miles assembled such a massive amount of talent nor had utilized such a wide array of influences to make a record.
Unfortunately for Buckmaster, his own best laid plans were immediately tossed aside when the recording sessions began for the album on June 1, 1972; the scores he carefully constructed and made copies for the musicians were never really used. Some of the basic ideas he brought to the sessions were used more for starting points, but the musicians , Miles and producer Teo Macero took them to places he never intended. Instead, the band recorded his sketches with only a few members getting a little rehearsal and most getting virtually none at all. This was how Miles got spontaneity out of his players, much as he had done for most of his notable records going back to Kind Of Blue.
There were two primary sessions where all the basic tracks for On The Corner were recorded; “On The Corner" was recorded on June 1 and “Black Satin" was put to tape on June 6. These two megatunes were later broken up into the four, discrete tracks that make up the final release. Two of those tracks were further broken down further into arbitrarily defined songs within the track with no identifiable start and stop points.
The unedited master of “On The Corner" is one of the rare spots on the album where a soloist aside from Miles emerges from the ensemble; McLaughlin sounds more like his old, uninhibited Jack Johnson self instead of the more studied, Mahavishnu version. The album version, called “On The Corner/New York Girl/Thinkin' Of One Thing And Doing Another/Votes For Miles" is not that much changed from the raw version.
There is a previously unreleased nugget from that session, though; “On The Corner (take 4)" sounds like a different tune altogether from the other versions of “On The Corner." Instead of the quicker double-time of the twenty-minute version that ended up on the album, this five-minute rendition goes at a slower pace and McLaughlin's menacing guitar fronts an un-worldly percussion section full of Indian instruments, conventional percussion and drums (either Hart or deJohnette, or both). Beside a sitar and Yamaha organ bleating out dark chords lies Henderson's rock-solid bass vamps at the center. Miles himself lays out. “Take 4" is a little bit light on the cerebral side, but it's one of the best straight groovers on the whole box set. With Henderson and McLaughlin leading the way of this jam, it's marks a brief glimpse back to 1970's Tribute To Jack Johnson.
The centerpiece track of both the original album and the box set is “Black Satin." In a collection consisting of hours upon hours of cyclical grooves and two-note riffs, “Black Satin" is beautifully complex, mysterious and downright funky. Despite it being derivative of the “On The Corner" track that spawned many of the other tracks of the album, “Satin" stands apart because of the heavy editing and dubbing that had been largely avoided for the other selections and possesses a catchy, recognizable theme. The rhythm is heavily multi-layered and the whistles and almost-random hand claps add a “street" element to what is actually a free-form funk tune. Macero made heavy use of tape edits that predate the sampling and beats that underpins techno, drum 'n' bass and dance music many years later. For all these reasons, “Black Satin" remains Miles' most successful expression of his genius in the last two decades of his life.
As Sony has done with the prior “Complete Sessions" Miles releases (especially Bitches Brew), tracks not really related to the original release are thrown in because they were taped around the same time frame. Truthfully, this collection could more accurately be called The Complete 'On The Corner' and 'Get Up With It' Sessions, because all the songs from that 1974 release are represented here, too. Even the odds-and-ends collection of early fusion songs, Big Fun, is represented here, via the twenty-one-minute epic, “Ife."
“Ife" is nominally credited to Miles, but according to Buckmaster, the main melodic line and the chord progression were his; Henderson supplied the bass line. Buckmaster also plays electric cello on it. Although it's too long by about six or seven minutes, there is enough going on musically to make it more interesting compared to must of the other tracks recorded in this period. Recorded six days after “Black Satin," it's not entirely clear why it didn't make it on the On The Corner album, but it was regularly in Miles' concert rotation for the next few years. Liebman also chose to cover it in his On The Corner tribute CD released earlier this year.
“Rated X" is not even a song, but a seven-minute jungle groove that's particularly nasty. The innovative aspect of it is how the percussion starts and stops at random, like as if someone accidentally mixed it out of the track in spots. Intentionally or not, the rhythm coming in and out in that manner was what Buckmaster had intended for the On The Corner sessions. Miles doesn't play trumpet but provides some eerie organ chords made tightly packed by tape loops created by Macero. That seems like a goof until you consider it anticipated techno, or electro-dub and sampling by some fifteen or so years.
One more track to note is “What They Do," which doesn't appear to show up in any previous releases, and is notable in the that it's more rock-oriented than funk-oriented. It seems to be played by Miles' '73-'75 band of Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas on guitars, Henderson on bass, Mtume on percussion and Foster on drums. I'm guessing that it's Cosey with the wah-wah freak-outs, but Miles is soloing right along with his wah-wah trumpet. A decidedly more “live" feel than other studio tracks of that time, it reminds of why after On The Corner until his retirement in 1975, Miles' best records were the live ones.
Aside from these tracks and the oddly commercial “Red China Blues" and “Minnie," there are few tunes that distinguish themselves from each other because the long, repetitive grooves and lack of melodic structures that start to numb the listener's ears about halfway through at the twelve minute mark.
Ultimately after all these years, On The Corner, as described by Davis biographer Paul Tingen, “continues to be challenging listening. The absence of musical structures, harmonic development, and melodic content poses genuine problems." Unlike thirty-five years ago, there are now a lot more critics who have praised On The Corner for being forward-looking, fresh, and funky. But it may take another thirty-five years before it reaches the acceptance levels of its fusion predecessors like In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew.
As for this six-disc collection, a hundred and twenty-five bucks (the price at the 2007 release) is a lot to give up for some mostly impenetrable music. To be sure, there are a few fanatics of Miles' mid-fusion period out there who will find plenty of puzzle pieces with which to complete the picture. Like Corky McCoy's notorious album cover of the original release, whether the picture itself is a masterpiece, an inferior sketch or a mixture of both is in the ear of the listener. One thing is for certain, though: it's not a forgery, it's very much an original.
Miles Davis is takin' it to the streets.
In late spring of 1972, Davis broke a two year hiatus from the studio to act upon his most daring idea of his 45 year recording history: to create music that finally is completely absent of any jazz aesthetic and replace it with “street" sensibilities. An idea to jettison most instrumental wankery in favor of moods and heavy grooves (a counter move in 1972 if there ever was one). And, an idea to abandon discernible melody in favor of bass riffs and relentless repeating figures and beats. Songs with no beginning and no end. The end product of this idea became known as On The Corner, one of his most controversial albums of all time. But unlike his other controversial albums, most people even today can't embrace it.
To put this vision into vinyl, Miles enlisted the help of an acquaintance he met three years prior; the premier orchestral conductor for rock stars, Paul Buckmaster. The British cellist, whose arrangements had already by this time figured in prominent records by David Bowie, The Rolling Stones and Elton John, always harbored a love for the avant-garde and jazz. So when he got the call from Miles, he enthusiastically embraced the opportunity. In the process, Buckmaster encouraged Davis to assimilate some of the music theories of Karlheinz Stockhausen, the German composer who pioneered the use of electronic instruments in classical music and formulating alternative song structures. Whether it was conscious or not, Miles moved more toward Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, requiring most of the musicians to play with as little preconceptions as possible and listen closely to each other.
As Buckmaster consolidated his ideas and composed scores, Miles rounded up another stellar set of supporting musicians for the task: John McLaughlin, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Lonnie Liston Smith, Jack deJohnette, Billy Hart, Dave Liebman, Bennie Maupin, Al Foster, Michael Henderson, Don Alias and many more.
Just as significant, Indian players were used (Badal Roy, tablas; Khalil Balarishna, electric sitar; Colin Walcott of the band Oregon, sitar). The Indian experimentations actually begun toward the end of 1969 until Miles took a break from the studio a few months later. But now, there were more earnestly employed.
Never before or since had Miles assembled such a massive amount of talent nor had utilized such a wide array of influences to make a record.
Unfortunately for Buckmaster, his own best laid plans were immediately tossed aside when the recording sessions began for the album on June 1, 1972; the scores he carefully constructed and made copies for the musicians were never really used. Some of the basic ideas he brought to the sessions were used more for starting points, but the musicians , Miles and producer Teo Macero took them to places he never intended. Instead, the band recorded his sketches with only a few members getting a little rehearsal and most getting virtually none at all. This was how Miles got spontaneity out of his players, much as he had done for most of his notable records going back to Kind Of Blue.
There were two primary sessions where all the basic tracks for On The Corner were recorded; “On The Corner" was recorded on June 1 and “Black Satin" was put to tape on June 6. These two megatunes were later broken up into the four, discrete tracks that make up the final release. Two of those tracks were further broken down further into arbitrarily defined songs within the track with no identifiable start and stop points.
The unedited master of “On The Corner" is one of the rare spots on the album where a soloist aside from Miles emerges from the ensemble; McLaughlin sounds more like his old, uninhibited Jack Johnson self instead of the more studied, Mahavishnu version. The album version, called “On The Corner/New York Girl/Thinkin' Of One Thing And Doing Another/Votes For Miles" is not that much changed from the raw version.
There is a previously unreleased nugget from that session, though; “On The Corner (take 4)" sounds like a different tune altogether from the other versions of “On The Corner." Instead of the quicker double-time of the twenty-minute version that ended up on the album, this five-minute rendition goes at a slower pace and McLaughlin's menacing guitar fronts an un-worldly percussion section full of Indian instruments, conventional percussion and drums (either Hart or deJohnette, or both). Beside a sitar and Yamaha organ bleating out dark chords lies Henderson's rock-solid bass vamps at the center. Miles himself lays out. “Take 4" is a little bit light on the cerebral side, but it's one of the best straight groovers on the whole box set. With Henderson and McLaughlin leading the way of this jam, it's marks a brief glimpse back to 1970's Tribute To Jack Johnson.
The centerpiece track of both the original album and the box set is “Black Satin." In a collection consisting of hours upon hours of cyclical grooves and two-note riffs, “Black Satin" is beautifully complex, mysterious and downright funky. Despite it being derivative of the “On The Corner" track that spawned many of the other tracks of the album, “Satin" stands apart because of the heavy editing and dubbing that had been largely avoided for the other selections and possesses a catchy, recognizable theme. The rhythm is heavily multi-layered and the whistles and almost-random hand claps add a “street" element to what is actually a free-form funk tune. Macero made heavy use of tape edits that predate the sampling and beats that underpins techno, drum 'n' bass and dance music many years later. For all these reasons, “Black Satin" remains Miles' most successful expression of his genius in the last two decades of his life.
As Sony has done with the prior “Complete Sessions" Miles releases (especially Bitches Brew), tracks not really related to the original release are thrown in because they were taped around the same time frame. Truthfully, this collection could more accurately be called The Complete 'On The Corner' and 'Get Up With It' Sessions, because all the songs from that 1974 release are represented here, too. Even the odds-and-ends collection of early fusion songs, Big Fun, is represented here, via the twenty-one-minute epic, “Ife."
“Ife" is nominally credited to Miles, but according to Buckmaster, the main melodic line and the chord progression were his; Henderson supplied the bass line. Buckmaster also plays electric cello on it. Although it's too long by about six or seven minutes, there is enough going on musically to make it more interesting compared to must of the other tracks recorded in this period. Recorded six days after “Black Satin," it's not entirely clear why it didn't make it on the On The Corner album, but it was regularly in Miles' concert rotation for the next few years. Liebman also chose to cover it in his On The Corner tribute CD released earlier this year.
“Rated X" is not even a song, but a seven-minute jungle groove that's particularly nasty. The innovative aspect of it is how the percussion starts and stops at random, like as if someone accidentally mixed it out of the track in spots. Intentionally or not, the rhythm coming in and out in that manner was what Buckmaster had intended for the On The Corner sessions. Miles doesn't play trumpet but provides some eerie organ chords made tightly packed by tape loops created by Macero. That seems like a goof until you consider it anticipated techno, or electro-dub and sampling by some fifteen or so years.
One more track to note is “What They Do," which doesn't appear to show up in any previous releases, and is notable in the that it's more rock-oriented than funk-oriented. It seems to be played by Miles' '73-'75 band of Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas on guitars, Henderson on bass, Mtume on percussion and Foster on drums. I'm guessing that it's Cosey with the wah-wah freak-outs, but Miles is soloing right along with his wah-wah trumpet. A decidedly more “live" feel than other studio tracks of that time, it reminds of why after On The Corner until his retirement in 1975, Miles' best records were the live ones.
Aside from these tracks and the oddly commercial “Red China Blues" and “Minnie," there are few tunes that distinguish themselves from each other because the long, repetitive grooves and lack of melodic structures that start to numb the listener's ears about halfway through at the twelve minute mark.
Ultimately after all these years, On The Corner, as described by Davis biographer Paul Tingen, “continues to be challenging listening. The absence of musical structures, harmonic development, and melodic content poses genuine problems." Unlike thirty-five years ago, there are now a lot more critics who have praised On The Corner for being forward-looking, fresh, and funky. But it may take another thirty-five years before it reaches the acceptance levels of its fusion predecessors like In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew.
As for this six-disc collection, a hundred and twenty-five bucks (the price at the 2007 release) is a lot to give up for some mostly impenetrable music. To be sure, there are a few fanatics of Miles' mid-fusion period out there who will find plenty of puzzle pieces with which to complete the picture. Like Corky McCoy's notorious album cover of the original release, whether the picture itself is a masterpiece, an inferior sketch or a mixture of both is in the ear of the listener. One thing is for certain, though: it's not a forgery, it's very much an original.
