Edited by Roger Fagge, Nicolas Pillai, Tim Wall.
£23 (paperback) £91 (hardback)
236 pages
ISBN 978-0-19-008579-7
Does the world need yet another book about Miles Davis? The answer is undoubtedly yes, and this publication from Oxford University Press offers a fresh approach to exploring the persona, music and cultural impact of Miles. What’s more, its main focus is on the last decade of Miles’s life, a period that is often dismissed, ignored or barely touched by many books about Miles. As the blurb on the back of the book notes: ‘Much has been written about the jazz trumpeter and band leader, yet studies of Davis are often restricted to the groundbreaking acoustic jazz he produced between the 1940s and 50s.’
This is an academic publication, featuring ten papers from various scholars including, a professor of jazz studies; an associate professor of history; a lecturer in composition, and a professor of radio and popular music studies. Although the chapters are written in a detached, academic style – with lots of footnotes and references – this is a highly readable book for the general reader. Only one chapter includes musical transcriptions.
It’s rather a shame that a book highlighting Miles’s final years starts off in such a negative light, with Tony Whyton’s paper, ‘Miles Behind: Jazz Studies, Masculinity and #MeToo’. ‘Warning,’ the opening paragraph solemnly intones, ‘The following chapter focuses on the work of a misogynist and serial abuser of women. Any pleasure derived from the study of Miles Davis should be considered in direct relation to these acts.’
Whyton explores that perennial question as to whether we can – or indeed should – separate the art from the person creating it. His answer is that we most definitely should not, and while he doesn’t go as far as to suggest cancelling Miles Davis, he comes pretty close to it. The problem with Whyton’s approach is that it reduces Miles to a pantomime villain – a woman-hating, woman-beating monster. He criticises a documentary on Miles for ‘only’ including two examples of when Miles was violent towards women, because it suggests that Miles’s ill-treatment of women was ‘episodic,’ as opposed to continuous?
Miles Davis had a complicated relationship with women. In his autobiography he said, ‘I love women.’ Miles was married three times: to Frances Taylor, Betty Mabry and Cicely Tyson. In the 1960s, he insisted that his record label Columbia Records put photographs of black women on his album covers. All of his wives appeared on his album covers and all had songs named after them. Miles’s partner in the late 60s/ early 70s, Marguerite Eskridge, and mother to Miles’s youngest child, Erin, appears on an album cover. In the late 1980s, Miles’s partner and artistic companion was Jo Gelbard. Their artwork appeared on the cover of the album Amandla, and at the 1991 Paris concert Miles played shortly before his death. She also had a song named after her. When Miles was commissioned to produce a book about his art, he insisted that Gelbard was given joint authorship. Half of the songs on the 1981 album The Man With The Horn are named after women.
So there was a side of Miles that clearly liked and respected women. Somewhat surprisingly, Whyton makes no reference to first-hand accounts of women who had close relationships with Miles – Cicely Tyson – whose memoir, ‘Just As I Am’ was published in 2021 – and Jo Gelbard’s A Love Story In Blue, published in 2006.
Both publications recall the violent and the tender side of Miles. Gelbard writes: ‘Miles put all his trust and power in my lap and that empowered me to be all that I needed to be.’ In an interview with this writer, she said, “He changed me completely as a person. He gave me tremendous self-confidence, both as an artist and as a woman, because he believed in me. There is no greater validation than having Miles Davis believe in you creatively.”
Tyson recalled a man with a tough external persona, but was really a person who was vulnerable, insecure and felt that he was never quite good enough for anyone or anything – including himself. Miles’s use of alcohol and cocaine heightened his jealousy, paranoia and violence.
None of this is written to excuse or diminish Miles’s ill treatment of women. In his autobiography, Miles records a sickening episode at home with Tyson, where he struck her in the face and she ran down into the basement for safety. Interestingly, Tyson did not recall this incident in her book, claiming that Miles only ever hit her once – when she accidentally dropped some knives, and Miles’s response was to strike her in the chest. Tyson added that Miles immediately apologised and never hit her again.
Jo Gelbard recalls waking up to find Miles violently choking her, and hatching a plan in her head to flee their apartment at a moment’s notice, should he ever he turn violent. Miles cheated on his partners, and at times, was controlling and coercive – his first wife Frances, had a very successful career as a dancer. Miles pulled her out of a Broadway production of West Side Story, stating that a woman should be at home with her man. Others witnessed Miles’s violence and ill-treatment towards women.
Miles did terrible things to women, but he is not alone. Other artists also did this: Picasso with numerous women; John Lennon with his first wife Cynthia; Elvis with Priscilla, and the poet Ted Hughes with his wife Sylvia Plath. What they all have in common is great talent and human frailties. This is not a case of whataboutery or seeking to diminish Miles’s appalling behaviour, but to show that if we simply want our art to be created by angels, then our libraries, art galleries and record collections will be greatly diminished. Unlike Whyton, I believe that most people are well aware that those who create beautiful art can also say or do ugly things.
The poet Philip Larkin illustrates the complicated side of human nature. Here was a man who wrote beautiful poetry, but who also wrote and said racist things. He even recorded a racist ditty with his partner Monica Jones. Yet, Larkin loved jazz (he once said, ‘I can live a week without poetry, but not a day without jazz’) and he revered African-Americans Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet, even writing a tribute poem to the latter. Things are rarely black and white (no pun intended) when it comes to human behaviour.
There is, however, much to agree with Whyton when he states that too many biographies of Miles have underplayed his ill-treatment of women and focused too much on his ‘Prince of Darkness’ persona. But that is changing. In the recent BBC radio and TV broadcasts of the Miles Davis Proms, which commemorated the centenary of his birth, references were made to the darker side of his persona during the interval.
When we listen to the music of Miles Davis, we are not condoning his actions any more than we are agreeing with the politics of the chef who made that delicious meal we enjoyed. As Herbie Hancock noted in his address at Miles’s memorial service, ‘If you listen to the music, there is no rage. There’s love. There’s vulnerability.’
A more uplifting read is Roger Fagge’s ‘Just Kickin’ That Doo-Bop Sound: Miles Davis, Jazz and Hip-Hop.’ The chapter examines Miles’s last recorded studio album Doo-Bop, which was released posthumously in 1992. Miles left behind yet another work mired in controversy, this time over whether jazz and hip-hop can mix, and whether it’s morally right to create new songs out of the music of a dead artist (Miles died before Doo-Bop was completed and only six tracks were recorded. Two more were created by using trumpet solos Miles had recorded six years previously).
Fagge does an excellent job in putting jazz, hip-hop and Doo-Bop in context. As he notes, jazz and the spoken word have a long heritage through the works of artists like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron. He also observes the cross-pollination that occurred between jazz musicians and hip-hop artists in both directions both pre- and post-Doo-Bop: Herbie Hancock and Quincy Jones, for example, incorporated elements of hip-hop into their music, the latter including several rappers on his album Back on the Block. Jazz musicians such as Max Roach, Ron Carter, Roy Ayres, Donald Byrd, Kenny Garrett and Courtney Pine appeared albums on hip-hop artists such as Gang Starr and A Tribe Called Quest.
Surprisingly, Fagge has little to say on the volume of jazz music that has been sampled by hip-hop artists. Music from all of Miles’s eras has been sampled more than four hundred times. The Bob James track ‘Nautilus’ has been sampled almost five hundred times.
That aside, Fagge addresses the criticism from jazz artists and critics like Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch (the latter’s acerbic comments on Miles and his music appear in a number of the book’s chapters). The argument goes that the heart of jazz is improvisation, while hip-hop is based around programmed beats. Ergo, they cannot meet. But Fagge believes that: ‘The suggestion of the musical incompatibility of jazz and hip-hop is too prescriptive and ignores the more fluid nature of the musical genres, with jazz and hip-hop changing, adapting and including aspects of a widening palette of musical influences.’
He also notes that Doo-Bop was not, as is often stated, universally panned by music critics. Some critics were positive about the music. He adds that Miles was working more collaboratively in the studio during this period, with Marcus Miller preparing the music before a recording session, and later applying post-production techniques to the music. For this reason, Fagge says, the two posthumously created tracks are not as anomalous as it might seem.
Fagge concludes that: ‘Doo-Bop attracted a lot of attention and had an influence on other musicians and fans thinking in similar ways. Once again, therefore, Miles was there at an important juncture in the development of popular music…although Doo-Bop may not have been a classic album, it raised and sometimes answered questions about the relationship between the two genres.’
The next two chapters are by Tim Wall, ‘Locating Tutu,’ and ‘Miles on a Second Major: Miles Davis’ Career from Columbia to Warner Bros. Records’ are complementary. Like Bitches Brew, Tutu is a standalone, landmark recording in Miles Davis’s vast canon. In both cases, Miles never made albums like them ever again, and nor did anyone else. But the influence of both albums resonates throughout jazz and beyond.
Marcus Miller was Tutu’s co-producer, and he also composed, played and arranged most of the music on the album. George Duke composed and produced one track (‘Backyard Ritual’). There is also one cover version of a pop song.
Wall considers the influences that led up to the making of Tutu, and suggests a large and diverse list of candidates, including, Prince; Madonna; Brian Eno and David Byrne’s My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts; Herbie Hancock’s Future Shock, and Material’s Memory Serves. Also included are the smooth jazz productions of David Grusin and Larry Rosen’s GRP records, as well as ‘The Struggle Continues,’ a track from the 1985 Artists United Against Apartheid project, Sun City, which featured Miles on trumpet.
But a closer examination of this list suggests that Wall may have been over-thinking Miles rather than rethinking Miles, and with the benefit of hindsight, finding connections that in reality had little or no influence on Tutu’s gestation. Prince, for example, only contributed one track for consideration on Tutu (‘Can I Play With U?’), which was dropped from the album at the last minute.
Miller has stated that only one tune on Tutu was influenced by Prince, the closing number ‘Full Nelson,’ which was meant to be a transition to Prince’s song. Wall adds that Prince later involved Miles in his production of the song ‘Sticky Wicked,’ on Chaka Khan’s 1988 CK album. But in fact, when Prince composed and arranged the tune, Miles did not figure in the equation. The only reason Miles played on the track was because Khan played him the tune when they were in the studio together (Prince was not present) and Miles asked if he could play on it. Miles plays on another tune on CK, the closing number, ‘I’ll Be Around,’ which Wall incorrectly describes as a Prince production.
Miles mentioned Madonna once in his autobiography and that was in relation to a discussion about his second wife, Betty Davis. Madonna does not feature in the book’s index, and the present writer doesn’t recall Miles talking about Madonna in the numerous interviews he gave throughout the 1980s. He certainly never covered any of her music, something he did with other women artists like Chaka Khan, Tina Turner, Sheila E and Cyndi Lauper.
Wall also claims that the mix of producer Arthur Baker’s highly processed sound and Miles’s muted trumpet playing on the song ‘The Struggle Continues’, may have inspired Duke and Miller to see how Miles’s trumpet could sound effective in that context. However, this theory is undermined by the fact that Miles plays without a mute on this track. I take no pleasure in pointing out the errors of a fellow writer, not least because every writer makes mistakes. But one would hope that an academic paper would have been checked with much greater rigour.
What is surprising is how Wall has very little to say on several of the biggest influences on Tutu’s musical direction. Miller has stated that Herbie Hancock’s 1968 Bluenote album Speak Like a Child was a major influence on the music of Tutu, and Hancock in turn says he was influenced by Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson and Thad Jones when recording the album. Miller is also on record as stating that Herbie Hancock’s playing during his time with Miles’s second great quintet inspired the melody of Tutu’s title track.
Two other major influences were the album’s co-producer and executive producer Tommy LiPuma, and George Duke’s song ‘Backyard Ritual,’ which can rightly be seen as the template for the album. Duke created his song on a Synclavier – a combined synthesiser, sampler and hard disk recorder. He sent ‘Backyard Ritual’ to Miles and LiPuma in demo form, expecting Miles to record the tune with his current band.
But Miles and LiPuma decided to use Duke’s demo as it was, and simply record Miles’s trumpet on top (as well as adding bass and percussion overdubs). This planted the seed for LiPuma to consider other musicians strongly associated with synthesisers working with Miles, such as Lyle Mays and Thomas Dolby.
When Marcus Miller was asked to compose some music for Miles’s new album project, LiPuma sent Miller a recording of ‘Backyard Ritual’ to give him an idea of the direction Miles was taking. Miller recalled, ‘I heard it and thought “I don’t have to operate within the parameters I had originally thought I would operate with, which was what Miles had been doing up to that point with live instruments and a band. So I pulled out the synths and started adding colours.’
Another major influence on Tutu’s sound not mentioned in the chapter is programmer Jason Miles. Although Miller composed the music, Jason Miles had a major role in creating the album’s overall sound and feel. His artistic and technical skills were used with synthesisers, emulators, sequencers, samplers and drum machines to create Tutu’s lush electronic soundscapes.
Eric Calvi, one of the engineers who worked on Tutu, thinks that British producer Trevor Horn may have influenced the sound of Tutu through his pioneering work with bands like The Art of Noise, which used extensive sampling in their music, including orchestral stabs, like the one at the beginning of the opening track, ‘Tutu.’
Returning to LiPuma, when Miller flew from New York to LA to meet LiPuma and play the three demos created by him and Jason Miles, it was LiPuma who made the unilateral decision that Miller should record the music in the same way he had created the demos.
LiPuma was also a producer renowned for his sleek production values and creating music with crossover appeal, as seen with albums like George Benson’s Breezin’, Bob James and David Sanborn’s Double Vision, and George Benson and Earl Klugh’s Collaboration (Miller played and composed a couple of tunes on each of the last two albums). It is LiPuma’s influence, rather than GRP Records, that was responsible for Tutu’s high production values.
LiPuma also wanted a cover song on Tutu and so sent Miles a pile of albums to listen to and select a song. One of those albums was Scritti Poitti’s Cupid & Psyche 85, and from this, Miles chose ‘Perfect Way’ to record. In fact, Miles wanted the album to be called Perfect Way, but it was LiPuma who decided that Tutu was a stronger title. On a more positive note, Wall dismisses critics who described Tutu as ‘electronic pop’ and argues that the album holds an important position in 1980s jazz.
Why did Miles Davis leave Columbia Records for Warner Bros. Records in 1985 after spending thirty years with Columbia? Wall’s follow-up chapter ‘Miles on a Second Major’ (great title!) explores this conundrum. Part of the difficulty is that Miles gave differing reasons in different interviews at different times. What’s more, none of his close musical associates at the time (such as Miles’s nephew and drummer Vince Wilburn Jr or his musical director Robert Irving III) can shed any light on how or why Miles made this monumental decision.
The general consensus is that Miles left for a variety of reasons: financial, artistic (he didn’t like Columbia classing his music as ‘jazz’); self-respect (he felt that Columbia was more interested in the much younger rising jazz star Wynton Marsalis) and perceived ill-treatment (Columbia were slow to see the hit potential of his cover version of ‘Time After Time’; refused to release the album Aura, and wouldn’t pay the fee for Sting’s guest appearance on the track ‘One Phone Call/Street Scene,’ from the album You’re Under Arrest).
But Wall believes that a more likely reason is that Miles was searching for a new musical direction, and that Warner Bros – with artists such as Prince, Madonna, George Benson and Chicago on its roster – represented the future rather than the past. But such arguments overlook several factors. At the time, Columbia Records had acts such as Michael Jackson, Earth, Wind & Fire and Bruce Springsteen on its books. Hardly artists of the past.
And when Miles moved to Warner Bros, his first instinct was to record music that was similar to that on his last Columbia album, ‘You’re Under Arrest.’ His first sessions for Warner Bros, in September 1985 involved his then current band recording two numbers: the jazz-funk ‘Maze,’ and Mr Mister’s pop hit ‘Broken Wings.’ Both would have sat comfortably on You’re Under Arrest.
Miles then put out a call for material to a wide group of musicians: George Duke, Paul Buckmaster, Toto’s Steve Porcaro, Bill Laswell and Randy Hall. He met Prince by chance at LA airport in November 1985, and that meeting resulted in Prince sending Miles a song for consideration. So it’s hard to conceive that Miles had a definite artistic vision when he left Columbia.
Both George Butler – then Columbia’s head of jazz – and Mark Rothbaum, who was Miles’s manager in the early 1980s, both believed that the primary reason for Miles moving to Warner Bros. was financial, and the facts support this. Miles had had an ill-tempered and expensive separation from his previous management team, and the agreement forced him to sell his large brownstone house in Manhattan to pay off his management debts.
Band member John Scofield (who was with Miles from late 1982 until July 1985 – just prior to Miles leaving Columbia) recalled that when he first joined the band, there was plenty of money around, and that the band would be taken to the airport in limousines. But by 1985, the wages were down and the limousines had gone. The fact that Miles and his management focused on Warner Bros’ large signing-on fee (rumoured to be seven-figures) and not the small print in the contract, which gave Warner Bros half of Miles’s future song-writing royalties, also suggests that money was an overriding factor in Miles’s decision to move.
Scholar Will L. Finch puts the spotlight on a work that he rightly feels is often overlooked when exploring Miles’s musical legacy – the 1991 film Dingo, which features Miles’s only lead acting role. ‘Dingo has featured primarily as a footnote in jazz scholarship and is rarely interrogated as a serious part of Davis’ output and cultural legacy,’ states Finch. Finch’s excellent chapter does much to address this, covering Miles’s role as an actor, soundtrack composer and performer in both the film and the production of its soundtrack.
Dingo was a joint Australian/French production, directed by Rolf De Heer. Part of the reason for the film’s low profile is that through a series of unfortunate incidents (including Miles’s death in September 1991 and a mix-up which resulted in Dingo being left off the Oscar nominations list) it was poorly distributed, and years before domestic video versions became available.
Fink used the 2005 Umbrella Productions DVD release of Dingo for his research, but it’s a shame he also didn’t look at their 2021 Blu-ray release, which includes a very informative 30-minute video interview with De Heer, and a Rushes Reel which covers the opening runway scene, and features interesting commentary by the director.
Even so, Dingo is given comprehensive coverage, and the chapter includes stills from the film, and several music transcriptions. Finch expertly debunks the oft quoted statement that the tune ‘Concert On The Runway,’ is a mere rehash of the 1958 song ‘Milestones,’ pointing out important musical differences between the two tunes.
He also explores the roles of soundtrack co-composer Michel Legrand (who did the bulk of the soundtrack work) and session trumpeter Chuck Findlay, who played the co-lead trumpet. However, he doesn’t mention that members of Miles’s then band also played on parts of the soundtrack. For some of them – like keyboardist Kei Akagi and bassist Benny Rietveld – it represents their only studio recordings with Miles to have been released.
No doubt Fink would readily agree with jazz critic Stuart Nicholson, whose liner notes for the Warner Bros Masters version of Dingo (released in 1991 and not referenced in Fink’s paper) describe the Dingo soundtrack as: ‘A greatly under-appreciated album in Davis’ long and distinguished career. Its importance in Davis’ discography, where it appears as a summation of his legend and myth, can only grow in importance in years to come.’ This fine study confirms this prescient comment. One hopes that Fink might one day write a similar chapter on another of Davis’s underappreciated soundtracks from the 1980s – the music for the film Siesta.
Nicholas Pillai’s ‘Fashioning Miles Davis: Dressing and Undressing Television Stardom’ analyses Miles’s fashion in television appearances. He starts by chronicling Miles’s fashion throughout his career, from his well-cut suits to the radical switch in the late 1960s thanks to his second wife Betty Davis (nee Mabry) who got Miles to switch from Italian suits to tie-dye shirts, bell-bottom trousers, stack heels and giant sunglasses. A change which the critic (who else?) Stanley Crouch described as the ‘expensive bad taste of rock ‘n’ roll”’
Pillai examines the clothes Miles wore when he played the role of pimp in an episode of Miami Vice, broadcast in 1985, and on the cover of the album You’re Under Arrest (Pillai wrongly describes Miles as looking like a pimp). There is also an excellent shot-by-shot analysis of the Spike Lee-directed Tutu Medley video. It’s a shame, Miles’s video for ‘Decoy’ (directed by Annabel Jankel) wasn’t included, as Jankel recalls going to Miles’s home to select the clothing for the shoot.
Just over the half-way mark in the book, there’s a radical change of format, with a chapter by jazz photographer William Ellis and academic Tim Wall, ‘My One Miles Davis LP: A Photo Essay on the Personal Resonance of Miles Davis’ Recorded Music.’ It’s part of a fifteen year-old collaboration exploring jazz culture through the visual image (similar projects have included One LP and One Love for reggae). The concept for My One Miles is simple: a musician is asked ‘If you had to choose one Miles Davis LP, what would it be?’ The sixteen photo essays include musicians photographed in various locations: at home; backstage, in a club, etcetera, holding a copy of the album they have selected, with text explaining why they chose it.
Those involved in the project include past members of Miles’s bands: Marcus Miller, Mike Stern, Dave Liebman; British jazz musicians such as Norma Winstone and Laura Jurd, and American jazz musicians like Terence Blanchard and Joe Lovano. Interestingly, the majority of album choices are from the late 1950s to mid-1960s, including three selections for Kind of Blue. Only one person – the British jazz violinist Ric Sanders – chooses a post -1969 album, in his case 1972’s On The Corner.
In the chapter ‘Orchestrating Miles,’ Bobbie-Jane Gardener and Tim Wall compare and contrast the relationship between Gil Evans, George Avakian and Miles on the 1957 recording Miles Ahead, with that between Miles, Marcus Miller and Tommy LiPuma on 1986’s Tutu album. In both cases, most of the music selections and arrangements were made by Evans and Miller respectively, and the authors astutely note that whilst Gil Evans’ relationship with Miles is viewed by jazz critics as a partnership or collaboration, Tutu is often described as an album in which Miller composed, arranged and produced most of the music, before Miles added his trumpet sound. Miles’s role is often viewed as being passive and disengaged from the music’s creative process, which was not the case.
The authors state that this mis-perception is in part due to the changing roles and relationships between composer, arranger, producer and performer that occurred in the thirty years between the recordings. It’s a chapter that provides plenty of food for thought. Pedro Cravinho’s ‘Encounter, Surprise and Acceptance,’ reviews the three visits Miles made to Portugal in 1971, 1989 and 1991, including the political and cultural changes that occurred in the country during these periods. The critical reaction to Miles’s performances is also examined.
Like many major artists, Miles had a list of demands for the concert organiser, and for his 1971 tour, Miles wanted a sparring boxer partner in his luxury suite, and a stash of amphetamines! For the 1989 concert, a major press conference was set-up in a hotel. The first question from the press was: ‘Is jazz black or white?’ Without saying a word, Miles got up and left the press conference. The event was over. Miles’s last visit to Portugal was in March 1991 – six months before his death.
He played two concerts, in Porto and in Lisbon the following day. Half way through the Porto concert, Miles walked off-stage and went back to his hotel room. The band continued playing without him for more than hour. Miles complained that he had been too cold on-stage, and so for the Lisbon concert, heaters were brought onstage. Sadly, Miles’s final concert in Portugal was not a triumphant exit: he was twenty minutes late onstage; ignored the audience and played very little. Of course, we now how ill and how close to death he was at the time – he died six months later. Even so, the audience reaction was reported as being positive.
The book ends with a fine chapter by Nicholas Gebhardt, ‘It’s Never Too Late: Miles Davis and Modernism,’ which examines Miles’s 1981 performance of ‘My Man’s Gone Now,’ first recorded by him in 1959 on the Porgy and Bess album.
It’s heartening to see academics devoting the time to explore, examine and document Miles’s final decade. And credit to Oxford University Press for publishing these papers in book form. If you’re interested in the music of Miles Davis from any period, there is plenty of interesting content in this book to pique your interest, as well as provoke debate on Miles’s music, his persona and his place in cultural history.
