There's a passage in Miles Davis' notorious 1990 autobiography where he's talking about how much quality music he recorded in the mid-to-late 1960s with his current quintet-- the group featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. "I made six studio dates with this group in four years," he says. "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." I can remember chuckling at that line when reading the book the year of its publication, but it would have been difficult to imagine just how extensive and sustained the Miles Davis reissue program would actually be after his death in 1991. The anniversary sets; the complete studio sessions boxes; the boxes collecting the boxes. It goes on and on and every new gift season brings another new offering.
And now here's the latest, from a couple of years after the period Davis mentioned: two re-releases of the legendary 1970 2xLP set Bitches Brew. One is a 40th Anniversary Collector's Edition gathering together the original album on one and a quarter CDs, along with studio outtakes, another CD containing a previously unissued set recorded at Tanglewood, in Lenox, Mass., in August 1970, and a DVD containing a previously unissued concert in Copenhagen from November 1969. The other version of the album is part of Columbia's Legacy Edition and contains the first two CDs from the 40th Anniversary set along with the Copenhagen DVD.
There's a reason Bitches Brew is getting this kind of treatment, even after the release of the 4xCD Complete Bitches Brew box set 12 years ago. It is, after all, one of the three or four most important albums of Miles Davis' career. And coming nine months after In a Silent Way, it is also one of founding texts of jazz fusion. It's a Big Deal Jazz album that's been tapped as being an essential part of any collection. Which unfortunately is something that tends to obscure the actual music. Putting on Bitches Brew and then straining to [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]|||||| hear why it mattered so much is a pretty lousy way to go about enjoying this music. Which is not to say there isn't a lot here to puzzle over and listen for-- the music on Bitches Brew is so variable and hard to pin down it rewards any amount of close listening. But Bitches Brew is also pretty accessible as electric Miles goes, and it's something you can put on and let wash over you for now, figuring out what it means and what everyone was doing later.
The first thing that Bitches Brew made clear is that Miles was keenly interested in expanding the idea of what his music could be, and was starting to stretch it way out. The title track runs 26 minutes, which then and now is at the extreme end of what a side of vinyl on an LP can hold; the opening "Pharaoh's Dance" also breaks 20 minutes. And these pieces weren't lengthy compositions or single jams, but were assembled by Miles and producer Teo Macero through editing-- unrelated tracks could become one piece through the miracle of the razor blade and magnetic tape. For an improvisatory art form that was founded on the idea collective expression in the present moment, the idea of stitching together pieces into a new whole was radical enough on its own. But Miles was changing his approach in several ways simultaneously as the 1960s came to a close. He was processing his trumpet with echo, working with electric keyboards and electric guitar, adding new percussion colors, experimenting with rock rhythms, doing away with chord changes, and building long tracks from riffs and vamps. And, as the liner notes from Greg Tate included with these sets illustrate, he was hanging out with Betty Davis, who was introducing him to new music, and along the way he had become a fan of Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and James Brown.
All of these elements swirled together into a record of brilliant and fascinating contradictions. The psychedelic cover art and long electric jams on the one hand anchor the music in Age of Aquarius, but the connections to earlier jazz tradition and unmoored, floating quality of music also lend it a timeless feel. It sounds very much like a bunch of dudes jamming in the room, but some of the abrupt edits serve as a reminder that it owes a lot to technology. It finds Miles distancing himself from his musical past, but it sounds equally far from the dense abstraction his music would take on a couple of years later, especially in a live setting. It was long and hard to get a handle on, but it was also a huge commercial success. Ultimately, Bitches Brew seems mostly like a single beautiful frame from a jarring film filled with jump-cuts. The amount that Miles Davis' music changed from the early 60s to the early 70s is astonishing. His sound was constantly on the move, and this is what it sounded like on those August days in the studio.
The bonus material illustrates just how quickly Davis' music was changing, and how much his music could vary given the context. Three months after Bitches Brew was recorded (but before it was released), he performed in Copenhagen with a five-piece band that included Wayne Shorter. Chick Corea's electric piano aside, the music is acoustic, though several tunes from Bitches Brew are included (the video is exceptional in quality in terms of both sound and image). In this setting, Davis' music sounds like what most people would identify as "jazz," and is less challenging than the cerebral and harmonically complex music he'd made just a few years earlier with his quintet. But by the August 1970 set included with the 40th Anniversary edition, the raging funk maelstrom that would epitomize his live shows in the next four years was on the rails. What a difference nine months made for Miles Davis as 1969 turned into 1970.
The two sets sit at opposite ends of the value scale. Listing at about $19, the Legacy Edition seems to me a very good buy-- the original album is a 2xCD set, the outtakes are reasonably interesting, and the Copenhagen DVD is a vital addition to the Davis canon. Also included on the second disc are four tracks edited down for release as 7" singles, and they are interesting curios good for one play but not much more-- three-minute edits are the opposite of what this music is about. The 40th Anniversary Set, on the other hand, goes for over $100 and is obviously geared toward Davis completists-- for them, it actually delivers pretty well as these sets go, since the 1970 live set is excellent, there are some extra visual goodies, and it's not padded out with a promotional film masquerading as a documentary (it also comes with two 180 gram vinyl discs-- I'll never quite get why someone wants both CD and LP sets.) How much is left in the vault? We'll see, maybe when the album turns 50.
