Miles Davis - Kings of Jazz Series - by Michael James - Part 2

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By way of background: “This new PERPETUA series, Kings of Jazz, provides authoritative introductions to the individual masters of traditional and modern jazz who have become legends in the field. The series has been designed for the jazz lover, and each volume has been written by an expert on his subject. These books include notes on the musician's life, early career, and influence, as well as a selected discography and a number of photographs. Bob Dawbarn wrote in The Melody Maker-. "This admirable new series fills a great need in the ever-increasing library of jazz literature. At last we are to have intelligent and authoritative jazz books at a price within the reach of every student of the music." Other titles in the Kings of Jazz series include: Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Dizzy Gillespie, Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Charlie Parker, King Oliver, and Johnny Dodds.”

The back cover annotation goes on to say: “Miles Davis, the subject of this volume, is presently in the mid-stream of a controversial trumpet-playing career that has developed with a single-mindedness untouched by fashion or the lure of monetary gain. While the promise of his future is abundant, his talents have already had an enduring effect on jazz development as a whole. Attracted long before his twentieth birthday by the new form of jazz then being pioneered by his seniors, he matured within the bop idiom to develop a style of improvisation that was clearly his own. He has become an acknowledged leader of contemporary jazz thought, with a body of recorded work to his credit that corroborates the justice of this general view.”

Here’s a Part 2 continuation of Michael extended essay on Miles’ career up to 1961:

“It is no coincidence that the most successful recordings Davis made in 1947 and 1948 were those in which the personal flavour was most marked. Agreed, there are indications that he admired Navarro sufficiently to adapt some of his mannerisms for his own use, but primarily he was concerned with moulding a highly original mode of expression which would not call for the same kind of technical command that had hitherto been obligatory for the trumpet soloist in the new school. Other players, such as Kenny Dorham, Red Rodney and Doug Mettome, by patterning their style more or less on the established leaders, rapidly acquired fluency in the new idiom. Davis preferred to create his own language and his progress was in consequence a good deal slower. If plagiarism was repugnant to him, he had to pay the price for his aversion to it; hence the split notes, faulty intonation and scrambled phrases that mar much of his work in the first five years  of his recorded career.

Because of the very nature of the brass instrument, it will often happen that a trumpeter plays badly on one recording session only to perform at a much higher level, say, a week or two later. Forthwith, it must be pointed out that this was definitely not the case with Davis during his tenure with the Parker quintet. Two main factors seemed to govern the standard of his solos: the tempo and the thematic material. At the very fast pace of Bird Gets the Worm or Klaunstaunce he was able, by dint of rapid fingering, to make his runs conform to the underlying beat, but this mechanical approach meant that the musical interest of his work was almost negligible. His phrases had scant melodic appeal, his note separation was exceedingly poor, there is not a vestige of swing, and the overall impression one receives is of an ill-controlled succession of sounds. What a difference we find when the pace is less demanding! It was unfortunate for the trumpeter, at least from the short-term standpoint, that Parker was so partial to extremely fast tempi. Davis's passages on How Deep Is the Ocean, All the Things You Are., and indeed most of the ballads the group committed to record, are singularly attractive. In such leisurely conditions he obviously found it much easier to think clearly. The line he creates is full of inventive twists and turns and his tone has a beauty that is all its own, admirably suited to the clear-cut phrases. When these records were first released many people were quick to brand Davis an interesting but cold and detached player, lacking the communicative power of other jazz trumpeters. The fiction was to last for almost a decade, but today even his detractors, if pressed, will most of them agree that the emotional aura of these solos is a convincing and memorable one, though it may not appeal to them personally.

Not only the tempo affected his work on these records. Its quality also depended on the type of tune being interpreted. In fact it would not be a gross inaccuracy to say that the only performances to which he contributed praiseworthy solos apart from the ballads were the medium-paced blues. There are, agreed, the inevitable exceptions to this rule; on Steeplechase, for instance, he plays a nicely ordered chorus and also makes apt use of inflexion. For the most part, though, the twelve-bar form would seem to have been the only context in which he was really at his ease when the tempo was faster than thirty bars to the minute. Air Conditioning [Drifting on a Reed], Bongo Bop and the various takes of Barbados and Perhaps all have effective passages by him. It would be foolish to imply that these solos are faultless, but his conception is not distorted to the point of anonymity by the technical weaknesses, as is the case with his work on many of the other tunes recorded by the quintet. One is reminded of a drawing where the lines are imperfectly controlled, becoming almost indistinct in one or two places, but where the artist's vision comes over convincingly in spite of the flaws.

It is clear, then, that whilst a great many of his solos on the Parker quintet records of 1947 and 1948 are mediocre in the extreme, the experience he gained with the group was most valuable to him. He had begun to refine the texture of his work, at the same time intensifying its effect. In short, he was establishing his identity as a jazz soloist. He still had much to learn, of course, both in matters of construction and technique; but it is typical of his adventurous thinking that in the immediate future he was to turn his attention to other matters, concerning himself not only with the problems of improvisation, but more especially with those of composition and arrangement.

In the summer of 1948 Davis left the Parker quintet. Earlier the same year promoters Monte Kay and Ralph Watkins, in company with disc jockey

Symphony Sid Torin, had opened a new club called the Royal Roost on Broadway. In June Dizzy Gillespie played there with his orchestra, sharing the stand with Thelonious Monk, and amongst the groups which followed them were those of Charlie Ventura, Tadd Dameron — and two units led by Miles Davis, the second of which was destined to have a far-reaching effect on small group writing. 

Appearing at the club for only two weeks, in September 1948, Davis's band comprised the unorthodox instrumentation of trumpet, trombone, French horn, tuba, alto and baritone saxophones, piano, bass and drums. The greater part of the book consisted of original tunes from the pens of George Wallington, Gerry Mulligan, John Lewis and the leader himself, whilst the arranging was handled primarily by Mulligan and Gil Evans. The band's booking lasted only a fortnight owing to lack of support, and according to Mulligan it played only one date in public, which took place at the Clique Club a year or so later. A recording ban was in force throughout 1948, but Davis subsequently managed to secure three recording sessions at which the group was recreated. Two of these were held in 1949, in January and April, and the third in March of the following year. The resulting records are of interest from a variety of standpoints, and in view of the praise which has been accorded them and the extent to which they have been identified with Davis's ideas by so many commentators, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider the events which led up to their creation.

It is beyond dispute that the Claude Thornhill Orchestra was the seed without which Davis's group would almost certainly never have come into being. Thornhill’s was first and foremost a 'society' band, and except for the war years, when its leader was in the United States Navy, had been in existence since 1939. By 1947 its personnel included young musicians such as Red Rodney, Konitz and Mulligan. Gil Evans, who had been associated with Thornhill since the nineteen-thirties when both were writing for a bandleader called Skinnay Ennis in Stockton, California, was its principal arranger, whilst Mulligan, John Carisi and Gene Roland also contributed to the library. Because of his interest in the rhythmic and harmonic aspects of bop, Evans became friendly with Charlie Parker, sharing a room with him for some time, and it was probably through the altoist that Davis made his acquaintance. There is every reason for believing that Davis found the light textures of the Thornhill band's scores to his taste, for they echoed in an orchestral context the sound for which he himself was evidently striving; and their congeniality was doubtless enhanced in the case of Anthropology, Donna Lee and Yardbird Suite, three of Parker's tunes that Evans had arranged for the band. It should be remembered, however, that such pieces were not characteristic of the Thornhill repertoire, a fact that is borne out by Evans leaving the band in 1948 in protest at its leader's preoccupation with sheer sound as against linear and harmonic activity.

According to Gerry Mulligan, the idea of assembling a group which would make use of Gil Evans's arranging skill in a setting more akin to jazz than was the case in Thornhill's orchestra, did not stem from Miles Davis. Not until rehearsals were in progress did Davis assume the leading role; for some months beforehand Evans, Mulligan, John Lewis and John Carisi had been discussing the formation of the group, mapping out instrumentations and so on. It is clear, too, that the actual question of who was to play in the band was not settled by Davis alone. His original intention was that Sonny Stitt should play alto and John Simmons or Al McKibbon bass. He did not expect that Mulligan would take part other than as a writer. Once agreement was reached on the personnel, however, and the group started to rehearse, it was Davis who dictated the style of interpretation.

On the records the group made at the three sessions I have already mentioned, Davis gets more solo space than any other musician and his tone lends the scored passages a distinctive quality; but these two points cannot obscure the fact that these are essentially ensemble performances. Almost every one has some extraordinary feature. Israel contains contrapuntal passages; Jeru has an unconventional structure and makes use of different time signatures; Moon Dreams is a fascinating textural study. Most jazz writing dates rapidly; it is pleasant, therefore, to be able to say that at ten years' remove these performances remain as absorbing an experience as ever for the listener. The impression of serenity and restraint which marks them all is as convincing today as it was when the records were first issued.

Something of the same atmosphere is evident in the trumpet solos. The sense of emotional stress apparent in Davis's playing on many of the Parker quintet records has not vanished altogether, but for the most part it is hidden beneath a cloak of restraint. Godchild, which contains an excellent solo by the leader, serves to illustrate the principal changes. He ignores the eight-bar divisions, it is true, and in this way reveals his bop training; we have already seen that he had made considerable  progress along these lines by the close of 1947. His tone, however, is considerably smoother, and he intersperses complex runs with sustained notes that are executed with a bare minimum of vibrato and attack. 

To judge from his playing on transcriptions made of the Dameron group's programme at the Paris Jazz Fair which was held in May 1949, it seems likely that his style was in a state of flux in these years, for on the Dameron recordings he performs in a very different way, using a much broader tone and more aggressive phrasing. In the circumstances it is natural that his style would depend on the immediate musical surrounds, taking its colour from them. I do not wish the reader to infer from these remarks that his work on the Capitol sides is altogether devoid of character. On the contrary, it is noticeable that it has a warmer glow about it than have the ensemble passages or even the other solos; introspective his creations may be, but they have a communicative power that is largely absent from the contributions of Lee Konitz or Gerry Mulligan. 

Apart from the chorus on Godchild, Davis is also heard to especially good advantage on Jeru, Move, Venus de Milo and Rouge, whilst on several of the other sides, such as Rocker, where his solo is interpolated in the ensemble, his playing is of interest. These sides certainly contain solos more elegantly formed than he had contrived at previous recording dates, but in some respects it was a pity that critics subsequently tended to use them as a yardstick to judge all his work, for from the standpoint of content they are by no means fully representative.

Although many musicians were enthusiastic about the original nine-piece group Davis led at the Royal Roost, public interest was not widespread enough to enable it to continue there and the trumpeter reverted to the orthodox small-group format. The recording ban ended on 15 December 1948, but its results were to plague the jazz world for many months to come. Very little instrumental music had been recorded during the time it was in force, for only the small independent labels, with the connivance of a handful of jazz musicians, had ventured to defy it. Singers, on the other hand, had made innumerable records, generally with the backing of musicians not subject to the union's decrees. As a result the public had lost any taste it may once have had for instrumental. This was no catastrophe for the studio musicians, who were naturally very soon in demand again to accompany the vocalists, but on jazz, no matter of what kind, it had a disastrous effect. Many orchestras, such as Dizzy Gillespie's, were forced to disband by early 1950, and others were severely reduced in size. Jazz musicians who would make no concessions to the public at large found it harder than ever to obtain work, and of these Miles Davis was a typical example. January 1949 found him working at the Audubon, a small New York jazz-room, with Art Blakey and Sonny Rollins; and during the spring he played in a rehearsal band that Tadd Dameron had assembled, prior to travelling to Europe with the pianist, to appear, as previously stated, at the Paris Jazz Fair. He also spent two weeks in Chicago, but apart from these engagements, some record dates and the occasional gig, he was unemployed throughout the year.”

To be continued in Part 3.