Digging into classic Miles

James Suggs

Twenty-five years after he left the planet, Miles Davis's music lives on. His classic jazz material was on full display Wednesday night at the Venice Art Center in a concert by trumpeter James Suggs' quintet. The band dug into material from his cool, modal and hard bop periods from the 1950s and early 1960s.

The band's performance, co-sponsored by the South County Jazz Club, drew a full house of 160 in the center's main gallery. Suggs' band include tenor saxophonist Jeremy Carter, pianist John O'Leary, bassist Alejandro Arenas and drummer Mark Feinman.

The Miles Davis legacy, still vibrant after all these years

Trumpeter, bandleader and jazz innovator Miles Davis would have turned 90 today (May 26), had he not passed away nearly 25 years ago. That quarter-century absence from the jazz scene arrives on September 28, 2016.

His music continues to resonate for lovers of his various styles of performance: bop, cool bop, modal jazz, hard bop, electronic fusion, and instrumental pop music. He was one of the pivotal figures in modern jazz. Miles was a charming, frustrating enigma – blessed with one of the sweetest tones ever heard on trumpet and dogged by a "Prince of Darkness" persona that was as much a buffer guarding his private space as it was a mystique.

On this Milestone day, here’s an opportunity to check out or revisit the 4,000-word profile I prepared just before his 60^th birthday. The four-hour interview experience was quite illuminating about the man and his music. I’m also sharing a few images from that April 7, 1986 afternoon in Manhattan.

 

Happy 90^th, Miles. wherever your spirit resides today. It certainly resides in countless musical hearts, given the relentless interest in the music.

 Photos © Ken Franckling 1986, all rights reserved.

Opening a month-long tribute to a jazz legend

James Suggs

Much attention will be paid throughout May to the musical legacy of trumpeter Miles Davis, who would have turned 90 this May 26. His musical legacy remains so strong today that it sometimes is hard to fathom that he left us a quarter-century ago - on September 28, 1991.

Trumpeter James Suggs assembled a fine quintet to honor Davis's imprint on mainstream jazz and shared music from the horn legend at a Sunday, May 1 concert co-sponsored by the Tampa (FL) Jazz Club, WUSF's "All Night Jazz" program and Hillsborough Community College's Visual and Performing Arts Series.

Miles and Miles of Newport

Miles Davis

Last August, the storied Newport Jazz Festival, granddaddy of the outdoor music festival format, celebrated the 60^th anniversary of its founding. This summer, producer George Wein will use the festival weekend to pay homage to the 60^th anniversary of trumpeter Miles Davis’s breakthrough performance at Newport. 

That July 17, 1955 all-star jam-session teamed Davis with saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and Zoot Sims, pianist Thelonious Monk, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay. Together, they explored “Hackensack,” “'Round Midnight” and “Now's The Time.” Columbia Records’ A&R man George Avakian signed the trumpeter to a recording contract shortly after that appearance.

CDs of Note - Short Takes

Taking a closer look at new CDs by Bob Devos, Jake Hertzog, Frank Macchia, Bill McBirnie and a vintage Miles Davis boxed set…

Jazz on this holiday weekend’s Record Store Day

The record collectors among you who can’t resist going out on Black Friday should stop by your local independent record shops. They need the business far more than any of the big box stores. Plus, it is the Black Friday edition of Record Store Day.

One value of the jazz jam session

André Roy

Jam sessions are great for a lot of things. One of my favorite values: the opportunity to hear musicians from near or far with whom one might not cross paths otherwise.
Over the past few months, I got a chance to hear Toronto guitarist André Roy at the South County Jazz Club's weekly jam, which has been held for the past year at Allegro Bistro in Venice FL.

Roy is a guitar modernist born of the rock era, and his beautiful guitar sound is infused with a rockish energy and intensity. Think John Scofield for comparisons.

What a pair

Today’s the first day of issue in the United States and France for a pair of postage stamps being issued to honor jazz great Miles Davis and French singer Edith Piaf.

A stamp of approval

Miles Davis will receive his very own commemorative postage stamp from the U.S. Postal Service in June as part of an overseas partnership. The trumpeter will be immortalized in a collection of music-themed stamps that will also honor the singer Edith Piaf. They will be released in tandem with the French postal service, La Poste, which is issuing a similar French commemorative

The Davis stamp design is based on the cover of Davis's Jack Johnson album, which features a classic B&W photograph by the late David Gahr.

The USPS announced today that the Davis and Piaf stamps are being issued in the U.S. as Forever stamps in self-adhesive sheets of 20 (10 of each design). Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate. At the time of issuance, the Edith Piaf and Miles Davis stamps are being sold at a price of 45 cents each, or $9 per sheet.

The stamp story was unearthed by Linns Stamp News, a specialty mag, and for general publications this week by The Telegraph, a newspaper in Davis's hometowm of Alton IL. View the original article...

A pleasant surprise

Today’s mail brought a terrific surprise…a copy of the latest Miles Davis compilation, Warner Brothers’ European division’s five-CD boxed set Miles Davis The Warner Years: 1986-1991, which was released this fall in Europe. This project was first planned in 2001 with Rhino as a six-CD set. That was shelved due to legal and licensing issues. It is now out minus a bit of the originally planned material.

The surprise? The cover and spine of the box feature a Miles photo that I took at a jazz festival appearance in 1987. I had been in contact with Rhino folks about providing some imagery back when the initial project was in the works, but hadn’t even heard of the project's revival. As serendipity would have it, Warner Music France obtained the image through Dalle, a stock photo agency in Paris to which I have been submitting music photography for many years.

The Warner Years offers the complete albums Tutu (1986), Amandla (1989), Live Around the World (1996), the historic Miles and Quincy Live at Montreux (1991), on which Davis revisited his 1950s repertoire with Gil Evans for the first time in decades at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and Doo-Bop (1991), plus seven elections from the soundtrack of Dingo (1991) and five from Siesta (1987). Disc 5 includes four previously unreleased songs and performances on which Davis accompanied Scritti Politti, Cameo, Chaka Khan, Zucchero, Kenny Garrett, Marcus Miller and Shirley Horn.

There is much here to enjoy from Miles’s final creative phase when he further blurred the jazz star/pop star boundaries.

Has it really been 20 years?

The reissue phenomenon has been so steady and so strong when it comes to Miles Davis, that it almost masks the fact that the influential trumpeter, composer and bandleader died almost 20 years ago… on September 28, 1991.

On September 20, Legacy Recordings will release Miles Davis Quintet - Live In Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol.1. It is the first offering in a series of rare and previously unreleased live recordings from around the world.

Another project is in the works that is a bit different… because it is aimed squarely at the younger, digital and social-media fan base.

On August 1, Legacy Recordings launched The Miles Davis Fan Project, an innovative online initiative designed to introduce his music to a digital audience via Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/MilesDavis) and Davis's official website, milesdavis.com.

Throughout August, 40 classic Miles tracks spanning the post-bop cool of Kind of Blue through the ferocious fusion of Bitches Brew and other Davis explorations are being featured on Facebook via the social sound sharing platform SoundCloud. The tracks feature an active "like" button that enables fans to vote.

The 10 recordings receiving the most "likes" from fans online will be assembled for Blue Flame. Given the premise of this project, the fan-selected, digital-only album could have been alternately titled As You Like It. According to the label, the title Blue Flame was nominated through an onlne Facebook poll.

By mid-August, more than 20,000 "likes" had been cast on Facebook with some songs grabbing more than 2,500 "likes." More than 35,000 plays have been racked up between the various contenders for final inclusion on the album.

In a news release, Legacy Recordings General Manager Adam Block said this is the first time the label “has put the music of an artist of this stature in the hands of fans via social media and asked them to create a collection of songs as a new release. That so many fans have chosen to engage, and to utilize the new technologies available to them, testifies to Miles' enduring appeal and eternal 'nowness.'"

Online fans are also being encouraged to create the official artwork for the release and describe what Miles and his music means to them in personal testimonials to be featured in a digital booklet coming with the online release.

Blue Flame’s release will coincide with the 20th anniversary of Davis's passing on September 28. The final track listing, sequencing and artwork for Blue Flame will be revealed two days earlier. The Miles Davis Fan Project has been endorsed by Miles Davis Properties, LLC.

[Above is a Ken Franckling photo of Miles, taken in April 1986 at his apartment in Manhattan overlooking Central Park.]

Not only cats love jazz

Cats make jazz and love jazz. In the case of loving jazz, so do mice. Well, at least one mouse in particular.

Next month, a Walt Disney Records imprint, Disney Pearl Series, will release Disney Jazz Volume 1: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat. It’s a 13-track collection of popular songs from the soundtracks of Disney films.

OK, maybe the analogy to Mickey Mouse was a stretch. But there is nothing mickey mouse about the participants, who include a wide range of today’s jazz stars. By jazz, I’m referring to mainstream jazz. There are no instrumental posters in this mix.

The emergence of this project should not be a surprise, given Walt Disney’s fondness for jazz, and the fondness that jazz musicians over the years have had for songs from his films. Need we mention more than Miles Davis’s classic take on “Some Day My Prince Will Come" from 1937's animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or pianist Dave Brubeck, who recorded an album’s worth of album of Disney music on Dave Digs Disney in 1957. Louis Armstrong and Gil Goldstein also recorded Disney projects.

Jason Olaine produced this new collection, asking participating musicians to pick through some 600 songs and record one of those Disney tunes – from classic films to newer animated hits like Toy Story and The Lion King.

Brubeck was one of the first artists to sign on, recording two tracks, "Some Day My Prince Will Come" and "Alice in Wonderland," the latter done with trio plus singer Roberta Gambarini.

The CD title track, derives from "Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat," from The Aristocats. It’s also the opening track, performed by trumpeter Roy Hargrove’s quintet. Other performers on this project include singer and bassist Esperanza Spalding, saxophonist, Joshua Redman, trumpeter Mark Rapp, pianist Alfredo Rodriguez, guitarists Kurt Rosenwinkel and Gilad Hekselman, the piano trio The Bad Plus, violinist Regina Carter, and singers Dianne Reeves and Nikki Yanofsky.

Talk about multi jazz generations. Brubeck turned 90 last month, and Canadian Yanofsky is still a teenager.

Here’s a rundown of the range of tracks. Redman selected "You've Got a Friend in Me," written by Randy Newman for Toy Story. Yanofsky opted for "It's a Small World." Rosenwinkel recorded "Free the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)" and Spalding recorded “Chim Chim Cher-ee,” both from Mary Poppins. Rodriguez re-arranged and recorded "The Bare Necessities" from The Jungle Book, with his mentor, Quincy Jones, producing. The Bad Plus selected “Gaston” and Hekselman choses “Belle,” both from Beauty and the Beast. Reeves sang “He’s a Tramp” from Lady and the Tramp, while Rapp opted to perform “Circle of Life” from The Lion King. Carter selected “Find Yourself” from Disney Pixar’s Cars.

In the CD’s liner notes, jazz journalist Ashley Kahn credited the top-drawer prowess of the performers pulled together for this project. "It's exceedingly rare that one finds this range of talent on one jazz album,” Kahn wrote. “If one desired an accurate measure of today's scene in all its flavors and formats, here it is on one disc."

With 600 songs in Olaine’s available library (actually 587 now), it’s not a stretch to think more volumes are coming in the months and years ahead. The Vol. 1 in the CD title is not just a matter of making a wish on a star. Not by any means.

Short Takes - CDs of Note

Bands led by trumpeters are in the spotlight…

Miles Davis, Bitches Brew: 40th Anniversary Collector’s Edition (Columbia/Legacy)
Two weeks after releasing its three-disc Legacy Edition of Miles Davis’s genre-smashing Bitches Brew project that pulled jazz together with the commercial rock world, Columbia/Legacy is out with a Collector’s Edition. The boxed set includes CDs containing the original recording plus six bonus tracks, a previously unissued performance by Davis’s evolving septet at Tanglewood in August 1970 and a DVD of a previously unissued quintet performance in Copenhagen, plus much more. The other items are an audiophile vinyl replication of the original album, a 48-page color book with an extended Greg Tate essay, and reproduced memorabilia.

Why so much attention now to Bitches Brew? Remember its times and Davis’s ability to take his jazz into distinctly new styles throughout his career. This time, he went head-to-head with arena rock bands at major venues – and found a rock audience welcoming his new group sound. It spawned a new wave of jazz-cum-progressive rock that soon became known as fusion. It paved the way for Weather Report, the Brecker Brothers, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and many other adventurers. Jazz purists at the time were questioning where Davis was headed. Whether or not they embraced it, now we have a clear sense of its progeny and impact.

Alex Sipiagin, Generations – Dedicated to Woody Shaw (Criss Cross)
If you like modern jazz trumpet played with melodic clarity and fire, Russia-born, New York-based Alex Sipiagin is worth a listen. Several listens in fact. He was an instrumental part of the late Michael Brecker’s sextet and now brings his talents to bassist Dave Holland’s big and small bands, and the Mingus Big Band. This session is a tribute to Woody Shaw, who was a key influence on Sipiagin’s development. The leader puts his own stamp on five tunes written by or associated with Shaw and adds four spirited originals. His partners here, all Michael Brecker alumni, are guitarist Adam Rogers, bassist Boris Koslov and drummer Antonio Sanchez. Favorite tracks: there takes on Shaw’s “Cassanadranite” (with terrific soloing by Rogers) and “Katrina Ballerina,” and Sipiagin’s “Greenwood I.”

Jim Rotondi, 1000 Rainbows (Posi-Tone)
Trumpeter Jim Rotondi is a stalwart member of the New York-based jazz collective One For All. He’s also a great leader and writer in his own right, as evidenced on this third release as a leader on Posi-Tone. Vibes player Joe Locke is a strong front-line foil for Rotondi in this swinging setting and contributes the burner “Crescent Street.” Pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Barak Mori and drummer Bill Stewart add strong support. Favorites: Rotondi’s “Bizzaro World,” the band’s teasing take on the Lennon/McCartney classic “We Can Work It Out,” and the Buddy Montgomery title track, “1000 Rainbows.” The latter is a ballad that has long deserved more recognition. This tip of the hat is most welcome - and beautifully done.