Why Miles Davis Was the Greatest...

[Gabor]

Great thread, catching up late.
Thanks for enlighten me about this movie and its score.

Hard to tell "the greatest", surely one of the greatests.
I think his position is more related with his personality, I mean ability carrying suggestive musical and human messages and rule (the room, the band, the music)

[JCat]

There’s a lot of dispute over ‘Blue in Green’, Bill Evans claimed he wrote it but Miles took the credit (and the royalties - not the first time Miles did that!). Bill’s friend, composer Earl Zindars, also confirmed this.

...and appearantly there has also been a dispute over the song "Four" and intellectual property rights. I always believed Miles was the composer, anyway he was the one who made it famous. I really dig "Four", a clever composition, simple but beautiful and good fun to play.

[djg]

eddie vinson wrote four, chuck wayne wrote solar.

[2bornot2bop]

Love this track from 50’s Miles. Sounds fresh, almost like something Chris Botti would record. Oh wait, Botti did, 50 years later.

Miles was a one and only. He ruled the world for nearly a ten year period. I love how when coming out of his battle with H he told the producer of Newport “you can’t have a concert without me, you’ve got to put me in.” And he did. The women and men of the audience sat with their mouths open, while Miles played them like the Pied Piper, playing one ballad and another. They’d never heard anything like him. Managers of Columbia had been in the audience. This concert performance was like an audition for Miles. And days later Columbia came running to get Miles signed to a recording contract. But first, he had to get out of his contract with Prestige. He went into the Rudy Van Gelder studio and within days recorded enough material that would fill 4 albums. Miles was now free of Prestige. Miles had one of the best 10 year musical runs ever. The rest as they say was history. And if you haven’t watched ‘Birth of the cool’ on Netflix you ain’t cool. Thank me later.

[2bornot2bop]

One of my favourite films. Superb music throughout by all the musicians, but particularly Miles, who was treated with great respect in Paris, in contrast to what he got at home. But do seek out the film, it's a classic.

And...I'm in love with Jeanne Moreau

It’s even said so many fans of the film first came to it because the soundtrack of the film was a hit, and they first heard the soundtrack and then wanted to see the film. This is what’s said in the documentary “Birth of the cool” dedicated to the life of Miles Davis.

[Onlyserious]

In the '80's there was a record company called "Compact Jazz" Which was put out by Phillips that put out compilations of second takes, and obscure cut stuff by tons of major artists, they were cheap but excellent. I bought a ton of them trying to learn tunes and collecting various interpretations of standards. I just lucked into Compact Jazz Miles Davis. It is a CD of Miles' full of stuff he recorded for movies almost all with French titles with a few standards. It is among my favorite Miles' recordings, but not well known--and obtainable. Check out the titles...

Miles Davis - Miles Davis (1989, CD) | Discogs

[grahambop]

That looks like most of the Ascenseur pour l’echafaud tracks.

The first 4 tracks come from a record with Michel Legrand called Legrand Jazz.

The last 4 tracks look like old Verve sides with Miles and Charlie Parker.

[Doctor Jeff]

Love this track from 50’s Miles. Sounds fresh, almost like something Chris Botti would record. Oh wait, Botti did, 50 years later.

Miles was a one and only. He ruled the world for nearly a ten year period. I love how when coming out of his battle with H he told the producer of Newport “you can’t have a concert without me, you’ve got to put me in.” And he did. The women and men of the audience sat with their mouths open, while Miles played them like the Pied Piper, playing one ballad and another. They’d never heard anything like him. Managers of Columbia had been in the audience. This concert performance was like an audition for Miles. And days later Columbia came running to get Miles signed to a recording contract. But first, he had to get out of his contract with Prestige. He went into the Rudy Van Gelder studio and within days recorded enough material that would fill 4 albums. Miles was now free of Prestige. Miles had one of the best 10 year musical runs ever. The rest as they say was history. And if you haven’t watched ‘Birth of the cool’ on Netflix you ain’t cool. Thank me later.

I won't quibble with anything above, except why 10 years? He recorded the Birth of the Cool sessions in '49-50, though apparently they didn't make much of a splash until compiled and reengineered and rereleased in 1957. But his mid-50's Prestige stuff was great and I think fairly popular. He was still cooking and heavily influential well into the early 70's, if not later.

The one and only time I saw him was when he was touring again in the mid-80's. I believe Mike Stern was with him, though I wouldn't swear Scofield wasn't there as well. It was at an outdoor festival near Vienna, and it was raining quite a bit, so the tent was packed. I had to climb on a chain link fence in front of the soundboard to get a good look at him. Worth it though.

He was still contributing to jazz not least by just showing up, playing new tunes, and bringing young new musicians up through the ranks.

[steve burchfield]

I know a cool story about a good thing Miles did. When Mike Stern was having addiction issues he paid John Scofield 900$ a week just to hang out backstage on a series of concerts, subtly letting Mike know he needed to get clean. When Mike got out of rehab he decided to keep both Stern and Sco for awhile. Pretty cool!!! The Don Cheadle movie about Miles is fairly good. Barry Finnerty who played with the Brecker Brothers also worked with Miles in the Eighties and later with Randy Brecker. I once bought a lithograph of Don Quixote by Miles but had to sell it. It was quite good. Very good visual artist as well. Lets just give All Blues a rest for a while as a gig tune! Ha Ha !

[JCat]

Jazz is mainly about self expression through improvisation. You don't have to be a great composer too...

The way I see it music is about expression, regardless of genre. A composition is an expression, a solo is an expression, a single tone is an expression.

There are countless of expressive guitar players in rock music. Jimmy Hendrix, Billy Gibbons and Eddie van Halen for example are great expressionists, but "it ain't jazz". Nile Rogers is way more Jazz, even though you don't hear him soloing. Jazz as a genre is tied to a harmonic and rhythmic language that we normally won't find in rock music. Chord Scale Theory is useful, but you need changes, right?

"When we produced "Kind of Blue" all I brought into the studio was sketches" (Miles Davis).

It wouldn't be too farfetched to assume he brought the changes. Just like Donald Fagen did for the famous Steely Dan sessions more than a decade later.

A series of vamps is not enough to call it a composition. Without a melody, a head, it won't get reproduced. Such melody, even a short phrase that gets repeated, doesn't have to be played by the soloist, but could be played for example by the Bass, like in "So What".

We have to pay attention to the changes and the head. Miles taught his disciples to "play the changes", but did they care about learning to play the chords or write the changes? And what happens to a tune when there is no longer a melody that people can reproduce? For a tune to be documented and widespread and covered by other people, as a minimum it must be possible to document changes and a head. Before Miles came along people would argue that it would be impossible to improvise variations on a melody that didn't exist. Maybe Miles proved them wrong, or maybe we as improvisers could actually learn something from writing melodies and playing variations on that melody? As a matter of fact, throughout his career Miles were looking for existing melodies, that inspired him to make new interpretations.