Chekhov's Mistress
Miles Davis, Rock Star
“I’ve been a Miles Davis fan as long as I’ve been a jazz fan, but for most of that time I turned my nose up at any of his electric music, believing, like any good traditionalist, that his real music stopped with Bitches’ Brew; and, like any good traditionalist, I came to this opinion without ever having actually listened to Bitches’ Brew. At some point my resistance weakened, and I bought a remastered copy, listened, and came to love it. From there I listened to more and more electric jazz by other artists, though I’ll always love acoustic jazz best of all.”
“…His induction as a performer into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a subtler and less obvious matter. Davis never played rock or rhythm & blues, though he experimented with funk grooves on 1972’s On the Corner and in some of his later bands. However, his work intrigued a sizable segment of rock’s more ambitious fans in a way that no other serious jazz figure had ever done – and not retroactively but while he was alive and making some of his most challenging music. In particular, the boldly experimental soundscapes of Davis’ 1969 album Bitches Brew spoke to the sensibilities of rock fans who’d been digesting the Grateful Dead’s expansive improvisations. Davis’ was acutely attuned to his environment and he once remarked, ‘We play what the day recommends.’”
Ben Ratliff said in the New York Times (“A Jazz Legend Enshrined as a Rock Star?” 13 March) that “…by the mid-1960’s he sensed correctly that jazz’s greatest age was closing.” Indeed he did and never looked back. When he died in 1991, Davis was recording “doo-bop,” a hip-hop album, with Easy Mo Bee. Although it may not stand up to some of his other experiments, the album has some excellent pieces and I like it better than his late work with Marcus Miller, like “Tutu” or “Siesta.” He was never content to stand still with the conventions of traditional jazz and always listened to the world around him for inspiration.
I once saw Miles Davis at the Playboy Jazz Festival in the 1980s. He played, characteristically, with his back to the audience the entire time, which gave him an odd fuck-you aura, but it was unforgettable. The Hollywood Bowl, where the festival was held, is a pretty big place and the festival itself attracts a lot of cross-over fans, so yeah, you might call Miles a “rock-star.”
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