Guardian

CRITICS of trumpeter Miles Davis often refer to the evolutionary exploits, which found him integrating electric instruments and elements of popular songs into his music – from 1968. As a matter of fact, this experimental intervention also sparked a bitter debate among musicians, scholars and audiences (that included some of his ardent fans) about the relationship between jazz and popular music.

Some even said that Miles was pandering to commercial trends, poised to dabble in hits and charts whereas he was only reaching out to new levels of creativity. He was updating jazz’s long standing tradition of refashioning popular songs as vehicles for improvisation. These critics might have pretty well realized the fact that Miles previously took jazz to a new level with the water shed album, Kind Of Blue, ushering in ‘modal’ jazz in 1959. What they failed to appreciate was the possibility of this new wave jazz developing in various directions on the one hand, and the eclecticism of Miles Davis himself who was a rare bird and a musical introvert- on the other.

This album sees Davis return to the small group formula, but once again discarding conventional approach. Instead of getting each musician to travel along those tram lines of the harmonic movement, this time Miles has pre- arranged things so that each soloist is thinking in terms of scales, short collections of consecutive notes which each have an emotional atmosphere.

In Flamenco Sketches, for example, a 12- bar blues played in 6/8 time, all the playing is based on the creation of a sparsely beautiful modal mood. The question may arise, “Why?” And the answer is quite simple: Mile Davis hoped by these stratagems – to make it possible for jazz to continue to develop. And, it has developed in various ways ever since, even resulting in the discovery of the ‘Great Black Music’ crusaded by Lester Bowie.

Flamenco Sketches may be a blues, but because the approach is linear rather than harmonic, the familiar blues sequence goes by the board. In compensation, we hear alto saxophone player, Julian Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane both breaking out of the cage of conventional cliché. The echo of folk strains is quite unmistakable, as is the sparseness of the piano backings, another characteristic of Davis’ tactics.

Blue in Green, a 10-bar sequence (whose structure takes on the resemblance of Where Or When and A nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square) is a deeply affecting fragment of melancholia. Miles’ playing on this track is unmatched throughout the entire world of jazz today. All Blues is another fascinating variation on an old theme. Each soloist begins with a series of five scales, to be played on until the cycle is completed. It is interesting to notice that despite the danger of chaos in using such an anarchic method, each player sustains the mood of his predecessor, and that a Moorish overtone enters the proceedings at the same stage in everybody’s solo.

In So What?, a modal structure rather than a harmonic sequence, is used once again; and the resulting folk strains are not always necessarily Negroid.

Freddie Freeloader sees Miles Davis recasting the shape of the blues. All the embellishments of modernism have been pared away until only the utterly indispensible remains.. This classic severity is the hallmark of Miles’ painful sensitivity as he devotes his attention to each single note. Apparent simplicity like this is the most complex effect any artist can strive for. It leaves him relevant for all time because he appeals to everybody. In the case of Miles Davis, this phenomenon manifested itself in the way he came across with the economy of notes where his contemporaries loaded audiences with the multitude of notes, even as they rushed them. Besides, the creativity behind the choice of notes and phrases, the tonal conception with which they were unleashed on the audience – were both evocative to say the least.

The watershed which Kind Of Blue represents in the history of jazz may perhaps not have been as profound as it turned out but for Miles’ choice of sidemen for the recording date:

On hand was the tenor player of the moment in Coltrane who was then in the limelight, competing for preeminence with the saxophone Colossus, Sony Rollins. Taking on the role of the alto saxophone was Julian Cannonball Adderley who, though influenced by Charlie Parker, was now extending his ideas beyond the frontiers of his mentor- so much that critics began to refer to him as the ‘super Charlie Parker’. Miles had the cream of the fifties’ rhythm section men as he surrounded himself  with pianists Winston Kelly and Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer James Cobb – all of whose credentials were as brilliant as the recording itself.

Pianist Bill Evans’ words may suitably close these random thoughts on a highly intriguing and intelligent session which, in 1959 established a landmark that removed jazz from the restrictions of the bop and bebop revolution of modern jazz created at Minton’s Playhouse in New York in 1942 by alto saxophone legend Charlie Parker, guitarist Charlie Christian, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, drummer Max Roach. He said of Kind Of Blue, “Miles conceived these settings only hours before the recording date, and arrived with sketches which indicated to the group what was to be played. Therefore, you will hear something close to spontaneity in these performances. The group had never played these pieces before the recording.”