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The stuff with Goodman was great and better recorded but the sides from Minton's are it (huge) for me. And IMO Christian sounds ahead of everybody. I didn't know about Al Tinney. I've thought a lot about the Monk CC group and how they would have dealt with Bop. But no one was playing Bop in 1941-42. I believe you're right that Diz was the catalyst. You listen to Parker playing Cherokee from around that time and it wasn't exactly how he was playing a few years later. I think that Monk and CC would have made it. Monk sure did and CC was ahead of him, imo, on the
Originally Posted by Stevebol
Minton's stuff.Last edited by mrcee; 12-13-2015 at 02:42 PM.
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12-13-2015 02:35 PM
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I'm confused by all of those who don't think Hendrix would be inspired and work well in the environment Miles was creating at this time. Originally Posted by zigzag
Put on part 1 of Moja from Dark Magus and tell me you can't hear Hendrix absolutely KILLING on that.
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I agree 100% Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I respectfully disagree. I believe Hendrix would have been totally out of his element. I guess we will never know. Too bad. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
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I got to thinking. Off topic a little. I don't know what part of The Duck Sly had but I've heard that he was around somewhere. I can hear where he's coming from when I listen to this. I think in this day and age that jazz guys could learn something from this groove. Originally Posted by Stevebol
Last edited by mrcee; 12-13-2015 at 10:12 PM.
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On a one chord jam? Did you listen to the track I'm talking about? Originally Posted by zigzag
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I don't want to come off like a flip flopping fence sitter but I hear what you're saying. Like anything else it could have gone either way but I'd optimistically hope and would like to think it would've been successful. I like Miles stuff from that era and even Joe Walsh could have possibly made a contribution as there was so much going on on those records. I love Pete Cosey but (and chime in if you disagree) I think Jimi could have done just as well. And Sonny Sharrock? Come on! And the later stuff with Scofield and Mike Stern? Both great players but Hendrix would have kicked their ass up and down B'way. imo Originally Posted by zigzag
I just posted The Duck (basically a one chord jam) above and hadn't thought about it in a Hendrix context but that was exactly the type of music he came out of. People always make a big deal out of his blues connection. But that's obvious. Technique wise he always, to me anyway, showed the R&B sideman that he was.Last edited by mrcee; 12-13-2015 at 06:58 PM.
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Many misconceptions about Jimi's playing and skill level based on product delivered by demands from his record contract. How many times has the newly established artist wanted to move forward, but was ordered to keep doing what makes money?? Word was that Jimi was very tired of what he was doing based on his obligations, and was way past ready to take it to the next level...jazz/rock fusion.
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Can I chime in if I agree? Originally Posted by mrcee
I have quite a bit of Davis and Hendrix from that era. Tons of Davis studio releases, out takes and alternate versions, and all of Hendrix including the cobbled together post mortem issues. Miles did some great work John McLaughlin as well. I can't see how a Davis collaboration with another great guitarist would fail. He was so open minded that during a lot of the recordings at that time his trumpet was almost secondary in the composition. Hendrix might have needed to do a little catch up, but his ear could have likely handled it. Also, I read somewhere about why Davis wanted to collaborate with Hendrix. All he said was "Machine Gun." He may not have been looking for Hendrix to contribute much more than that although he likely would have.Last edited by lammie200; 12-15-2015 at 12:36 PM.
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I did. It is great to speculate. I could be wrong... but I don't think so. Moot point. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
First off, Jimi didn't play with any speed... ever... period. Second, most everything I heard him play swung. Third, I never really heard him play anything I would consider "Jazz." I understand he wanted to evolve, to progress. I would really have loved to see what he was capable of.
His strength was his spontaneity, his ability to play what he felt, and how well he bonded with his guitar, but all within a blues milieu. I just don't think he and Miles were on the same wavelength... as someone said earlier, like oil and water. And my original post was that I felt Miles was out of Jimi's league. This doesn't mean that Miles couldn't have made great music with Jimi.Last edited by zigzag; 12-13-2015 at 08:43 PM.
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Pete Cosey's not playing "jazz" with Miles either....he's channeling Hendrix.
Seriously, listen to what Jimi was capable of...forget the studio stuff. Listen to Machine Gun. Complete freak out. That would have kicked so much ass on "Jack Johnson."
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Definitely Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
And all can say as well is "Machine Gun".
And, again, I don't think Jimi's playing was all in a blues melieu. That sure was a big part of it but I still feel that Jimi's basic technique was that of an R&B sideman more than of a straight bluesman like BB King or Buddy Guy. Sure he was a great blues player but so were Herb Ellis, Charlie Christian and Charlie Parker but their basic technique was jazz.
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just some of my feel for jimis abilities..
the growth he showed between the first album Experience and the third LadyLand..was a quantum leap..and he was beyond just blues..Little Wing-Axis..Castles made of sand..
He wrote some incredible songs and his use of effects and melodic fills and chord runs separated him from just about all of the rock players of the day..he was alone in that time period of rock..now at the same time people like Robert fripp and alan holdsworth--Ill include Zappa in this mix-- and some jazz players were doing "progressive/fusion" flavored stuff before anyone had a name for it..this was beyond diatonic step by step harmony of jazz..and producers could not market it well as they had no idea what it was .. now to speculate..as I mentioned in a previous post..could Jimi have developed into the fusion movement..Im sure he had the talent to take a leap and learn..to pin jimi into a box of "he could ONLY play" what he played in the past is an insult to him..his playing and songwriting on LadyLand was far advanced from Experience..
A tune called "rainy day" had a jazz flavored feel to it..if jimi would have played ii7 V7 arps over the main part of the tune it may have produced some "wow jimi plays jazz" comments..
yes its true the label execs had him lined up for concerts that dictated what he played..he would have had to immerse him self with different musical directions for a time re-emerge with new material..and possible a new mgmt. team and label..
would working with miles inspire growth in hendrix...it did for many of the name jazz stars that worked with him..to speculate on this..I ask..if McLaughlin didn't work with Miles on Silent Way and Brew..would Mahavishnu have happened..and all the other fusion groups that used Miles' sound as a template
yes its sad we wont ever knowLast edited by wolflen; 12-13-2015 at 10:02 PM.
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Sly Stone was booked to play a dance at The Omni for Emory University back in the early 80's; one of my friends did the arrangements. He was notorious for missing concerts and erratic behavior, but there was talk that he was "back on track".
Well he showed up 2 hours late, played a greatest hits medley for about 30 minutes, then left. No encore. The emcee came on to announce that "due to ordinances" they would have to wrap it up at because it was midnight. Lousiest concert event I've ever experienced.
The second lousiest at least in a physical sense was actually Miles Davis. I saw him a few years later at a festival near Vienna, along with Chick Corea and quite a few other top-notch bands. The problems here were bad weather--cold and rain--and poor event planning--the stage was under a large circus tent that couldn't accommodate 1/3 of the spectators. Also piss-poor food and services. (Kind of like Woodstock on a small scale.) Toward the end of the evening and in particular for Miles' set I literally hung from a chainlink fence just under the soundboard so I could get a glimpse and hear the bands.
I don't remember with detail how Miles played; he had just put out We Want Miles, and I think Mike Stern played on guitar. I imagine I enjoyed it in spite of the physical discomforts.
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Miles' 'Star People' (1983) is basically a slow blues if I recall correctly. Hendrix would have had no trouble with that.
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Miles had the next best thing to Jimi - Pete Cosey! Pete took the sonic ball and ran with it - if anything he took what Jimi did further out and developed it. A sonic player. A rock player, but with an African American sensibility.
AFAIK Miles wasn't very interested in jazz guitarists (apart from Charlie Christian, who almost doesn't count, in a way.)
And Miles also wasn't particularly interested in harmony at this point (TBH I'm not sure if he ever was). He was still playing the modal concept he had started in the late '50s - on Bitches Brew a lot of it is 'change mode on cue' (Wayne Krantz uses similar cueing systems to organise his music dynamically and rhythmically BTW).... In his soloing, he was exploring first of all interesting, unusual scales (such as the E/Eb/C triad 'Bitches Brew' scale - E, G, Ab, B, C, Eb) and later just sound with his wah-wah'd trumpet. I don't think Jimi would have found any of this alien at all.
Listen to the complete In A Silent Way sessions and see how Miles rejects most of the structure and harmony of Joe Zawinuls compositions in the edits. Really interesting. The records could be Charles Lloyd or something before Miles and Macero cut all the 'music that sounds like music' out.
Unlike a lot of the rock guys, Jimi had the rhythmic concept of black music though as well as the sonic way of playing. IMO Jimi swings far harder than most current jazz guitarists... The man was drenched in feel.
Which incidentally I believe is why Miles hired John McLaughlin - he was known as an R&B 'feel guy' before he got his alternate picking together in the late 60s, and obviously had the London proto-rock thing going on, which was very trendy at the time.
Incidentally, it always puzzles me that people think Miles's late 60s and 70s music has something to do with jazz fusion.
Also - Miles hated the term 'jazz' - along with Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington and quite a few others...Last edited by christianm77; 12-14-2015 at 10:07 AM.
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All this talk about the Blues... Sure the Blues is a prime foundational element of virtually all American popular music (and unpopular music like jazz) from nearly the past 100 years. And not to disparage the style but anybody can or should be able to play the blues. I'm not sure, I may have read it on this forum, but Miles said that the 12 bar blues was America's greatest contribution to music. And Jimi was a great blues player and it was an important part of his and every other rock/funk/jazz player's musicality but to me his best shot was his sense of rhythm. That's the R&B Funk connection in his playing. I'm sure Sly and the Family Stone could have done a great version of Stormy Monday or Row, Row, Row Your Boat for that matter. I'm sure Al Green or Barry White could have torn up any blues standard (ever hear Barry White do Louie Louie? not a blues tune but it's Massive).
It's arguable but jazz is fundamentally a syncopated fusion of the blues and European Classical harmony. Funk, R&B and Soul (and Country actually) are more Gospel based and coming out of the church. Jazz is coming out of whorehouses. The eternal division between the sacred and profane. It's safe to say that all or nearly all great soul, R&B singers started out in the church and retained a strong connection to it. Jazz musicians less so. There's a certain groove/drive and cadential basis in soul music (the so called 'amen *IV I* cadence'. And the I IV R&B vamp) that fundamentally differs from straight blues and standards based jazz progressions. Most times, to me, when jazz musicians attempt to do something in the Soul/Gospel/Funk vein it's not completely successful. Bobby Timmons is an exception and I'm sure there's others. And Mary Lou Williams is a fantastic gospel pianist. Even our resident Funkateer, Stevebol, wasn't impressed with On The Corner. I like it though even if it's not as funky in the classic sense as many would like to think. More World Beat really with the tablas etc.
Jimmy Smith and a lot of what's called Soul Jazz is really more bluesy than anything else. And the funkier stuff like Horace Silver is more Latin than anything else.
Sure, you can't get away from the Blues but Funk, Soul and R&B are a slightly different bag and one that Jimi Hendrix was deeply steeped in.
James Ulmer said it well: Jazz is the teacher and Funk is the preacher.
Or like the Reverend James Cleveland said: It's not about the melody or the rhythm or the lyrics or the performer. It's about the message.
If you don't understand that you'll never completely understand Soul Music or Jimi Hendrix.
I've heard that Scofield has recently discovered classic (what's called 'hard') gospel music. Welcome aboard the soul train, Man!
Miles tells a story, in the autobiography I think, about his visiting relatives in rural Arkansas as a youngster. He was walking alone in the dark of night down a country road and heard a voice singing from a church. He said the tone of it was like nothing he'd ever heard and that he carried it with him throughout the rest of his life. I don't think Miles was a conventionally religious person but he knew what the message was. In musical terms way beyond cookie cutter sentimental religiosity and phony piety.
Last edited by mrcee; 12-14-2015 at 04:18 PM.
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That's a good tune. It reminds me of Cameo.
Yo pretty ladies....
around the world,
A Louie Louie,
Louie Louie
All you sucker DJs....
Who think they're fly
Louie Louie.....Clap on 4!
One, two, clap on 4!
WE don't have the time for psychological romance, nope
A Louie Louie
Louie Louie
That's a catchy tune right there.Last edited by Stevebol; 12-14-2015 at 02:57 PM.
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The connection is that Miles' band went electric...bass, multi keys, Miles using a wahwah pedal...you might have your own personal defnition of jazz fusion, but in the jazz continuum, Miles helped to invent it. The monster fusion bands were created by sidemen directly from Miles' electric bands....Weather Report, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu Orchestra.... Originally Posted by christianm77
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I understand the connection from an instrumental and personnel point of view. That's crushingly obvious. I'm talking about aesthetics. Originally Posted by cosmic gumbo
His '70s music was absolutely nothing like any of these bands. The nearest these groups came to sounding like Miles was the version of Directions on I Sing the Body Electric - but then Miles had been playing Directions for years in his electric groups with many of the same musicians.
Fusion's (Jazz/Rock) direction was in the end nothing like Miles's direction in the '70s. Those bands were moving more towards intricate arrangements, odd time, complex harmony, virtuoso soloing. Miles was moving towards static harmony, polymeteric layering on a basic 4/4 funk pulse, a preference for somewhat 'sonic' improvisation (with the exception of the rather harmonic/linear David Liebman and Sonny Fortune.) This is something he very consciously working towards.
A lot of the players Miles worked with were perplexed by or even actively disliked his music. Badal Roy, David Liebman for example, quite openly state that they actively disliked the music at the time. Reading between the lines many of the other players felt the same but are more guarded. This is borne out by the fact that their music either moved towards grooveless freedom (Circle, say) or jazz/rock of the Mahavishnu variety.
The author Lucius Sheppard described Miles's music at this point as 'anti-enlightenment' which I rather like.
People who love fusion often hate 70s Miles. And vice versa. Miles was even an influence on some of the more 'out there' post-punks, electronic musicians and avant garde art rockers - the sort of people who wouldn't have any interest at all in Jaco Pastorius. (Me, I like both.)
Very few people within jazz followed Miles's post jazz direction. Wayne Krantz is one of the few guys playing this type of non-fusion electric music (he actively denies that he plays fusion and his music is based on improvisation and cues working over grooves and static harmony rather than any kind of complex arrangements or harmony.)
So - Miles' 1970's music ended influencing the future course of popular music. Fusion only ended up influencing jazz.
Also lets hear it for the mighty Michael Henderson, lynchpin of the '70s Miles line ups, quietly taking care of business. What a dude (and he ended up being a star!)Last edited by christianm77; 12-14-2015 at 06:17 PM.
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Great record. I love the '80s stuff - different again from the 70s stuff, although the early 80's live stuff has some of that 70s feeling to it... Originally Posted by grahambop
Last edited by christianm77; 12-14-2015 at 06:23 PM.
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Here Here for Michael Henderson.
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Originally Posted by christianm77
Spot on. 1970s Miles is fundamentally different than any other music of that decade, from any genre . When I think of the tight, machine gun like precision unison playing in the "Inner Mounting Flame", that is NOTHING like what Miles was doing.
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Dave Holland jammed with Hendrix. At the time he was in Miles Band:
And the recording:
Last edited by WESTON; 12-24-2015 at 02:49 PM.
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