Iconic at 50: Miles Davis' 'Bitches Brew'

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer in WNYC and no, that's not The Brian Lehrer Show theme. That's trumpet player, composer, and bandleader, Miles Davis from his classic album, Bitches Brew, which half a century ago won the Grammy award for Best Large Ensemble Jazz Album. You can hear an electric piano, that's Chick Corea, a bass clarinet, Bennie Maupin, and the electric guitar played by John McLaughlin. As some of you know, this summer, we're looking at or rather listening to some iconic albums that turned 50 this year and digging into the context of the times in which they were made and their impact on both music and culture.

Now, the music historians say 1971 was a particularly important year. So far in the series, we've talked about and listened to excerpts from What's Going On by Marvin Gaye, Joni Mitchell's Blue, the Shaft soundtrack from Isaac Hayes, Journey in Satchidananda by Alice Coltrane, and Tapestry by Carole King, all from 1971. Today with Miles Davis, as the centerpiece, it's the marriage of rock and jazz, which we could really say took off in 1971 with some of Miles' own essential works and the first albums by the jazz-rock fusion pioneer bands, Weather Report and the Mahavishnu Orchestra with guitars John McLaughlin.

Our special guide for us through this piece of 1971 music history is Marcus Miller, a bass player, composer, producer, a bandleader in his own, also a music educator who played with Miles in the 1980s and puts on a great show himself. Saw him a couple of years ago. His own latest album, which was a Grammy nominee is called Laid Black. Marcus, big fan. Thanks for coming on for this. Welcome to WNYC.

Marcus Miller: Thank you, Brian. How's it going over there?

Brian Lehrer: It's going all right. Glad you got up early in West Coast time to do this.

Marcus Miller: [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: I thought we might start with a little prehistory to work our way up to 1971 because Miles Davis, for people who don't know his story, kind of revolutionized music, not once, not twice, but three times. For the uninitiated, let me do some very short excerpt, and then ask you to talk about them. 1949, Miles pioneers what's called the cool jazz sound. It wasn't the hard bebop of the era that came just before it, but rather chill in a certain way that was new at the time. Cool as opposed to hot. On this track called Jeru, listen to horns playing like an organized section.

[Jeru plays]

That was Miles Davis in 1949 from the album Birth of the Cool. Flash forward to decade to 1959 and what many people consider his best album, one of the best jazz albums ever in many people's opinion, Kind of Blue groundbreaking again, in part for moving away from the traditional cord changes that jazz is based on to something a little more abstract and conceptual.

[So What plays]

Miles Davis, the beginning of the song So What from Kind of Blue, 1959. Again, not sounds people were used to hearing at that time. Flash forward a decade one more time when Miles Davis plugs in, shows he's being influenced by rock and roll and goes electric. This is the beginning of Right Off from his album released in 1971 called A Tribute to Jack Johnson.

[Right Off plays]

A little more obviously rocky with John McLaughlin's guitar than the track we heard earlier from the album Bitches Brew. Marcus Miller, would it be fair to start with the idea that Miles Davis was a creatively restless composer, never content as many artists are in many genres to just keep doing the same kind of music their whole lives?

Marcus Miller: Yes, I think that would be fair to say. He first came to New York from east St. Louis in the mid-'40s because he had heard Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. They had come to east St. Louis and they were playing what was a revolutionary music at that time called bebop. It was revolutionary in comparison to the swing bands, which were the popular groups at the time. He heard that music, it blew his mind, he said, "I got to be part of this new thing." What may bepop knew was that it was a fast tempo, sophisticated harmonies, and very difficult to play.

He came to New York as basically a protégé of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Then, like you said, a few years later, basically the beginning of the '50s, he changed it. Bebop was hot, it was fast, it was challenging. In the '50s, all of a sudden, it wasn't exciting to him anymore and he wanted to find the new hip thing. '60s again, as you pointed out, he got bored again. He was always just looking for the new challenging element to put in this music. Those three changes were pretty revolutionary in the jazz world, but nothing compared to what he did in '69 when he started using electric instruments.

Brian Lehrer: I think of Miles Davis plugging in in the late '60s a little like Bob Dylan plugging in in the mid-'60s, the folk music world was scandalized and thought Dylan was selling out to commercial trendiness. Was there that same kind of blowback in the jazz world about Miles going electric?

Marcus Miller: If you take the blowback from people who were used to what Bob Dylan had been doing before and multiply that by about 10, that's what the effect of Miles plugging in because Bob Dylan, let's see, maybe five or six years of history before he plugged in. With Miles Davis, you were talking by 1971, you were talking about 25 years of playing jazz in a more traditional fashion with traditional instrumentation, so it was seismic.

Brian Lehrer: Then, Marcus, much of this series on this show about 1971 as a pivotal year in music, includes the political or social context of the times. Carole King's Tapestry, we talked about last week, had some relevance to the rise of early '70s feminism and the increasing divorce rate at the time. What's Going On represented Marvin Gaye evolving into someone with a civil rights consciousness, more than before in his music. Can you say Miles going electric was about anything going on in the world other than his relationship with sound itself?

Marcus Miller: '71 for me probably was I look at it as the dust settling from the cultural explosion of the '60s. By the time you get to '71, you're almost expected to reflect the times, to reflect the cultural change in your music. Even artists who weren't consciously doing it, were doing it because the cultural revolution was such a part of everyone's everyday life by 1971.

Miles who, as we spoke about, he was already restless. He had been playing a really sophisticated form of jazz by 1967, and he started looking in the audience and seeing a different type of audience member. There were no Black people in the audience anymore. No one was tapping their foot anymore because the music was a little too abstract for you to grab onto the rhythm, and he had a girlfriend named Betty Mabry, and they got married, Betty Davis, who was completely immersed in the new culture. She was hanging out with rock and roll as she was making records of her own that were very contemporary. She was wearing the knee-high platform boots, and she had a huge Afro.

It was a mix of Miles' social consciousness because he was very socially conscious, and him just not wanting to become a relic, wanting to make sure his music still had relevance, so I think it was a combination.

Brian Lehrer: How about Miles' interest in Jack Johnson since he made that tribute album that we excerpted from Jack Johnson, the boxer from the Jim Crow era, who became the first Black heavyweight champion and was the target of so much racism for it? Was Miles particularly into his story? Ever talked to you about that?

Marcus Miller: Yes, Miles was a huge boxing fan and of course, he was-- Miles throughout his career was always fighting against racism. In his early years, he played in the South and had to enter the clubs in the back of the club. He had to eat at separate restaurants, the whole thing. Jack Johnson was very much a hero to him, so when they approached him about providing music for that documentary, he was all in.

Brian Lehrer: Here are a couple of things that that Miles revolution, Miles plugging in spawned because 1971 was also the first year or the first albums by some of the people who were playing with Miles in that revolutionary period, who then went on to start their own band. One was the piano player Joe Zawinul, who started an electric jazz band called Weather Report that released its first album in '71. This is just the first few seconds of a track called Umbrellas. Listen folks to the electric bass and electric piano, plus more traditional soprano sax.

[Umbrellas plays]

You get the idea. The guitarist John McLaughlin released an even harder-core fusion album that year, that was very influential called The Inner Mounting Flame, that also featured another thing for that time that was new, an electric violin, played by Jerry Goodman. Here's the beginning of a track called Awakening. Strap in for this one.

[Awakening plays]

Awakening from the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1971. Marcus, did you ever hear from Miles what he thought of this genre that he gave birth to and how fully it fused with rock, or if he had favorites within it?

Marcus Miller: He never talked about it like it was anything different. He talked about John McLaughlin, he talked about Zawinul, he talked about all the guys, but in terms of the music, for him, it just seemed like a natural evolution, so he never really talked about how different that music was because I think he bought all in to that culture, so it was just a natural reflection of the times as far as he's concerned.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think fusing jazz with rock to this degree brought a new generation of listeners to jazz that in a way, maybe brought them to the rest of the literature?

Marcus Miller: Absolutely, because that's what happened with me. I was 11, 12 years old, I heard Herbie Hancock's Head Hunters. Herbie Hancock, of course, played with Miles in the '60s and followed Miles' lead in terms of electrifying his music, funkifying his music. I heard that music and I said, "Wow, what is that? I love that." Then somebody told me that, "Well, that's Herbie Hancock and he used to play with Miles Davis." Then from that, I just started getting into everything. I started buying-- Well, I didn't have to buy Miles Davis records, my dad had them all.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles]

Marcus Miller: I just had to pull them out of the bin, but it just turned me on, and I went back. I went back 50 years and learned a whole history of jazz based on that being my entry.

Brian Lehrer: As we run out of time because you've been so nice to us, Marcus Miller, for doing this segment, we'll go out with a track that you wrote and recorded with Miles from 15 years later, the title track from the album Tutu. Miles one another Grammy for his soloing on that album. In keeping with our social consciousness theme, my last question is, I'm guessing that if you and he did an album called Tutu in 1986, you were thinking of Bishop Desmond Tutu and the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Would that be correct?

Marcus Miller: Absolutely, yes. At that time, I knew everyone was aware of Nelson Mandela, but not everyone here in the States knew about Desmond Tutu, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and I wanted to bring some attention to him. I asked Miles if he would mind if we named the song Tutu. Not only did he named the song Tutu, he named the album Tutu, so absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Marcus Miller, thanks again. This was a treat for me. Again, thank you for getting up early on your West Coast musician's clock and doing this with us, so continued good luck out there playing jazz in the pandemic.

Marcus Miller: All right, no problem. Thanks. Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: We go out with Marcus on bass, Miles on trumpet, Tutu.

[Tutu plays]

 

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