Miles Davis - Kings of Jazz Series - by Michael James - Part 3

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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 3 continuation of Michael extended essay on Miles’ career up to 1961:

“By the late spring of 1955 Davis had evidently formed a fairly good idea of the kind of group he wished to work with regularly, because the band which recorded under his name on 7 June differed in only two respects from the quintet he was to lead from the autumn of the same year until the spring of 1957: Oscar Pettiford played bass and there was no saxophonist to partner the leader in the front line. The rhythm section attains a high standard but Davis himself is not at his best, although there are some attractive trumpet passages on Green Haze, a slow blues, and A Gal in Calico. For much of the time he sounds dispirited. The familiar bugbear of faulty intonation partly explains this undesirable state of affairs, aggravated in one or two cases by a questionable choice of themes. Night in Tunisia will always be associated in the majority of enthusiasts' minds with the virtuoso displays of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. This version is almost dull in comparison, and exposes Davis's relatively limited range; the break he improvises after the opening theme statement sounds especially unadventurous.

If the fruits of this session were, in the main, disappointing, they are nevertheless interesting for the ways in which they foreshadow his future development. The chief of these concerns the relationship between his phrasing and the basic metre. I have already remarked that throughout most of 1954 he appeared to have been playing just a trifle behind the beat; it would also be true to say that the time-lag, infinitesimal as it was, seemed altogether regular. Now, however, the link between phrases and beat has grown less strict, and there is greater rhythmic freedom in his improvising, but, inevitably, less swing. With a rhythm section as relaxed and as powerful as this one behind him, the last point is comparatively academic, for although Davis's playing, considered apart, can barely be said to swing at all, the listener is not aware of any such shortcoming in the work of the quartet as a whole. It might be mentioned in passing that the drive — or forward momentum — of his playing is  not being impugned. I am talking purely of swing, a sensation which is not susceptible to even the most cursory verbal definition, but which will be readily understood by anyone acquainted with the music of the great jazzmen of the past four decades.

It was not with his quintet, nor indeed with this embryonic version of it, that Davis made his mark at Freebody Park in July, but with a motley group which had been, thrown hastily together, as is so often the case on gala occasions. For the record, it comprised, in addition to Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, Thelonious Monk, Percy Heath and Connie Kay. There seems little reason to believe that he excelled himself; it is far more likely that his unexpected acclamation by those present was merely yet another case of the jazz audience suddenly becoming aware of talent that had hitherto been concealed from it for lack of publicity.

Not until late October did Davis's new quintet make its first records, but in the interim he took part in two sessions, the first for Debut with a band which was obviously dominated by Charlie Mingus, although the trumpeter's name appears as leader on the label, and the second with a pick-up group for the Prestige company. The Debut album may be safely overlooked, for although Davis is his characteristic self from the tonal viewpoint, he sounds ill at ease and evinces little melodic inventiveness. It may be that he felt inhibited by the framework within which he was obliged to work, since the extended performances for Prestige [LP 7034] find him in far more confident form. McLean is disappointing, but Davis, Milt Jackson and Ray Bryant all play brilliantly, aided by Percy Heath and Art Taylor. Subdued yet swinging, the rhythm section complements Davis to perfection on Changes., where his muted solos, the very epitome of tenderness, overshadow even Jackson's fleet choruses.

If one were to take these two recording dates as a guide to Davis's reaction to an arranged setting, it would appear that pre-set routines were inimical to his style; but as the Capitol records of 1949 and 1950 and those made for Blue Note in 1952 and 1953 had previously shown, this was not the case when he himself was able to dictate the form these routines were to assume. 

This important distinction was now to be stressed yet again by his new quintet, which worked regularly for some eighteen months with an unchanged personnel, and was thus able to develop ensemble techniques that were out of the question with a group assembled for a single record session or a short run of a week or so in this or that jazz room. These techniques concern not so much the relationship between the two wind instruments,  though arranged passages, of course, there were, as the interplay between the solo horn and the various members of the rhythm section. 

I have already spoken of this subject in discussing Davis's records of the early nineteen-fifties, and have pointed out the important role played by the drummer, who was often responsible not only for implementing the beat but also for enriching the polyrhythmic content of the music as a whole. 

Continuous employment was now to give Davis the opportunity of amplifying this procedure in a number of intriguing ways, but before going on to examine actual instances, it will be instructive, I think, to consider the styles of the men he chose when assembling his band. A brief digression of this kind will help to explain the success of the major part of the quintet's recorded work and will also illuminate Davis's perceptiveness as a bandleader, an aspect of his talent which economics had hitherto obscured.

It was widely rumoured that he would have liked Sonny Rollins to join him, and there is little reason to doubt this, for he had frequently used him in the past when engagements had been forthcoming. Rollins, however, spent most of 1955 studying in Chicago, and presumably felt that the time was not ripe for him to accept Davis's offer; he eventually went with Max Roach instead, replacing Harold Land in the drummer's group. In his place the trumpeter chose John Coltrane, a Philadelphian who had been with Dizzy Gillespie's big band in the late nineteen-forties and had since appeared with Eddie Vinson and Johnny Hodges. 

Ever since his stay in the altoist's quintet Davis had preferred to work with saxophonists whose playing reflected Parker's ideas, perhaps because he felt that their multi noted flights made an interesting contrast with his own rather spare phrasing. Coltrane, who had also been influenced by Sonny Stitt and Dexter Gordon, fulfilled this condition in no uncertain way. At this time he was a relatively immature stylist, his harmonic researches leading him to employ a greater number of notes than he eventually found to be necessary, but whilst some of his solos with Davis in 1955 and 1956 were to sound rambling and incoherent, he made an exceptionally good foil for the leader, and his use of phrases of uneven length was in full accord with the asymmetrical nature of the group's music.

On bass Davis chose Paul Chambers, a young Detroit musician who had quickly made himself a reputation in New York jazz circles through his work with George Wallington, with whose quintet he appeared at the Café Bohemia in September. His harmonic sense was nothing short of exceptional; his tone was satisfyingly full, and — an important point where his work with Davis was concerned — he was able to create distinctive melodic lines; even when primarily concerned with stating the beat, the intervals he chose were always attractive to the ear. Philly Joe Jones, who was at the drums, had gained much of his experience in rhythm-and-blues bands. Possessed of enviable stamina and a driving swing, both doubtless acquired in this demanding field, he had also formulated by 1955 a style of accompaniment which was decidedly original, though deriving in part from Max Roach, with whom he had previously studied on an informal basis. Now that Davis's phrasing had grown freer of the beat, it was essential the qualities of drive and swing be abundantly present in his accompaniment, and it was because he recognized these so clearly in Jones's playing that his admiration for the drummer knew no bounds. 'Look,' he once said, ‘I wouldn't care if he came up on the bandstand in his B.V.D.s and with one arm, just so long as he was there. He's got the fire I want. There's nothing more terrible than playing with a dull rhythm section. Jazz has got to have that thing.'[Esquire Magazine, March 1959.] Just as vital in the context of this band was Jones's gift for elaborating the melodic line. He had at his command a rich variety of devices for doing this, and his exemplary volume control and uncanny anticipation enabled him to make the unexpected accent sound not only logical but inevitable. At times he would perform at a near contrapuntal level with the soloist, and in view of the prolix nature of his accompaniment it is clear that Davis made a wise selection in the Quintet's pianist. 

Instead of complementing trumpet tenor or bass choruses with the filigree melodies of an Al Haig, Red Garland restricted himself to spurring the soloist on with a series of hard, percussive chords. In this way he avoided obscuring the detail of the drummer's commentary yet still contrived to enrich the harmonic and rhythmic interest of any given performance. It seems likely that it was above all his skill in this sphere which recommended him to Davis, for his solo work, though showing great craftsmanship, is rarely so absorbing as one would wish. Immature and unfinished Coltrane's style certainly was at this time, but his contributions hold more interest than Garland's. On repeated hearings the piano solos tend to sound mechanical, partly because they are so often divided neatly into two halves, the first consisting of single-line improvisation over left-hand punctuations, the second made up of an unrelieved sequence of chordal patterns similar to those used by George Shearing or Erroll Garner. No one would contest his swing or sound musical knowledge, but a large proportion of his solos recorded with Davis lack the inventiveness of his playing, say, on Traneing In, which was recorded in August 1957.

During the year and a half or so of its existence, the quintet made records for both the Prestige and Columbia companies. Those issued by the former concern were done at three extended sessions held in November, May and October, the group playing a selection from its repertoire as though it were making a normal club appearance. A greater number of recording dates were held under the aegis of Columbia, but these brought forth fewer sides, which suggests that greater attention was paid to precise interpretation, the final choice for commercial release being made from several different versions of the same theme. Such methods very often entail a loss in spontaneity, and there is no doubt that the band sounds more subdued on its Columbia records. It would not do, however, to lay too heavy a stress on this difference, for it derives in part from the divergence in recording, the Prestige albums possessing far better definition than the others. Many Columbia issues from this period are similarly at fault; the rhythm sections are recorded most unsatisfactorily, as with the albums by Art Blakey's

Jazz Messengers. In practice, though, the principal split in the body of the quintet's recorded work was not between the records made for Prestige on the one hand and Columbia on the other, but between the ballad renditions and the medium or fast tempo pieces.

There Is No Greater Love, Bye Bye Blackbird and All of You typify a style of ballad playing which Davis has used widely in recent years, both with the band at present under discussion and its successors. The pattern is a fairly simple one: the melody is stated by trumpet in mute followed perhaps by a further passage of muted trumpet, Davis never straying far from the theme, before solos by Coltrane and Garland lead up to a final chorus, similar to the first. Performances of this kind made scant use of the group's artistic potential and when heard consecutively sound rather stylized, as though Davis and his band were going through a familiar routine. This is especially true of the leader's playing, for whilst he performs in a very individual way, utilizing his tonal resources to convey an emotional climate of acute melancholia, rarely does he appear to extend himself. In Bye Bye Blackbird, it is true, we find some interesting theme development, but for the most part he is content to stay very close to the melody as written, and one is led to wonder to what extent he was making concessions to the audience. In recent years Davis has frequently been accused of assuming a contemptuous attitude towards the customers of the jazz-rooms in which he works, and it is ironic in view of this that his music should be open to this charge. However that may be, comparison between My Funny Valentine and You're My Everything, ballad renditions which do not conform to the prevailing pattern, and the bulk of his recorded output in this vein lends support to the accusation.

There can be little doubt that the quintet's records at faster tempo were the more absorbing. At first its performances generally conformed to the normal modern small-group style, the soloists improvising freely over the rhythm section. Ah-leu-cha, How Am I to Know and Sposin’ are examples of this, with Davis contributing a splendid solo to the first. Two pieces from the group's initial session for Prestige, held in November 1955, more clearly illustrated its possibilities as a unit. Just Squeeze Me has Paul Chambers fashioning a second line beneath Davis's theme statement and also finds Red Garland tacit in places, but it is above all The Theme which features exhilarating interplay between the musicians. This performance begins with a fascinating duet between Chambers and Jones. Davis then enters, sustaining high notes to good effect, but the main melodic burden is carried by Garland who sets down some rollicking piano beneath the leader's austere line before the latter comes to the fore on the bridge. Solos follow from Davis, Coltrane and Garland, with Jones providing an exciting commentary on them all. Although the saxophonist is in poor voice, his phrases in double-time muddled and badly constructed, Chambers' strong musicianship holds this section together, and one is left with the agreeable impression that adventurous as the group's conception was, the understanding which existed between its members ensured that its music was always thoroughly integrated.

The unconventional character of The Theme foreshadowed the quintet's subsequent development. If records are any guide, it is safe to say that by late 1956 such renditions were an important part of its repertoire. Oleo, Airegin and Tune Up stand out as spectacular instances of the band's style and compare favourably with its more orthodox performances such as Blues by Five or When Lights Are Low. There is no profound schism between the one approach and the other, for all five of these records score with the listener by virtue of their poly-rhythmic content; but on the first three an adept distribution of duties between the quintet's members steps up the interest already implicit in each single musician's work. In his soloing Davis maintains a high standard, using his improved technical powers to good advantage. If I Were a Bell has a characteristically intense contribution by him, whilst on Airegin he plays in an extremely aggressive way, employing phrases that are as incisive as they are rhythmically free. Nor was he ready to forgo the felicities of inflexion: his improvisation on When Lights Are Low shows that he was continuing to use this most fecund device to strengthen the communicative power of his work. The confidence he exudes at fast and medium tempi suggests that he found ample inspiration in the polyrhythmic stylings of his group, and makes a strange contrast with his subdued contributions to the ballads, which, as I have already explained, are set in far simpler form, with the rhythm section restricting itself mainly to marking out the beat.

The strength of this band resided above all in the understanding which existed between its members, for at the time Coltrane was a relatively undeveloped soloist. In ''Round Midnight, done in September 1956, he fashions a moving chorus, but on most of the quintet's records he falls a long way short of the standards he was eventually to set with Traneing In and Good Bait. It is not surprising, then, that Davis tended to be at his best when his group was working up to its full capacities as a unit.

Although this quintet had worked on a regular basis there had been times when it was inactive for one reason or another, as for instance when Davis came to Europe in late 1956; and in the spring of the following year it disbanded altogether. In the summer Davis formed a new band. Rollins was on tenor saxophone in place of John Coltrane and Art Taylor at the drums instead of Jones. Garland and Chambers, as before, completed the group. The same musicians, with the exception that Tommy Flanagan and not Garland played piano, had recorded together about a year before, and on that occasion the results had been more than encouraging; but by 1957 Rollins had developed further, and reliable authorities have it that he was dissatisfied with his position and yearned for a band of his own. In view of this it was to be expected that the new formation would not long stay together, and such indeed proved to be the case. The autumn found Davis once again signing on new men. Bobby Jaspar took over from Rollins, Flanagan joined on piano, and Philly Joe Jones returned. Jaspar, featured on both flute and tenor, soon left, replaced in October by Julian Cannonball Adderley, who joined the group during the course of a concert tour. 

No records have been issued by any of these transitional groups, and indeed it is probable that none, in fact, were made, perhaps because of the frequent changes in personnel. Yet such hardly seems a satisfactory explanation when one considers that by 1957 Davis was a very popular figure with enthusiasts at large. His contract with a business corporation such as Columbia was now to consolidate his status with the jazz public, not only by way of small group recordings, but, more significantly, through a series of orchestral sessions held under the direction of Gil Evans, one of the arrangers who had been concerned in the mounting of the nine-piece group he had led at the Royal Roost in 1948.”

To be continued and concluded in Part 4.