An Appreciation of ‘Bitches Brew’ on its 50th Anniversary by Chris Baber
The Musicians:
Miles Davis: trumpet; Wayne Shorter: soprano saxophone; Lenny White: drums; Bennie Maupin: bass clarinet; Chick Corea: electric piano; Jim Riley: percussion; Jack de Johnette: drums; Harvey Brooks: fender bass; Charles Alias: drums; Dave Holland: bass; John McLaughlin: electric guitar; Joe Zawinul: electric piano; Larry Young: electric piano.
Released on the 30th March 1970, Miles Davis’ ‘Bitches Brew’ is one of those albums that not only sounded right when it was released (capturing the spirit of adventure and revolution in the late ‘60s) but still sounds right today. It is also a record that suffers from carrying two unfounded myths that are repeated so often that it can be difficult to shake them. The first myth is that Miles’ record label, Columbia, somehow forced him to make a record that would give them a hit after his sales had been declining for the past few years. The second myth is that Miles was seeking to create a ‘jazz-rock’ record. The first of these is fairly easy to dismiss. Yes, Miles’ career had dropped from the high point in the early 60s, when he seemed to be winning every Poll going and could do no wrong. But this was as much to do with the way that jazz as genre was ceding ground to rock and roll, and funk. While there are stories of Columbia label bosses claiming credit for the release, ‘Bitches Brew’ sits very comfortably in the development of Miles’ music and should be heard as the logical progression of his thinking rather than some radical departure. The second might feel a little more controversial to argue, but I think that seeing ‘Bitches Brew’ simply in terms of jazz-rock, jazz-funk, fusion, etc. does a tremendous disservice to both the music and Miles’ ambition in creating this music.
My introduction to jazz came from two random occurrences: the first was being captivated by Diana Ross in the film ‘Lady Sings the Blues’, which I stumbled across one night on television; the second was buying a battered copy of ‘Bitches Brew’ in a charity shop in Plymouth. I liked the cover and had a vague idea that Miles Davis was a big name in jazz. So, as this was my first jazz record, you’d expect it to hold a special place for me. Given that my musical tastes, to that point, had been shaped by punk rock and the eclectic mix of music served up by John Peel at night on Radio 1, my first impressions of ‘Bitches Brew’ was simply to accept that this was pretty normal stuff. Of course, this was because the album had influenced so much of what followed, both in jazz and the outer reaches of experimental rock. So, I was hearing as much the legacy of the music as the source. Indeed, the next few jazz records that I bought felt tame and disappointing by comparison and it took a good few years to appreciate the breadth and depth of the various styles of jazz. But I keep returning to ‘Bitches Brew’ as a touchstone for music and as an album that still just feels right.
To return to my complaint about the mislabeling of the record as jazz-rock, jazz-funk, fusion etc., I think that you need to place the recording in the context of Miles’ relationship with Classical music and compositional theory more than in terms of trends in pop music. As a young student at Juilliard, in 1944, he would have taken introductory classes in a bunch of classical idioms and styles, and his musical education prior to that had exposed him to European music and theories of composition. That he’d been playing jazz trumpet for years prior to going to college, and that he skipped classes to get a deeper education from the clubs on 52nd street does not detract from the fact that he was always a serious student of musical theory. His time with George Russell and, of course, Gil Evans, gave opportunity to learn about the use of one or two scales instead of harmonic structure. These ideas he refined into his own concepts of modal jazz (which everyone is familiar with from the ‘Kind of Blue’ album, even if they don’t know the musical theory). From an interview with Nat Hentoff, sometime in the early ‘70s, Miles said that Gil Evans had written out a scale for him to play when they were recording ‘Porgy and Bess’. There were, he says, “No chords. And that other passage with just two chords gives you a lot more freedom and space to hear things… When you go on this way, you can go on forever… I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variations. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities…” Given this sophisticated idea of music, why on earth would he want to reduce his playing to something as mundane as the 12-bar structures and verse-chorus of rock?
The ‘rock’ myth of ‘Bitches Brew’ has its roots in the idea that Miles was not aware of the music that young people were listening to, so had not heard of James Brown or Jimi Hendrix. In some versions of this account, Miles was mainly listening to Classical music rather than what was appealing to the youth. To me, this preference for Classical over popular music is not only testament to his musical knowledge but also hints at some features of ‘Bitches Brew’ which are not universally acknowledged. Perhaps it’s just my listening to the music, but there are stretches in the music which are as much orchestral as they are other musical styles. This is not simply down to the jettisoning of basic 12- (or 16- or whatever) bar structures, but more to ways that thematic development is managed across each piece and even between pieces. The modal experiments from earlier recordings, the use of a handful of chords, the use of the bass clarinet (reminiscent of, say, Stravinsky, in the way that is used to provide ominous shadowing in ‘Pharaoh’s Dance’) point to somewhere far removed from rock. In order to get the feeling of being able to ‘go on forever’ within these few chords, you probably need a pulse that can give a foundation over which the players are able to freely move. Hence, a logical step would be to work with 2 bar ostinato or a chugging back-beat with little variation because the musical development will be harmonic rather than rhythmic.
Betty Mabry had played Miles a lot of the music that she was listening to and he would have seen her perform live (with a hard-edged funk sound that owed much to James Brown but which she was making her own). He acknowledged this debt in tunes like ‘Mademoiselle Mabry’ (on the ‘Filles de Kilimanjaro’ album, his last, incidentally, for some time with Gil Evans). This track is based on the Hendrix tune ‘The Wind Cries Mary’. Rather than working from the melody (as Evans was to do with his arrangements of Hendrix tunes), Miles takes the chords and works them into something of his own. Miles would rarely take the charts from a composer and follow them. So, on ‘Bitches Brew’, Zawinul’s ‘Pharaoh’s Dance’, and, particularly, Shorter’s ‘Sanctuary’, become different pieces from their origins. Perhaps this might explain Zawinul’s initially dismissive attitude when he left the recording sessions, where he felt that much of the music was unstructured noodling. It wasn’t until he heard the final disc that he appreciated what had been created.
During the preceding years, particularly with the ‘first great quintet’, Miles had been seeking an economy of playing so that his phrases were short, enigmatic, zen-like and were often at odds with the busyness of the band behind him (and certainly in stark contrast to Coltrane’s swirling, never-ending solos). This economy of playing is also impressed on the other soloists on this set. Wayne Shorter, on soprano, is playing much sparser, less energetic solos than he’d play on his own recordings. John McLaughlin has famously talked about the gnomic instructions that Miles gave him, such as ‘play like you don’t know to play guitar’when recording the seminal ‘In A Silent Way’ the year before.. What Miles was aiming for were phrases that could shift around the beat. To the listener, this can appear hesitant, as if the players are trying to feel their way into the tune. It’s only when the same phrase is played in identical fashion for the next few bars (or returned to later in the piece) that you realise how deliberate this is.
The bulk of the record was laid down over three days from 19th to 21st August, 1969. The first session involved the title track,‘Bitches Brew’, which ended up in four parts. The section over the funky bass line (introduced by Miles’ snapping his fingers) was recorded first – but became the second part of the tune on record – and the rubato section was recorded second – and became the opening to the piece. Parts 3 and 4 of the ‘Bitches Brew’ recording were morphed into the piece ‘John McLaughlin’. This reworking and editing of material is characteristic of the way that the album was shaped by Miles and Teo Macero (and something they developed on subsequent recordings). The first days recording closed with versions of ‘Pharaoh’s Dance’, to which the group returned on the third day (together with ‘Sanctuary’) and the album version merges parts from several runs through of the piece. The second day was devoted to ‘Miles runs the voodoo down’. The mixing of sections from different takes of tunes was something that Teo Macero had been doing for a while (and, of course, was by no means a new thing in the recording process). Where this mixing of sections becomes novel on this set is that way that these combinations create the final composition. People rightly speak of the way that the studio became an additional instrument in the creation of this album, and you get the sense that Miles was constructing his tunes from the way that the players had responding to the ‘calls’ that he was throwing out to them. It is no coincidence that the album cover has the phrase ‘directions in music by Miles Davis’ above the title (as does ‘In A Silent Way’, recorded in 1968).
The second day was devoted to ‘Miles runs the voodoo down’. The mixing of sections from different takes of tunes was something that Teo Macero had been doing for a while (and, of course, was by no means a new thing in the recording process). Where this mixing of sections becomes novel on this set is that way that these combinations create the final composition. People rightly speak of the way that the studio became an additional instrument in the creation of this album, and you get the sense that Miles was constructing his tunes from the way that the players had responding to the ‘calls’ that he was throwing out to them. It is no coincidence that the album cover has the phrase ‘directions in music by Miles Davis’ above the title (as does ‘In A Silent Way’, recorded in 1968).
Several of the tracks were being gigged by Miles in the preceding couple of years, where his quintet (Miles, Wayne Shorter, Jack de Johnette, Dave Holland, Chick Corea) had travelled around the States and to Europe. So, this was music that was being constructed in live performances. Recordings from, say, the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1969, show them working through versions of ‘Sanctuary’, ‘Spanish Key’, ‘Miles runs the voodoo down’ – so the material had already evolved somewhat during touring. In the ‘Bitches Brew’ sessions, the addition of other musicians, and the opportunity to layer more ‘electric’ sounds and effects, created a different context for the themes and their development. There is no denying that Miles is leading this set. The pieces often follow a ‘call and response’ pattern in which he themes are handed over to the other soloists – sometimes this can be to their surprise, so you can hear Miles calling MacLaughlin to come in, or you can hear Miles snapping his fingers to mark time. You also get the sense that, while Miles knew what he wanted from this album, he would know it when he heard (rather than coming in with well-worked charts for the musicians or clear instructions on what each of them should play).
Throughout the album Miles’ trumpet playing is some of the best in his career. He hits the sort of high notes that the heroes of his youth in Big Bands would use, he plays clear, translucent lines and is beginning to explore ways in which Echoplex and other effects can be used to extend the sound of the trumpet (while keeping this sound unmistakably his). While this album stands the test of time and while it has been credited with launching whole genres of music (not least because almost all of the musicians on the recording went off to form their own groups to explore the potential of what they had recorded on ‘Bitches Brew’), I still feel that it feels dismissive to record it as ‘jazz-rock’, ‘jazz-funk’, ‘fusion’ etc. Rather it is one of many pinnacles in Miles’ career but one where his arranging skills are often overlooked and one where what he was really doing was creating the culmination of his theory of music. It set the bar for music to follow and set Miles off on a path where he was playing to bemused rock audiences in large stadiums (often as a support act) and it gave Columbia the hit they wanted. Inside the front cover, there is a photograph of Miles, looking to the left and smiling broadly: this image, more than Mati Klarwein’s cover art, typifies the record for me: this is a set that pleased Miles.”
