MILES DAVIS: THE RETURN (Part II)

Between the arrhythmia and the blues

In 1981, after relaunching himself into the hectic world of jazz (that he had stirred a cocktail), Miles Davis was feeling 100%. The Man With The Horn had worked well and it seemed that the next album, as it were, it would be easier to  be designed and recorded. It was named We Want Miles and was recorded by the same musicians as the previous, with the addition of percussionist Mino Cinelu. It was followed by a tour that was developed mainly by Japan, and a series of albums (Decoy, You're Under Arrest, Aura ...) in which Miles doubt to continue with the stormy sound experiments of the past decade or to give a new turn of the screw.

One of those albums, Star People (1982) reflects this internal raw war of Miles. The album is torn between the issues of stormy funk ("Come Get It", "Speak", "Star On Cicely") and the ballads ("It Gets Better", "Star People") in which moderation takes you back to that sound in the days when he was working with Gil Evans, with whom Miles had resumed their friendship during his disappeared years (1976-80). As the producer was Teo Macero, Evans goes virtually unnoticed, but he collaborated actively in the construction of the album, as we shall see.

The process of creating Star People was not easy. Miles was not cured. That year, Cicely Tyson left the country and Miles, alone again, relapsed into a state of anxiety. He had left the cocaine, but returned to smoking (four packs a day) and drinking (more beer than we could imagine). When she could speak with Cicely, Miles could not move his fingers. He had suffered a stroke. Soon he could not move his arm or play the trumpet.

After months of acupuncture, diet and abstinence, lost almost all his hair, Miles is awakened one night and, despite wearing a cast on his arm, found that he could play. It was a renaissance in his own words.

He did not want to waste time. He had spent seven years without appearing in Europe and every time he went was welcomed like a star. The success was assured and that was what he needed just at that moment: a popular heat to return the self-esteem. However, the press (and, by extension, the audience) had no idea about the episode of stroke, so nobody was prepared for the skeletal and ghostly figure of that Miles who appeared on stage in Stockholm, Copenhagen, Hamburg and Frankfurt. A producer who was going to record the concert in London (and making a film) startled when saw him. Called to his father-in-law, a doctor and psychiatrist, who examined Miles and reassured him saying he would play a bit the first night, just a little bit more the second and the third night at the Hammersmith Odeon he would be "unstoppable."

Then came the album.

At that time, Miles only listens to pop music (Prince, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder ...), of trying to absorb, above all, the ability to reach wider audience. He wants to be back on the top again. Thus, returning to study, he changes his way of working. The unordered rehearsals that frightened the musicians now become conscientious sessions. Miles makes Gil Evans transcribe the solos played during the rehearsals: "Star on Cicely" is credited as a song composed by Miles, but it's part of a solo played by Mike Stern during a rehearsak; "It Gets Better" and "Speak" is inspired by a solo that John Scofield improvised in the studio. To capture the example, the most disordered track of the album is "Come Get It," which was recorded live, not in studio. Miles becomed a serious and organized musician.

Of course, improvisation is still an essential pillar of the music of Miles, as seen in the issues, but what interests me most about this album is the yawning gap that exists between the ballads and funk tracks. How Miles compose and arrange them differs substantially. "It Gets Better" is a blues with all the keys, while "Speak" is a storm of bad ideas striking funk sounds reminiscent of some issues of the era Prince. This huge gap between the fast tracks and the blues ones suggests a two-sided Miles, a dual being that really does not dare to choose between returning to the experimental arrhythmia of 70's or profiting from the newly embraced religion, built aseptic as pop. Maybe that's why each side gives 50% of the disk.

In a more clear way that We Want Miles, the album Star People marks what will be the latest style of Miles, riding between the remnants of his previous electronic experiments (in a more refined  way) and the increasingly power silences (in line with that sound and affordable aseptic envy of pop).

Anecdotally, one might add that it was the first time that pictures of Miles (the hobby had helped him in the bad times) were used for a cover and the last time that Teo Macero was the producer.

Here you have "Star People", belonging to that half of the disc where Miles sounds like old times. It was recorded in Paris on September 20, 1986, and the group is different from the album:


This one is track 3, "Speak". It belongs to the other half of the album, which I do not know what theory supports old-Miles, surely the chaos:

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*  The top photo is Miles Davis 80. The author is K. Abe.

** The cover of Star People, with a picture of Miles.

*** The bottom picture corresponds to Miles in 1981, the fateful year. I do not know the author.

O SISTER!

Vocals on the top

Vocal jazz, jazz from the 30's, 40's, swing ... styles that were born before our grandparents, however, these styles are making us move our feet as they were new. And, as Miles Davis used to say, "If it makes you move your feet, it's jazz." We commented a few weeks ago (when we wrote about Geoff Dyer's book) that there are many doors to get to jazz. As we do not communicate with the fashions or the jazz magazines charts, we do believe that no style is outdated. And this is one of the best things of jazz.

O Sister! have entered in the sensitive souls of the fans of swing with an album entitled Crazy people, that I never tire of listening. They display all their knowledge of the Golden Age of Jazz, the 30s. Not a bad door to enter into the world of jazz. At that time, jazz was dance music and it was in fashion. The big bands  with crooner  or pretty singer girl was the best, and female vocal groups (like the Boswell Sisters, first and brilliant inspiration of this group) shone above all others.

Paradoxical and happily, O Sister! is not a female vocal group in spite of its name. Marcos Padilla breaks this perfect triangle getting between the two female vocalists, Paula Padilla and Helena Amado. His male voice adds a juicy counterpoint and much experience to it. Matias Comino on guitar and arrangements is the fourth member (less visible) of the group.

The album was recorded in 2009 in Seville at Sputnik studies. They made it the old way, with all the musicians in the studio playing at the same time, which brings freshness (and risk) to music, a music that's not in the charts since the 40s. The CD contains fabulously arranged tunes and mesmerizing perfection. Tracks like "Sentimental Gentleman from Georgia" and "Heebie Jeebies" might be enough to present the album, but all the eleven songs deserve to be drunk note by note, arrangement by arrangement, not to miss any line or any touch of harmonica or any whistle or any of the tricks that make this recording sound as natural as if it had just been rescued from the tunnel of time.

The group O Sister! do "just that", swing-style vocal of the 30's, with all its dixie sounds, its deep American air and its vocal acrobatics. The humor is not a problem, even though some people only see  an anecdote in their 30's style clothes, because those pearls, those charleston dresses and  that boater hat are just a statement of intent, a war cry: There was a time when the jazz was fun!

Let's enjoy!

Watch this video as a sample, a seductive and delicious version of "Minnie The Moucher" live at Sala Malandar in Seville:

O Sister! live. Malandar (Svq). from O Sister! on Vimeo.

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* Photo by Manuel Ramos.

** You can buy their album and find much more information on this website: http://osister.es/about/

THE RETURN OF MILES DAVIS

Between funk and ruin

When in May 1980 Miles recorded The man with the horn (Columbia, 1981) he had passed five years without picking up the trumpet. Earlier, Agharta and Pangaea had appeared, but both were "only" recordings captured during the Festival in Osaka, 1975, the year in which he suffered pneumonia, the year he suffered hip surgery, the year his friend Cannonball died at 46... Miles lived cloistered at home, enduring a long hangover from the years of madness in which, as he tells in his autobiography, "sex and drugs had taken the place that music had in my life until I reached a point where I spent all the hours of the day in those two things". His friends feared the worst. Columbia and United Artists fought to hire him. Miles accounts were in the red. But he kept getting high. And did not play.

Actress Cicely Tyson, who had been his lover and friend, saved his life, in the words of Miles, and helped him to focus his interest in health and music. She was not the only one who helped him. Many musicians used to come to Miles' home to visit and cheer. Chaka Khan, who was his neighbor forced  him to be cleaned. But it was the drummer Vince Wilburn, nephew of Miles, who took him out of that state of suicidal depression. His uncle had given him a drum battery when he was seven, and now he was in a group of Chicago that played a mixture of jazz, soul and funky. Miles listened to the demos and take them to Columbia. The result was that the other group members met with Vince Wilburn and Miles in New York to record some tracks. Miles was ready to return.

After a month of rehearsals, Miles wanted to tape thtat music. He asked Dave Liebman to find him a saxophone and he recommended a former student of his, Bill Evans. "If I played the sax, I would do  it like you" said Miles after listening to Bill playing, and Evans became part of the history of Miles.

 

In previous years, there were many jazz musicians who died young, some of them were friends of Miles, so Gerry Mulligan, called him to celebrate his return to the world of the living. He had heard that he was recording again. Mulligan said, "I hope you play beautiful things for us, the guys who love you", to which Miles replied: "No, guy ... I'll make a funky band to make money." The result was a theme that shines, "The Man With The Horn", which would give title to the trumpeter's comeback album. It is said that Miles had not yet regained the art, and  that his trumpet tracks were added later, but this could well be part of the legend. It had passed many years since his fans last heard Miles playing in his true style.

In a later session, Miles would replace the group of his nephew by people like Marcus Miller on bass, Sammy Figueroa on percussion, Mike Stern on guitar, Al Foster on drums, but did not get complete  the album until much later, in a recording session in May 1981, in which Vince Wilburn and his group met again with Miles in New York to record the song "Shout" with a boldly disco sound.

The result album blends jazz-rock tracks and soul-funk with the indelible mark of the thick experiments in which Miles had messed in the previous decade. However, it was a hit on radio stations, especially through the title track to the album.

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* Photo by Rico D'Rozario ( www.ricodrozario.com ): Al Foster, Miles Davis and Mike Stern in 1982.

I DON'T LIKE JAZZ

Or do I do?

I like jazz but do I love jazz anyhow?

I don't like jazz when it gets chaotic and becomes incomprehensible.

I don't like jazz when the audience does not clap their hands at the end of every solo.

I don't like flamenco jazz when what they are playing is actually flamenco with saxophone.

I don't like jazz mixed with any Folkore.

I don't like jazz fusion when the merger doesn't let me hear jazz.

I don't like jazz rock when rock doesn't let me hear jazz.

I don't like jazz when pianists as fabulous as Eliane Elias record songs that are nothing more than soft and sterile pop.

I don't like the jazz of Norah Jones and Amos Lee because what they really sing is just country music (although I like their music if what I want to listen to is country music).

I still don't know if I like Jazz by Toni Morrison.

I don't like machine-made electric jazz.

I don't like jazz understood as an elitist music only available to a few (as Lennon said: "Jazz, that shit for intellectuals").

I don't like jazz when tv uses it only as a mood for a striptease show.

I don't like that mellow and plasticized jazz that Yellowjackets play.

I don't  like jazz gigs when one musician has not a chance to play his solo.

I don't like jazz without inspiration.

I don't like any kind of jazz, anyhow.

Or do I do?

CLINT EASTWOOD

Actor, director, aficionado, pianist... genius

No one doubts about the importance of jazz in the films by Clint Eastwood as a director, or the influence that he, with his passion for music, causes in jazz musicians. Those relationships between the characters, those Far West landscapes or those honkytonks would not "sound" the same way without jazz. That particular vision of Clint Eastwood of the vain attempts of Charlie Parker to remain standing or the complicated (and invisible) world of Thelonious Monk are part of the bible of jazz, of that dictionary that explains how and why the current jazz has become what it is. In appreciation, a wide jam of present musicians met on October 17, 1996 at Carnegie Hall in New York to record a concert to celebrate this passion for each other or, as said George Wein, host of the event, the successful way he includes jazz in his scenes.

Released on DVD but not very easy to get, Eastwood After Hours includes themes that have appeared in his films. As a tribute, it's great: it combines an impressive cast of musicians for the occasion. Barry Harris and Kenny Barron play four hands Misty (Errol Garner), an issue that was the protagonist and the catalyst on Eastwood's first film as director. Claude Williams makes a fabulous version of San Antonio Rose (Honkytonk Man, 1982), in which Clint appeared with his son Kyle, who has composed several soundtracks, and participates in this concert with his quartet playing a version of This time the dream's on me from the movie Bird . In this track, of course, the protagonist is the sax (Doug Webb).

Among the sidemen of the rhythm section (who play almost the whole concert) are Christian McBride on bass and Kenny Washington on drums. I also really liked the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band with Kevin Mahogany, with Charles McPherson, Joshua Redman or with a superb soprano James Rivers playing the theme of Thightrope (1984), interspersed with suggestive and intriguing images from the film, with touches of blues ranging in crescendo with the help of the big band ...

Thelonius Monk jr. Thelonious Monk jr. (A.K.A. TS Monk ) appears in versions of Straight no chaser (which names the documentary), Round Midnight and I see your face before (The Bridges of Madison), although the fireworks are on charge of James Carter and Joshua Redman in the saxophones a few minutes before, playing a tremendous version of Straight No Chaser / Now 's the time in a duet at full speed, endless. It could not be more powerful. There is a spectacular finish, orgasmic:


A few issues later, Redman has another magic moment, when in Lester leaps in all the saxophones that have participated in the concert (James Rivers, James Moody, Charles McPherson, James Carter and Flip Phillips, Roy Hargrove on the flugelhorn), join. Every one contributes with his "Prez side". I could say that this is my favorite time of the concert, but later is Eastwood himself who appears on stage to thank and to play the piano, a blues with his initials, After Hours / CE Blues, accompanied by Jay McShann James Moody, Roy Hargrove and the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band, just the moment and the place where all of us would like to be, there, on the stage of The Carnegie Hall, surrounded by the best musicians and Eastwood ... He is the Grand Aficionado.

I know sometimes I get carried away by passion, but I think you will agree with me that this is one of those shows all of us would have liked to attend.

I'M A FOOL TO WANT YOU

On myths and monsters

The ballad begins with a statement. The piano plays the melody and draws it accurately, not merely an introduction. Marks an idea. Then the tenor bursts gently but forcefully. It is a lament. The brushes make a laconic pace that seems to hold the saxophone. The piano builts a fund of high notes, precious, memories of what it was, what it could be, what is no longer, we now explain why the sax laments. I'm a fool to want you (Sinatra) is included on the album Ballads (Blue Note, 1991), a collection of standards that allow us to judge Dexter Gordon's potential in slow songs. The pianist is Barry Harris and the drummer is Billy Higgins.

Dexter Gordon was a singular bopper. From his beginnings with Lionel Hampton and Fletcher Henderson he drank the sense that there is nothing written that cannot be overcome, from the days of Bird and Dizzy's bebop Dexter inherited what was going to survive to his folly, what would survived for years, of his own way of playing many tenors have drawn conclusions. Obscured by the brightness of other contemporary tenors such as Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane, Dexter was a great guy in every sense of the word. Women felt impressed by his height, men by the force his presence suggested. However, he was able to extract from his sax powerful and sweet (at the same time) ballads without becoming maudlin. And this is enough merit to hear this disc.

The saxophone is one of the most representative instruments of jazz. In fact, if you ask a layman, he will always point to this instrument. But the saxophone is a relatively new invention. Adolphe Sax created it in 1840. Professional musicians of the 19th century compared its sound with a "clarinet with double pneumonia." Someone said recently that it sounded like an inspired donkey. I can not remember who it was. Maybe I read it.

Adolphe Sax used to suffer insults when people heared the sound of the sax for the first time. Anyone who is not a musician and had tried to make it sound knows what I mean. Someone wrote in a medical journal of the era that sax produced consumption! Sax finally escaped from persecution and established a good amount of instruments, including a so delicate, a technical marvel: the flugelhorn .

I always think about these stories when I listen to I'm a fool to want you. The sensitivity of the tenor sax touches me and I cannot help concluding that in this world of miseries and atrocities, Dexter Gordon is a myth and a monster, in the artistic meaning of this words.
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* Photo: Dexter Gordon on 1948, perhaps the picture that best describes him. By Herman Leonard, of course.

WILLIAM P. GOTTLIEB

Perfection in the paradox

Gottlieb, known as "Mr. Jazz", became interested in music when a piece of bad meat caused him a trichinosis and forced him to a tedious convalescence that he mitigated with jazz records and magazines. Despite this bad start, his relationship with twentieth-century music is one of the most productive and celebrated in the world of photography.


William P. Gottlieb's destiny was not to be a photographer. He was set up with a job at the Washington Post, without providing any merit, and ended up in the Publications section. To earn some extra money, he suggested to the editor the possibility of a section of jazz photographs. He had to buy his own camera, a Speed Graphic, the same that the journalists used all the time. Although he wanted to write he became a photographer and still now, in his way, is established as the standard of what we today would call "a typical photograph of jazz."

William P. Gottlieb was a perfectionist. Having to pay his own films and magnesium flash lamps, which were single-use, put all the care in the world to portray the right time. He knew the musicians, their tics and their ways, so just he had to put a little patience to find the ideal time to take a picture, two at most per night. In order not to waste this gift negative his photos were born as ideal (few, but perfect) that have become essential.

William P. Gottlieb came to own his own jazz column, his own radio show, and was known as the organizer of dance competitions (of swing, of course) and jam sessions where the best musicians met, and he lived the best time of jazz, 40 and 50. However, suddenly he left. He went from being the gold standard in the jazz world in black and white to engage in educational films. He continued with photography, but never returned to jazz. Even today nobody knows why. Fortunately, in 1995 the Library of Congress of the United States acquired 1600 Gottlieb negatives and slides, as well as framed photos and contact strips with the help of Ira & Leonore S. Gershwin Fund. They are available on the Library website for American Memory , and since this summer at Flickr. I cannot think of a better way to remember and to inspire photographers to come.

Everything around him is paradoxical and, however, perfect, as if everything would have been to arrive by chance, take a single image and check that it was a masterpiece.

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Photographs:

* Top: Gottlieb with his Speed Graphic, July 1997 (photo by Jim Higgins)

** The best photo of Billie Holiday made by Gottlieb at Downbeat, New York, February 1947.

*** Django Reinhardt in the New York club called Aquarium, November 1946

**** Spectacular photo of Sidney Bechet. Behind are Freddie Moore, Lloyd Phillips, and Bob Wilber. Taken at Jimmy Ryan's Club, New York, June 1947.