What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Serial_Apologist]

SA

The two things that remain interesting regarding Miles' playing in the 1980's was his use of timbre and the harmonic language he employed. More often than not, the only thing "happening" in the music was the way he employed harmony. I am really surprised by your defence of Miles in this era because the crux of the issue with jazz is improvisation and the ability of musicians to react to each other. The way he approached recording often meant he was not even in the studio when the rest of the band were effectively providing a backing track. To me, this is almost the antithesis of the notion of spontaneous creativity with an album like "Tutu" effectively encasing Miles in a set of tight, rigidly defined arrangements which you could have more in common with the way someone like Glenn Miller worked than Miles did in an earlier era.

Yes in retrospect you're right to say that. You are very generous not to throw my oft insistence about improvising being the leading edge shaping jazz evolution back at me. One might even go so far as to question whether records like Tutu are in fact jazz, and iirc either Miles himself or some of those those around or sympathetic to him were at the time talking in terms of a New Black American Classical Music category - rather as Archie Shepp and Freddy Hubbard had been doing in the 1960s, obviously with the different motivations of very different circumstances.

However, I take issue with the following:

Even if you compare the work with Gil Evans, Miles' work is far "freer" and uninhibited than in the recording made with Marcus Miller. Miller's writing is catchy and the charts have a pop-sensibility yet this is effectively a context as rigid as with a commercial swing band from the 1940s - the banks of synths substituting for an orchestra.

You are certain right I think to point up the absurdity of claiming a leading role for Miles in his 1980s work, as compared to 20 or 30 years previous. In many ways it is remarkable that his influence was so strong and lasting for so long, and through (and of course beyond) so many changes in creative direction. It would have been as that living legend that he would have seen himself being appreciated. I think the best way to approach that late work is as an individual distillation of all that had preceded in search of a new more contemporary aesthetic framework, and say that the image came in the way of his inclination to formulate his own, on his own terms, (whether or not we happen to like those terms), as he still was in the early 70s, before the 5-year gap. The best of those searches are not in the pop covers, but in ballads such as "Portia", with their evocative mood painting. I think there's a difference from the way in which soloists were slotted into time-saving two chorus slots in so many Swing outfits, and that it lies in the fact that Miles was allowed (or more probably insisted on) time to think how he was going to react to Marcus Miller's settings, and that the blend made for something that was new (in its time) and singular. I don't think there was anything else around at the time that was quite like Tutu.

Picking up on Gil Evans' writing, Mikkelborg's "Aura" was perhaps the first instance where it was possible to witness someone else challenging for Evans' crown when it came to writing to a large ensemble. It remains the most musically important record Miles Davis made since the late 1960s/ early 70's but more salient to your narrative that jazz is a music which seek to rise to challenges and evolve is the fact that this was precisely the kind of record which pushed upon the doors for many of the orchestral jazz writers working from the 1990s onwards including Bob Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely, John Hollenbeck, Maria Schneider, etc, etc. In my opinion, this is the true worth of this record, throwing challenges from 20th century classical music as a basis for improvisation and a context for musical exploration. in the UK, the likes of Mike Gibbs and Neil Ardley had been pushing the envelope in this area too. Perhaps a more interesting question would be to conject how Miles would have reacted to the challenge of a Hollenbeck or Schneider? I would put to you and Joe that Hollenbeck's recent efforts to deconstruct pop music in the context of big band arrangements is seriously radical in a fashion that Miles covering "Human Nature" , "Time after time" or Scritti Politti's "Perfect Way" is ultimately pretty lame. Miles was reluctant to divorce himself from the pop quality of the material and this ultimately led to an artistic cul-de-sac. By the end of the decade and considering just how creative jazz was in the 1980s, Miles was pretty much marooned and effectively put his money on the wrong horse.

I do not mind Miles' 1980s output and I have a number of records that I bought at the time. They are ok to listen to albeit very dated. The issue for me is that none of it is of the same calibre of anything he produced in the 50s and 60s and on the one occasion when he did produce a "serious" jazz record, it was off the back of someone else. The comparison with the final recordings of Louis still stands - aside from the album with Mikkelborg, Miles' work in the 1980s was inherently conservative with little pretense of being innovative.

Hmmm - not so sure about that Armstrong comparison. Towards the end Miles may have courted popularity, but he did it on his own terms, (which would never have conceded a Hello Dolly), and at the time I don't think any of us were sure what the future of jazz was to be, or even if, with the championing of the Neos by the jazz commentariat, it had one as a forward-moving age-reflective musical art form. See, anything can sound dated, ie of its time, and it can be heroically of its time, but still be dated, inasmuch as people fifty or sixty years late can find anything of contemporary relevance (beyond let's call them general principles) to draw from. What was great about pre-1980s jazz was the ways in which succeeding generations picked up on where the music was at, rather than feeling some compulsion to dig old grounds, which should be left to the work of archeologists like Ralph Sutton. I remember having this argument with Charles Fox over David Murray.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I am not really that sure that "Tutu" is unique, to be honest. Wondered if you were familiar with Arthur Blythe's "Put sunshine in it" which was produced by CBS in 1985, one year before "Tutu?" The results are quite similar although Todd Cochran's arrangements are not as good as Marcus Miller's. The liner notes to my copy of this record ( comes with two other , "genuine" jazz records which are exceptional) explain that CBS were looking to something similar to the work of Dave Sanborn, Grover Washington and George Howard which was popular at the time. Cochran has also worked with the likes if Aretha Franklin, Stanley Clarke and Peter Gabriel. The session by Blythe also included drum machines just as was the case on "Tutu." Overall, the effect is not too dissimilar to "Tutu" although Blythe "plays" more. I think that another distinction is that Blythe was pressurised by CBS to make this record and had no real interest in the project whereas for Miles it was a rebranding that came with his appearance on Warner.

The 1980s were synonymous for the use of enhanced production techniques with the paucity of decent drummers in popular music leading record producers to use the then current technology. It also saw the emergence of radio stations broadcasting on FM that were demanding higher fidelity recordings. Ultimately, these FM stations created a demand for instrumental music which was not taxing and facilitated the emergence of labels like GRP. I am not sure that Miles was really interested in jazz in the 1980s and saw it as somewhat fossilized. Pop sensibilities seemed more important to him and he was perhaps more attuned / influenced by the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince. It just seems to me that there was a whole movement in jazz / instrumental pop music in the 1980s that the jazz fraternity still chooses to ignore. People like to think "Smooth jazz" did not happen yet this kind of approach was pretty ubiquitous in the late 70's, 80s and 90s . The fact that Miles managed to impart his character on this music means that we are still talking about the music - had this not been the case, I think a lot of it would have been disposable.

Miles still wished to see himself as a "hipster" yet , with the passage of time, there is little that sounds too hip about his work in that decade. As I said, I do not dislike it but , to use the example of Arthur Blythe again, his work for CBS in the late 70s and mid 80s stands up far better than Miles' of the same period. (Excluding " Put sunshine in it", of course!!) As I said before, there are so many riches in the jazz of the 1980s that Miles Davis was bordering upon being irrelevant. He had an incredible media profile at that time , appearing on numerous chat shows and even "Miami Vice" yet his music was effectively following popular trends as opposed to making them.

Growing up listening to the contemporary jazz at that time was incredibly exciting. I think the 1980s were certainly the most fertile decade in jazz after the 1960s and I have met people who consider it to be as creative as the 1940s. I would argue vociferously that nothing recorded by Miles between the period of his comeback and ultimate demise other than "Aura" has the integrity of the likes of what Keith Jarrett, Steve Coleman, Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland, John Scofield, Paul Bley, Michel Portal, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, Arthur Blythe, Thomas Chapin, AEoC, etc, etc were producing at the same time. Although the tune "Tutu" has become a jazz standard, I would be hard pushed to think of Miles' 1980s records leaving any kind of legacy. The albums in the early-mid 1980s have their moments yet for genuine exciting and experimental jazz, there was more happening elsewhere and in some very different styles too.

[Joseph K]

Allan Holdsworth - The Sixteen Men of Tain

It's his vibrato today that's really killing me. But also, those mysterious chord progressions. Absolutely awesome. Where's the genuflecting emoji?

[Stanfordian]

'Hi Voltage' - Hank Mobley
with Blue Mitchell, Jackie McLean, John Hicks, Bob Cranshaw & Billy Higgins
Blue Note (1967)

[Joseph K]

Julian Lage - Arclight

[Jazzrook]

Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers with Jackie McLean, Bill Hardman, Sam Dockery & Spanky DeBrest playing Gigi Gryce's 'Exhibit A' in 1957:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=cZyd8Q5ERA8

JR

[Joseph K]

Monk - Brilliant Corners

[Stanfordian]

Jimmy & Wes – ‘The Dynamic Duo’
Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery with Grady Tate, Ray Barretto, Bob Ashton, Danny Bank, Jerry Dodgion, Jerome Richardson, Phil Woods, Clark Terry, Ernie Royal, Jimmy Maxwell, Joe Newman
Jimmy Cleveland, Melba Liston, Quentin Jackson, Tony Studd, Dick Hixson, Richard Davis.
Oliver Nelson (arranger / conductor)
Verve (1966)

[Joseph K]

Herbie Hancock - Dis is da Drum

[Joseph K]

Herbie Hancock - Dis is da Drum

Couldn't make it to the end, I'm afraid. What began as sort of agreeable, ended up irritatingly repetitive.

Now I'm checking out HH's Magic Windows.

[Joseph K]

[Jazzrook]

Cedric Im Brooks & the Light of Saba playing Horace Silver's 'Song For My Father':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=GfaOaQgIkS8

JR

[Stanfordian]

‘Down with It!’ - Blue Mitchell
with Junior Cook, Chick Corea, Gene Taylor, Al Foster
Blue Note (1965)

[burning dog]

The whole day through!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjyyD0CVXNA

[Joseph K]

Miles Davis - The Man with the Horn - specifically, 'Fat Time'... sounding better than I remember it.