This ended up covering late Davis stuff. He’s basically inventing a new genre of jazz every album or two now.
- On the Corner: Davis invents funk/soul jazz.
- A Tribute to Jack Johnson: Davis invents rock/jazz fusion.
- Tutu: Davis invents synth-jazz/the thing that would get distilled and warped down to New Age/Kenny G jazz in the 90s.
There are numerous live albums! I didn’t go down the rabbit hole on this part. Miles and Quincy Live at Montreux features Quincy Jones and is a pretty great end-of-career retrospective.
“Willie Nelson” on Directions is surprisingly funky.
Overall, I could have gone for less Birth of the Cool-esque and more Bitches Brew. 🤷I like bop, but funk and fusion are more legible to my modest jazz-harmony ear.
Highlights: On the Corner, Jack Johnson, Tutu. The last was originally planned as a Miles Davis/Prince collaboration (❗ ❗ ❗) which fell through. Still pretty good.
What I’d hoped to get out of this, and indeed did, was hearing the invention of large swaths of the jazz landscape over time, album by album. In this way, Miles Davis was a singular influence on the course of music, a lot like Beethoven was.
Hopefully, in my lifetime, we’ll realize another musician has come around and broadly invented entire genres of music every few albums. (I’m assuming we’ll still have albums!)
Previously: Notes from the Miles-verse Parts 1 and 2, Into the Miles-verse.
