Miles Davis ran the voodoo down with the revolutionary rhythmic rebirth of cool in this fluid fusion of jazz with rock and funk. After a quarter of a century of tireless reinvention that saw him spearhead several movements in jazz, Davis was looking for a way to keep the music relevant. Expanding on the styles that he began with 'Filles de Kilimanjaro' and continued on 'In A Silent Way', Davis took on an ambitious project with little support from his record label.
He would recount in his autobiography: "[Clive Davis] was trying to take Columbia into the future and pull in all those young record buyers. After a rough start he and I got along well, because he thinks like an artist instead of a straight businessman. He had a good sense for what was happening; I thought he was a great man. He started talking to me about trying to reach this younger market and about changing. He suggested that the way for me to reach this new audience was to play my music where they went, places like the Fillmore. The first time we had a conversation I got mad with him because I thought he was putting down me and all the things I had done for Columbia. I hung up on him after telling him I was going to find another record company to record for. But they wouldn't give me a release. After we went back and forth in these arguments for a while, I was thinking about going over to Motown Records, because I liked what they were doing and figured that they could understand what I was trying to do better. What Clive didn't like was that the agreement I had with Columbia allowed me to get advances against royalties earned, so whenever I needed money, I would call up and get an advance. Clive felt that I wasn't making enough money for the company to be giving me this type of treatment. Maybe he was right, now that I'm looking back on all of it, but right from a strictly business position, not an artistic one. I felt that Columbia should live up to what they had agreed to. They thought that since I sold around 60,000 albums every time I put out a record - which was enough for them before the new thing came around - that that wasn't enough to keep on giving me money. So this was the climate with Columbia and me before I went into the studio to record 'Bitches Brew'. What they didn't understand was that I wasn't prepared to be a memory yet, wasn't prepared to be listed only on Columbia's so-called classical list. I had seen the way to the future with my music, and I was going for it like I had always done. Not for Columbia and their record sales, and not for trying to get to some young white record buyers. I was going for it for myself, for what I wanted and needed in my own music. I wanted to change course, had to change course for me to continue to believe in and love what I was playing."
'Bitches Brew' was recorded at Columbia's 30th Street Studio in New York with producer Teo Macero and featured Miles Davis on trumpet; Wayne Shorter on soprano saxophone; Bennie Maupin on bass clarinet; Joe Zawinul on electric piano (left channel); Chick Corea on electric piano (right channel); John McLaughlin on electric guitar; Dave Holland on bass; Harvey Brooks on electric bass; Lenny White on drum set (left channel); Jack DeJohnette on drum set (right channel); Don Alias on congas; and Juma Santos (aka "Jim Riley") on shaker and congas.
Davis remembered: "When I went into the studio in August 1969, besides listening to rock music and funk, I had been listening to Joe Zawinul and Cannonball playing shit like "Country Joe and the Preacher." And I had met another English guy, named Paul Buckmaster, in London. I asked him to come over sometime and help me put an album together. I liked what he was doing then. I had been experimenting with writing a few simple chord changes for three pianos. Simple shit, and it was funny because I used to think when I was doing them how Stravinsky went back to simple forms. So I had been writing these things down, like one beat chord and a bass line, and I found out that the more we played it, it was always different. I would write a chord, a rest, maybe another chord, and it turned out that the more it was played, the more it just kept getting different...So I would direct, like a conductor, once we started to play, and I would either write down some music for somebody or I would tell him to play different hings I was hearing, as the music was growing, coming together. It was loose and tight at the same time. It was casual but alert, everybody was alert to different possibilities that were coming up in the music. While the music was developing I would hear something that I thought could be extended or cut back. So that recording was a development of the creative process, a living composition. It was like a fugue, or motif, that we all bounced off of. After it had developed to a certain point, I would tell a certain musician to come in and play something else...I wish I had thought of video taping that whole session because it must have been something and I would have like to have been able to see just what went down, like a football or basketball instant replay...That was a great recording session, man, and we didn't have any problems as I can remember. It was just like one of them old-time jam sessions we used to have up at Minton's back in the old bebop days. Everybody was excited when we left there each day."
'Bitches Brew' reached number eighty in Belgium, thirty-five on the US pop album chart, and number one on the US jazz album chart, becoming Davis' first gold record and giving commercial credibility to the fledgling jazz fusion movement. The album won a Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album.
http://www.milesdavis.com/
'Bitches Brew'
full album:
All pieces written by Miles Davis, except where noted.
side one
1. Pharaoh's Dance (Joe Zawinul) 0:00
side two
2. Bitches Brew 20:05
side three
3. Spanish Key 47:04
4. John McLaughlin 1:04:40
side four
5. Miles Runs The Voodoo Down 1:09:05
6. Sanctuary (Wayne Shorter) 1:23:10
Live
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