Freedom Jazz Dance, the latest volume in Columbia Legacy’s Miles Davis Bootleg Series, opens with a discussion. It’s October 24, 1966, and Miles and bassist Ron Carter are working out a bass line until Miles interrupts and scolds him gently: “No,” Miles rasps, “that’s too common. C’mon.” Carter at one point says, “I don’t understand.” Miles continues on, “Play E diminished…start with a B flat,” and finally, to producer Teo Macero in the control room, he says, as he does again and again on this set, “Play that, Teo.”
After eleven takes—and twenty-three minutes of talk, rehearsal, and some ball-breaking—Miles, along with Carter, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, and drummer Tony Williams (famously known as the “Second Great Quintet”), embark on the master of Eddie Harris’ soul-jazz number “Freedom Jazz Dance” that would appear the following year on the album Miles Smiles. In fact, each of the six tracks on Miles Smiles are broken down, pored over, and built back up by the musicians and the producers of this set (Steve Berkowitz, Michael Cuscuna, and Richard Seidel), who have unearthed outtakes, false starts, and, for the first time, studio dialogue.
Virtually two-thirds of this three-CD set is the making of—and love letter to—his 1967 album Miles Smiles, one of his finest works that’s often overlooked in “best-of” Miles shortlists. The rest of Freedom Jazz Dance includes reels of material that would later appear on Nefertiti and Water Babies. The alternate takes and the lively banter plop you right there in the studio as the artistic process unfolds. It’s what differentiates Freedom Jazz Dance from past volumes of this enthralling series, which were all live concerts that showed how Miles’s groups evolved on the bandstand. Here the studio is the laboratory—and what a studio, the storied 30th Street Studio, a converted Armenian Evangelical Church between Second and Third Avenue, where Kind of Blue was recorded seven years earlier. Though compared to what the new quintet was up to by 1966, Kind of Blue sounds almost quaint.
The dialogue on this set is often profane (“That was a motherfucker!”; “Don’t sit up there giggling, cocksucker!”); sometimes tedious (“Wayne, what’s happening? You want a drink? Want a hamburger?”); but usually mineral-rich. “Hey Wayne,” Miles says, this time in his brownstone on West 77th Street, “I was thinking about writing a blues…like in F and then going to A-flat, you know?” before he tinkers with the idea on an electric piano. During a take of “Orbits,” he says, “Don’t rush it, Tony.” On “Gingerbread Boy”: “Herbie, don’t play chords on your left hand, just your right hand.” Miles is nurturing, but very much the boss. While working through “Dolores,” he says to Herbie, “Don’t play nothin’ until you’re ready to play,” to which Hancock answers, “You don’t want that thing in there? I thought it was cute.” Miles says, “I don’t."
One could argue that this volume is superfluous (“Give Wayne half of that hamburger, Bobby”). New listeners to jazz or to Miles Davis particularly might be disoriented, especially if they don’t recognize the voices of the band members or understand the significance of Teo Macero. (“Teee-o? Teee-o?” “I need moral support Teo—immoral.”) For the uninitiated, Miles Smiles, Nefertiti, and The Bootleg Series, Vol. I are almost certainly better places to start.
Who knows how Miles Davis himself would even feel about this. Would he want the outtakes included? The banter? In his 1989 autobiography, he wrote of these years: “I made six studio dates with this group in four years….We recorded much more than what was released….And there were some live recordings that I guess Columbia will release when they think they can make the most money—probably after I’m dead.” But one could also argue the exact opposite, that this set is found treasure, especially to Miles completists, enthusiasts, musicians, and students. The producers don’t take jazz or Miles Davis fans lightly, or as ATMs. This documentation underscores the artistic process of one of American music’s most seminal bands.
You can hear how the Wayne Shorter-penned “Footprints,” maybe the highlight of Miles Smiles, went from a slower tempo to the perfectly paced, ethereal master take. Or Tony Williams, just 20 in October 1966, go from great to spectacular by the session-reel outtake of “Nefertiti” eight months later. He’s equally mesmerizing on a rhythm section rehearsal of “Country Son,” as is Carter.
It’s been a big year for Miles Davis. In April, there was Don Cheadle’s biopic Miles Ahead, accompanied by Robert Glasper’s original score and his additional tribute album Everything’s Beautiful, which included Erykah Badu, Laura Mvula, and Bilal; Prestige reissued a box set of his early 1950s recordings on 10-inch vinyl; he has a presence in the brand new National Museum of African American History and Culture. May would have been his 90th birthday; September marked 25 years since he passed. Even a Scotch whiskey called Kind of Blue, in honor of Miles, launched in August.
If there’s a drawback to the ongoing releases and reissues from Miles Davis, it’s that it can steer attention away from jazz musicians on the vibrant scene today. Not that they shouldn’t welcome it; there will always be a lot to glean from Miles’ canon. And there will likely still be more finds from his Columbia vaults; his early-mid 1980s’ work, for instance, hasn’t been sifted through yet. That’s a good thing. There will always be something to look back —and forward—to.
