Miles Davis: All Blues

Miles Davis' 1986 album Tutu

Remembering trumpeter Miles Davis on the day of his death from pneumonia 20 years ago.

Davis was as full of contradictions as he was musical ideas: personally churlish, he was supportive and encouraging of the apprentices in his band; disdainful of critics, he was pained by their criticisms; reared on bebop, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His album, Kind of Blue, was saluted on its 50th anniversary by Congress by a 409-0 vote; we’re guessing there weren’t 409 members who were familiar with it.

The next time you need to be reminded that people are complicated, remember Miles. When he turned his back on audiences, we can only assume he meant it.

Trumpeter heir Wynton Marsalis told The Independent in 2003 Davis was “a genius who decided to go into rock, and was on the bandstand looking like, basically, a buffoon.” Davis had been dead 12 years, but his reaction probably wouldn’t have been any different than it was 17 years previously, according to the Telegraph, when Marsalis climbed on the stage as Davis performed at the Vancouver Jazz Festival: “That motherf—-r’s not sharing the stage with me.”

 ”There was a classic competition between an older man and a younger man who is more idealistic. By that stage he’d given up jazz and was playing pop and rock, trying to stay pertinent,” Marsalis told the Telegraph’s Peter Culshaw. “He had released a large portion of his integrity. He knew it. We both knew it.”

We’ll see if Marsalis feels any differently a quarter-century hence when he’s 65.

We know this: asking where Miles Davis’ place is in jazz is a little like asking where Ty Cobb, the baseball player Davis’ personality most closely resembles, ranks in the Hall of Fame. It’s not if he’s in the first class, but whether he’s at the head of it.

Because there aren’t many jazz musicians whose death will evoke an editorial reaction from The New York Times as Davis’ did.

From the Times, three days after Davis’ death: “Unless someone soon emerges from nowhere, the trumpeter Miles Davis will be remembered as the most influential jazz artist of the second half of the 20th century. Mr. Davis remained iconoclastic through four decades as instrumentalist, composer and band leader. He felt compelled to change (a “curse,” he called it) and when he did, the whole of jazz often changed with him . . . Miles Davis is dead at 65. One of his albums was called “Miles Ahead.” And he was: an American original, as cool as they come.”

Davis was 65 when he died.

The link below is to Davis’ composition All Blues from the 1959 release Kind of Blue; it’s a live 1964 version with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams (there is, unfortunately, a slight skip or two).

Sources: telegraph.co.uk, independent.co.uk, wikipedia.org

Nicholas Payton: Fleur de Lis

Birthday greetings to trumpeter Nicholas Payton, who celebrates No. 38 today.

Payton is one of the many musicians from New Orleans; you can follow Payton’s musical lineage back as if it were a family tree. His father Walter, who died last fall, was an accomplished bassist and educator; Nicholas was taught by Ellis Marsalis; Nicholas toured with pianist Marcus Roberts, who played with Wynton Marsalis, who is currently the best-known in the long line of New Orleans trumpet players to which Payton belongs.

(It’s only a coincidence that the coach of New Orleans’ Super Bowl-winning Saints is Sean Payton. Or is it?)

“In New Orleans music, trumpet is king,” Payton told Ashley Kahn on npr.org. “(There’s) something about the sound of the trumpet — its expressiveness, its sort of regal quality.”

The trumpet is not Payton’s only means of expression. He also plays piano, and he blogs on his website about topics ranging from race to music and in between. His blogs on race are provocative — we don’t concur with all of his conclusions — but they frequently stimulate revealing exchanges in the comments sections. If you get involved, you’ll be challenged.

Said Payton in Tony Green’s liner notes to the 1998 album Payton’s Place: “A lot of people have a very limited view of me, of what they see me doing. I don’t want to go against my reputation, as far as what I have established, but I don’t want to be categorized as a traditionalist. I’m still very conscious of my roots, but at the same time, I want to use my foundation as a starting point that will allow me to expand and express myself.”

Listen to the cut below from Payton’s 2008 album Touch of Blue to hear him do just that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdUY4EKuMFU

sources: wikipedia.org, nicholaspayton.com, npr.org

Bill Evans: Waltz for Debby

Bill Evans' 1975 double album Peace Piece and Other Pieces; 2 sides a re-release of 1958's Everybody Digs Bill Evans and 2 previously unreleased sides

Remembering pianist Bill Evans on the day after his death in 1980.

Although much is made of Evans’ relationship with and impact on Miles Davis, and vice versa, they made only two studio albums  together — 1958 Miles and Kind of Blue.  Which is a bit like saying Harper Lee only wrote To Kill A Mockingbird. If you read, you’ve  probably read it. And if you listen to jazz, or music at all, you’ve probably listened to and/or own a copy of  Kind of Blue.

The irony is that Bill Evans — not to be confused with composer/arranger Gil Evans, who also influenced Davis — had already left Davis’ group before Kind of Blue was recorded. But according to Ashley Kahn’s jazztimes.com article on their relationship (link below), Davis made a special request of Evans. Thus the 1959 album that featured Davis and John Coltrane had Evans on piano (and Paul Chambers on bass, Jimmy Cobb on drums and ”Cannonball” Adderley on alto sax). “I planned that album around the piano playing of Bill Evans,” Davis said in 1989, according to Kahn’s piece.

(According to npr.org, Davis said to Evans, “See what you can do with this;” the result was Evans’ solos on Blue in Green.)

On Rolling Stone’s 2003 list of 500 greatest albums, Kind of Blue was rated 12th; the only surprise is it didn’t rank higher. Said pianist Chick Correa, from Kahn’s book Kind of Blue: The Making of a Miles Davis Masterpiece: “It’s one thing to just play a tune, or play a program of music, but it’s another thing to practically create a new language of music, which is what Kind of Blue did.”

Evans and Davis each pursued careers as band leaders; their music diverged. “The further he got from the Miles experience in point of time, the less aggressive his playing became,” said producer Orrin Keepnews, in Conrad Silvert’s liner notes to the album Spring Leaves.

Evans died, after years of drug abuse and hepatitis, at just 51 years old. A friend called it, in Peter Pettinger’s book: Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, “the longest suicide in history.”

A link to Kahn’s fascinating account of race and the Evans-Davis relationship below, and to a live version of Evans’ Waltz for Debby. 

Bill Evans and Miles Davis

sources: wikipedia.org, bittersuiteband.com, jazztimes.com