Needless to say, that this is quite simply essential listening, and a pivotal point in time not just for Miles but for the development of the jazz that would follow.
Columbia Legacy 19802941252 (8 CD set)
Miles Davis (trumpet); Wayne Shorter (tenor saxophone); Herbie Hancock (piano); Ron Carter (bass); Tony Williams (drums)
Recorded December 22 & 23, 1965
After having been out of print for a number of years it is quite fitting that Columbia should see fit to re-release these historically important recordings to mark the centenary of Miles’s birth.
The music has been around in various guises from two LPs released in Japan only in 1976 to its worldwide release as a double album in 1982, but it wasn’t until 1995 and thirty years after it was recorded that Columbia issued all the music captured over two nights at the Plugged Nickel on a 7CD set. This latest edition is presented as an eight-disc collection or 10 LPs and once again reminds us just how essential the music is as Miles and his Quintet move out of one phase and into the next.
My first exposure to this remarkable music was in the double album Live at the Plugged Nickel which I purchased as a teenager more than forty years ago. Only just starting to explore the music of Miles Davis it felt a bit like being thrown in at the deep end, and nothing like the quintet records that I had heard with the First Great Quintet.
In evaluating these astonishing performances, it is perhaps important to place them in context. Struggling to find the right saxophonist to replace John Coltrane, Miles had been forced to rethink his own position in the music. The lean, lyrical and ruthlessly self-edited improvisational voice of the late 1950s had gone and been replaced with a more searching and exploratory trumpet style. No longer confined to the middle register of his instrument, Miles was pushing himself into new territory as if realising that his front line partner was not providing the contrast between his lean and sparse trumpet playing and the verbosity of Trane, and that he was having to fill both roles in his own playing.
The search for the right saxophonist took four years in which time he had found a new and exciting rhythm section in the younger generation of musicians in Herbie Hancock, Carter and the young drum prodigy, Tony Williams. Taking the new rhythm section out on the road with first George Coleman and fleetingly Sam Rivers on tenor the rhythm section bedded down quickly coalescing as a unit, and then at last in 1964 Wayne Shorter, the tenorist that Miles’s had been after since Coltrane’s departure, was available.
Within weeks of Shorter joining the Quintet their first recording took place, a live recording that yielded the Miles in Berlin album from a concert on September 25, 1964.The material was all familiar having been in Miles’s band book for, in some cases, more than a decade, but the delivery was noticeably different.
In January 1965 the trumpeter took the quintet into the studio to record E.S.P., an album of all new material that pushed the group in a new direction, however on live appearances the quintet continued with their by now familiar repertoire. A frustrating time for Miles, with his new group ready to explore the new music, Davis underwent hip surgery in April and after a three month recuperation was ready to work again before a further accident resulted in a broken leg and further time away from music.
By the end of the year Miles was raring to go, and the quintet was booked for a two week residency at the Plugged Nickel in Chicago. Unbeknown to Miles, his new young group were becoming bored with playing the same material night after night and had decided ahead of the gig to shake things up by not playing what was expected or obvious but doing what was least expected. The main instigator of what he termed ‘anti jazz’ was drummer Tony Williams and his presence is a major factor in the music captured in seven sets recorded over two evenings work.
Once again the music is Davis’s tried and tested repertoire. Pieces including ‘Stella by Starlight’, ‘All of You’, and ‘Walkin’’ were given radical makeovers, alongside the introduction of one new composition ‘Agitation’ from E.S.P. From the outset Hancock, Carter and Williams teased and cajoled the material, never letting it settle into a groove or swing feel for long. The drummer can be heard leading proceedings with his manipulation of the beat often dropping the tempo when least expected before once again taking off at a blistering pace.
The pianist and bassist were primed and ready for such musical antics and their ears and Carter’s innate sense of time and rhythm kept the music and form on track. With the rhythm becoming so elastic and shaping the performances the chords of the chosen piece would often be jettisoned, and the quintet would play what would become known as time no changes.
Throughout the seven sets Wayne Shorter is on fire, his phrases alternate between long elongated strings of notes that shift quickly between rhythmic patterns and melodic phrases and frequently reminds us of the composition being played by slipping elements of the theme into his solos.
Miles himself takes this all in. He frequently takes longer solos with his phrases alternating clipped and sparse and more expansive ideas. He incorporates stab notes and smears into his playing in addition to forays into the upper register that always create drama. The changes in his playing and the shape of his phrases and use of tonal inflection are astonishing. If one compares the distance travelled between Miles’s trumpet playing on his 1956 reading of ‘My Funny Valentine’ from the album Cookin’ to the one recorded at the Philharmonic Hall in February 1964 eight years later, then the jump to the two versions from the Plugged Nickel is just as startling and dramatic.
With Tony Williams constant stretching of time, Ron Carter’s rock solid yet ultimately flexible bass playing and Wayne Shorter’s oblique and enigmatic tenor solos, Miles is obviously inspired and feels free to create. If the pianist sounds diffident or detached as the sets progress, he will frequently lay out or dispense with a chordal accompaniment in favour of right hand fills it is because he has yet to find his place in what was a rapidly changing environment.
If the prospect of seven hours of music and multiple takes of the same compositions over the two nights appears daunting my advice is to put any such doubts to one side. I have been listening to the 8CD edition of this historic document and each disc captures in its entirety a full set, the only exception is the second set from December 22 that occupies discs 2 and 3, all in set order and as it was played and each brings forth a continuity of purpose in the music that repays the time and attention required to assimilate these incredible performances.
Needless to say, that this is quite simply essential listening, and a pivotal point in time not just for Miles but for the development of the jazz that would follow.
