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Bitches Brew
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Bitches Brew is a studio double album by jazz musician Miles Davis, released in June of 1970 on Columbia Records. Recording sessions took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio over the course of three days in August of 1969. The album continued Davis' experimentation of electric instruments previously featured on his critically acclaimed In a Silent Way album. With the use of these instruments, such as the electric piano and guitar, Davis rejected traditional jazz rhythms in favor of a looser, rock-influenced improvisational style.
Often cited as one of Davis' best-selling albums and masterpieces, Bitches Brew marked a turning point in modern jazz.
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Bitches Brew is a studio double album by jazz musician Miles Davis, released in June of 1970 on Columbia Records. Recording sessions took place at Columbia's 30th Street Studio over the course of three days in August of 1969. The album continued Davis' experimentation of electric instruments previously featured on his critically acclaimed In a Silent Way album. With the use of these instruments, such as the electric piano and guitar, Davis rejected traditional jazz rhythms in favor of a looser, rock-influenced improvisational style.
Often cited as one of Davis' best-selling albums and masterpieces, Bitches Brew marked a turning point in modern jazz. Upon release, it received mixed criticism from fans and critics, alike, due to the album's unconventional style and revolutionary sound. Later on, Bitches Brew gained recognition as one of jazz's greatest albums and a progenitor of the jazz rock genre, as well as a major influence on rock and funk musicians. In 1998, Columbia Records released The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, a four-disc box set that included the original album as well as ensuing studio sessions through February 1970.
Recording sessions
Davis called the musicians to the recording studio on very short notice. A few pieces on Bitches Brew were rehearsed before the recording sessions, but at other times the musicians had little or no idea what they were to record. Once in the recording studio, the players were typically given only a few instructions: a tempo count, a few chords or a hint of melody, and suggestions as to mood or tone. Davis liked to work this way; he thought it forced musicians to pay close attention to one another, to their own performances, or to Davis's cues, which could change at any moment. On the quieter moments of "Bitches Brew", for example, Davis's voice is audible, giving instructions to the musicians: snapping his fingers to indicate tempo, or, in his distinctive whisper, saying, "Keep it tight" or telling individuals when to solo.
Davis composed most of the music on the album. The two important exceptions were the complex "Pharaoh's Dance" (composed by Joe Zawinul) and the ballad "Sanctuary" (composed by Wayne Shorter). The latter had been recorded as a fairly straightforward ballad early in 1968, but was given a radically different interpretation on Bitches Brew. It begins with Davis and Chick Corea improvising on the standard "I Fall in Love too Easily" before Davis plays the "Sanctuary" theme. Then, not unlike Davis's recording of Shorter's "Nefertiti" two years earlier, the horns repeat the melody over and over while the rhythm section builds up the intensity. The issued "Sanctuary" is actually two consecutive takes of the piece.
Despite his reputation as a "cool", melodic improviser, much of Davis's playing on this album is aggressive and explosive, often playing fast runs and venturing into the upper register of the trumpet. His closing solo on "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" is particularly noteworthy in this regard. Davis did not perform on the short piece "John McLaughlin".
Post-production
There was significant editing done to the recorded music. Short sections were spliced together to create longer pieces, and various effects were applied to the recordings. One source worth quoting at length reports:
Bitches Brew also pioneered the application of the studio as a musical instrument, featuring stacks of edits and studio effects that were an integral part of the music. Miles and his producer, Teo Macero, used the recording studio in radical new ways, especially in the title track and the opening track, "Pharaoh's Dance". There were many special effects, like tape loops, tape delays, reverb chambers and echo effects. Through intensive tape editing, Macero concocted many totally new musical structures that were later imitated by the band in live concerts. Macero, who has a classical education and was most likely inspired by the 1930s and 1940s musique concrθte experiments, used tape editing as a form of arranging and composition.
"Pharaoh's Dance" contains 19 edits its famous stop-start opening is entirely constructed in the studio, using repeat loops of certain sections. Later on in the track there are several micro-edits: for example, a one-second-long fragment that first appears at 8:39 is repeated five times between 8:54 and 8:59. The title track contains 15 edits, again with several short tape loops of, in this case, five seconds (at 3:01, 3:07 and 3:12). Therefore, Bitches Brew not only became a controversial classic of musical innovation, it also became renowned for its pioneering use of studio technology.
This extensive editing was sometimes controversial in jazz circles as purists and detractors argued that jazz should be "spontaneous". But decades earlier trumpeter Louis Armstrong had quickly perceived the photographic nature of the audio recording, becoming the first musician to assemble a band solely for the purpose of recording it live in the studio.
Innovations
Though Bitches Brew was in many ways revolutionary, perhaps its most important innovation was rhythmic. The rhythm section for this recording consists of two bassists (one playing bass guitar, the other double bass), two to three drummers, two to three electric piano players, and a percussionist, all playing at the same time. As Paul Tanner, Maurice Gerow, and David Megill explain, "like rock groups, Davis gives the rhythm section a central role in the ensemble's activities. His use of such a large rhythm section offers the soloists wide but active expanses for their solos."
Tanner, Gerow and Megill further explain that "the harmonies used in this recording move very slowly and function modally rather than in a more tonal fashion typical of mainstream jazz.... The static harmonies and rhythm section's collective embellishment create a very open arena for improvisation. The musical result flows from basic rock patterns to hard bop textures, and at times, even passages that are more characteristic of free jazz." The solo voices heard most prominently on this album are the trumpet and the soprano saxophone, respectively of Miles and Wayne Shorter. Notable also is Bennie Maupin's ghostly bass clarinet, which was perhaps the first use of the instrument in jazz not heavily indebted to pioneer Eric Dolphy.
The technology of recording, analog tape, disc mastering and inherent recording time constraints (i.e., bandwidth) had, by the late sixties, expanded beyond previous limitations and sonic range for the stereo, vinyl album: Bitches Brew reflects this. In it are found long-form performances which encompass entire improvised suites with rubato sections, tempo changes or the long, slow crescendo more common to a symphonic orchestral piece or Indian raga form than the three-minute rock song. Starting in 1969, Davis' concerts included some of the material that would become Bitches Brew.
Retrospect
Bitches Brew was a turning point in modern jazz. Davis had already spearheaded two major jazz movements cool and modal jazz and was about to initiate another major change (the album's cover also sports the phrase "Directions In Music By Miles Davis" above the title.) It is perhaps difficult for today's audience to realize how astonishing it was in 1970 to have a major label Columbia Records release a major album by an important jazz artist with the term "bitches" in its title. The use of the word on the album cover may be a factor in certain fans' and critics' dismissive or even hostile responses to the record. It is all the more remarkable given the uncompromising, ferocious tone of the music within.
Some critics at the time characterized this music as simply obscure and "outside", which recalls Duke Ellington's description of Davis as "the Picasso of jazz." Some jazz fans and musicians felt the album was crossing the limits, or was not jazz at all. One critic writes that "Davis drew a line in the sand that some jazz fans have never crossed, or even forgiven Davis for drawing." Bob Rusch recalls, "this to me was not great Black music, but I cynically saw it as part and parcel of the commercial crap that was beginning to choke and bastardize the catalogs of such dependable companies as Blue Note and Prestige.... I hear it 'better' today because there is now so much music that is worse."
On the other hand, many fans, critics, and musicians see the records as an important, vital release. In a 1997 interview, drummer Bobby Previte sums up his feelings about Bitches Brew: "Well, it was groundbreaking, for one. How much groundbreaking music do you hear now? It was music that you had that feeling you never heard quite before. It came from another place. How much music do you hear now like that?" The Penguin Guide to Jazz gave Bitches Brew a four-star rating (out of four stars), describing the recording as "one of the most remarkable creative statements of the last half-century, in any artistic form. It is also profoundly flawed, a gigantic torso of burstingly noisy music that absolutely refuses to resolve itself under any recognized guise." In 2003, the album was ranked number 94 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Along with this accolade, the album has been ranked at or near the top of several other magazines' "best albums" lists in disparate genres.
Bitches Brew is often called the best-selling jazz record. Such sales figures have been disputed, but it was Davis's first gold record, selling more than half a million copies. Kind of Blue, another groundbreaking record released eleven years prior to Bitches Brews release, has also been cited as perhaps the best-selling jazz release.
Track listing
All pieces were written by Miles Davis, except where noted.
Side one
- "Pharaoh's Dance" (Joe Zawinul) 20:06
Side two
- "Bitches Brew" 27:00
Side three
- "Spanish Key" 17:34
- "John McLaughlin" 4:26
Side four
- "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" 14:04
- "Sanctuary" (Shorter) 11:01
Reissue bonus track
1999 CD release featured a bonus cut recorded in early 1970.
- "Feio" (Shorter) 11:51
Personnel
Musicians
Production
See also
External links
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