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MILES DAVIS
Best-known as one of jazz's greatest artists, trumpeter/composer/bandleader Miles Davis (1926-1991) first plugged in and rocked in the late 1960s. He recruited electric instrumentalists for his bands, fixed his trumpet with a wah-wah pedal and set out to, in the words of his 1970 bandmate, keyboardist Keith Jarrett, "forge new ways of coming at things."
It is not surprising then that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame will include Davis among its 2006 inductees.
Another electric-era Davis keyboardist, Chick Corea, wrote in the liner notes of the live Miles disc "Black Beauty" that the bandleader exhibited a "constant demonstration of creative disagreement with the status quo."
This was nothing new for Davis, who throughout his category-defying career blazed new stylistic trails, including cool jazz and modal jazz. While "Kind of Blue," his seminal 1959 record, is by far his best seller (it continues to sell as the quintessential acoustic jazz album), his next-popular disc, "Bitches Brew," came 10 years later with a fuse. It was a double-album of jazz-meets-rock gusto.
Columbia/Legacy has been chronicling Davis' career with a series of boxed sets. Its most recent project, released in December 2005, is the six-CD "Miles Davis - The Cellar Door Sessions 1970." Most of the material, recorded during four nights at a Washington, D.C., club, had never been issued before. The set features Davis and his band ripping into raucous and funky sets that surprised the audiences as well as the onstage musicians.
Bob Belden, a veteran producer of Davis reissues and co-producer of "The Cellar Door," says, "These guys had the idea of how rock and jazz worked together, and they got more of a focused sound out of their instruments than the rock guys. Miles was capturing Cream and Hendrix and extending it into improvisation in a powerful live setting. After this came fusion, most of which sounds childish in comparison."
Enlisted for the date was guitarist John McLaughlin, who later formed the jazz fusion band Mahavishnu Orchestra. "Miles was pushing the frontiers of music to the limit," he says. "It just so happened that I was there with a guitar, and having grown up with not only his music, but also rock and blues, I was in the process of bringing these diverse elements together. Miles knew that instinctively, which is why he hired me." - Dan Ouellette
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