S&D: Miles Davis in the 70s & 80s

it's almost all ricky wellman (who is great), but maybe al foster is on a track or two?

love the bit where herbie does a little electric piano "impression" of miles.

^^^best moment of the doc. love Herbie so much.

feel like i never really listened properly to "Go Ahead John" before. what the fuck is he doing to that guitar? is it phasing? this is properly heavy shit.

I can never recommend the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions enough.

I like Kilimanjaro and Get Up With It a lot.

I always find it unusual that one of Miles' main side-men was some bloke from Doncaster. What he does with a guitar and wah-wah pedal on Go Ahead John is extraordinary, pure mind blowing type shit. It is better than anything from the Jack Johnson sessions or indeed the album. It was my number 1 track in William C's Miles poll.

he joined Tony Williams's Lifetime first, so I assume that was how he was introduced to Miles?

dave holland = some bloke from wolverhampton!

xpost to Hurting - yep, just recently read an old 'Hello/Goodbye' feature in Mojo where McLaughlin talks abt joining Miles' group from Lifetime, and then leaving Miles to form Mahavishnu Orch. Unsurprisingly, according to John McG, T. Williams was not too 'chuffed' abt having his old boss steal his guitar player away from him.

lol, I have no idea whether "not too chuffed" = not too upset or not too pleased.

lol, not too pleased!

dave holland = some bloke from wolverhampton!

Fucking hell I always thought he was American!

Holland definitely has one of the most interesting discographies of Miles' sidemen, particularly of the electric period (Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Dave Holland Quartet, duo with Derek Bailey, etc.)

As is soda pop

lol, I have no idea whether "not too chuffed" = not too upset or not too pleased.

I'm listening to Go Ahead John again now. This thing blew my mind when I discovered it in college back in '94 or so.

Dur, no idea how "this is soda pop" made it in there. Late posting does me in.

Holland definitely has one of the most interesting discographies of Miles' sidemen, particularly of the electric period (Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Dave Holland Quartet, duo with Derek Bailey, etc.)

On one of the TV docs abt MD, Holland tells a great story about how, just after joining the Davis group, he played Miles an SME alb, and Miles' only response was, "Yeah, our group isn't going to sound like THAT"

'Conference of the Birds' is easily one of my all-time fave jazz albs - Sam Rivers AND Anthony Braxton, doesn't get better than that. And yeah, it's a goddamm crime that that Holland/Bailey duo rec has never been reissued.

On one of the TV docs abt MD, Holland tells a great story about how, just after joining the Davis group, he played Miles an SME alb, and Miles' only response was, "Yeah, our group isn't going to sound like THAT"

And yet, he'd let the rest of the band go pretty much as wild as they wanted to when he was offstage between solos.

My car was broken into last week and I had The Complete On The Corner Session in the glovebox and they took my box of silver change and left it behind. Shoulda taken the miles.

stealin one thing and leavin another

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbuHfoBAhas&list=PLCBD9E88B0D4226B2&index=81

The recently deceased from cancer Ricky Wellman on the drums with Miles. Wellman had been a DC go-go drummer with Chuck Brown in the late 70s into the 80s and for awhile with EU. Miles loved his playing on Chuck's "Go-go Swing" and hired him

Wow, had no idea Miles was still playing material from Jack Johnson in the 80s!

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/music/2013/12/02/remembering-the-great-d-c-drummer-ricky-sugarfoot-wellman/

Wellman drummed for Miles from 87 until Miles' death in 91.

Erin Davis says,

[My father] always had a real strong connection to all his drummers. Whoever was in that drum chair was always the anchor for what he was trying to do. He and Ricky had a very special relationship for a long time. They really worked well together and they really enjoyed playing with each other. He really loved Ricky.

Just got the advance CDs for the next volume in the Bootleg Series - Miles at the Fillmore - in today's mail. It's a four-disc set containing the complete sets from June 17-20, 1970 that were edited down into the four sides of At Fillmore under the titles "Wednesday Miles," "Thursday Miles," "Friday Miles," "Saturday Miles." At this point I think 1970 might be the most exhaustively documented year of Miles' professional life - there's this set, Black Beauty from April, all the various studio sessions in The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions box, the six-CD The Cellar Door Sessions 1970 box, the At the Fillmore East March 7, 1970 2CD set, Bitches Brew Live from a year or two ago...

And yet, this is the only one with both Chick and Keith, IIRC...

How's this banded, is it as separate tracks for each song or whatever? the original set that it expands on just went by sides as far as I remember, one for each night of the performance. & Teo Macero had severely edited performances so they fit into 20 minute vinyl sides.

I hope outside of this they continue to put out 3cd plus dvd sets in the series. Have been hoping for at least one 1973 video to be officially released, outside of the MOntreux one at least. & wish that would be released separately. I'm not that into him in the 80s which is what the rest of the MOntreux dvd set is I think.

How's this banded, is it as separate tracks for each song or whatever?

Yeah, each CD is a full set, with track divisions.

Hey, can any of you Miles heads tell me what the deal is with Electric Shout? It's not well-documented online at all, and certainly not from 1970, as is listed several places. I really dug (most of) this at work today.

http://www.mclub.com.ua/vcat.phtml?action=vs&album=13675

It looks like some kind of bootleg compilation of stuff ranging from 1968-69 up to maybe 1982.

Yeah I gathered that. I liked this version of "Jack Johnson." Weird live mix with congas way up front and guitarist in back. Trying to figure out what era this might be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A60UDqt3kuU&list=PL8oYrR4DgBHzQUH6Lld_4F5LuQliKvuq8

Wasn't sure where to mention this but Cheadle's Miles movie is done:
http://www.factmag.com/2015/07/22/don-cheadles-miles-davis-biopic-to-close-the-new-york-film-festival/

Trying to keep expectations in check, but would really like this to be good.

I could imagine some terrible acting with someone trying to emulate the famous rasp.

Don Cheadle has as good a chance of pulling it off as any other actor I can think of

Anyone heard this yet btw?

www.amazon.com/Miles-Davis-At-Newport-1955-1975/dp/B00WNII7YS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1437661465&sr=8-1&keywords=miles+at+newport

This series is always at least pretty good, and though I already have the early stuff here, the early 70s stuff looks very enticing.

Trying to keep expectations in check, but would really like this to be good.

― five six and (man alive), Wednesday, July 22, 2015 5:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea def

is there a trailer for the film?

The Newport set is interesting, the highlight yeah is Berlin 11/1/73, which I already had a bootleg of. The sound is still oversaturated but that just adds to the intensity. Still digesting the whole box though.

No footage from the film that I've seen, just some on-set pics
http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/on-set-photos-from-don-cheadles-miles-ahead-now-filming-in-cincinnati-after-successful-crowdfunding-campaign-20140721

The 1971 and 1973 material is the best of that Newport set, though the 1966/67 sets by the acoustic quintet are also pretty hot, and worth having because they fill in some of that band's middle era - all previous live recordings either came from the beginning (1965) or the end (late '67) of the group's life. So you got them still in exploding-standards mode, or going wild. Here, they're somewhere in between, and it's fascinating to hear the differences.

I wanted a whole set of the 1971 band, which only existed for a single European tour in the fall of that year. Oh, well.

yeah, 71 + 73 are unbelievably good -- 71 seems like Jarrett's peak w/ Miles. Crazy that he just stopped playing electric keys after that! dude was amazing.
66-67 sets are great too, holy crap what a band.

I was just wondering if the song Willie had an actual Willie Nelson song as its influence or if it was just more general. I have heard that it had some source in Miles listening to him in the late 60s/early 70s.

Miles loved Willie's vocal phrasing.

They had the same road manager for a while (Mark Rothbaum).

since i have spent such little time w/ 80s miles i appreciated this rundown in p4k: http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/1078-a-guide-to-1980s-miles-davis/

the live in tokyo 1981 "my man's gone now" posted there is fantastic

It's a shame he apparently only felt like dealing with the Columbia albums. The Warner material is frequently stronger (I'm a big fan of Tutu and like Siesta a lot, too).

good to know, i haven't listened to either tutu or siesta

intrigued by the aura clip in there too

To me, Aura is easily the best thing he did in his comeback.

the citation of the vocal track on The Man With the Horn makes me wonder if he did enough of those to warrant a poll. Can think of at least two other instances (Birth of the Cool and Sorcerer) where there was a shitty, inexplicable track w a vocal tacked onto an album. are there others? why did Miles do this?

nothing like you has ever been seen before
nothing like you existed in days of yore

(has my vote)

why did Miles do this?

He was relatively adrift in 1962, which is part of why he did those songs with "that silly-ass singer, Bob Dorough," to fill out Quiet Nights. Why one of the songs from those sessions is on Sorcerer is a complete mystery. "Nothing Like You" was five years old at that point, and only two minutes long. A 38-minute Sorcerer without "Nothing Like You" would've been preferable.

Dunno the "why" about Birth of the Cool, other than that Kenny Hagood was in Dizzy's orchestra, and also sang on records by Bird and Monk.