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.

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.