Miles Davis at 100: What We Remember and What We Miss

Miles Davis would have turned one hundred this year. The centennial has brought the somewhat predictable wave of reissues, retrospectives, and tributes. But which Miles keeps coming back? The suit-and-narrow-lapels Miles of the fifties. Kind of Blue as sonic wallpaper. The Second Great Quintet as the canonical high point.

In this episode, Howard Mandel - JJA president emeritus and author of Miles Ornette Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz - sits down with three guests who've spent serious time inside the music: bassist and author Melvin Gibbs, pianist and scholar Bob Gluck, and journalist Martin Johnson. They push past the myth and talk about what the centennial framing gets right, what it flattens, and why Miles keeps mattering even when the cultural idea of 'cool' has largely moved on without him.

Learn More About: 

• Miles Davis 
• Howard Mandel
• Melvin Gibbs
• Bob Gluck
• Martin Johnson

Support for The JJA comes in part from the Jazz Foundation of America, providing emergency assistance, healthcare, and performance opportunities to performers, composers and others in need. Visit jazzfoundation.org.

This podcast is made possible with the support of Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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Transcript

Howard Mandel: I think it’s fair to say that we all have some interest in—perhaps admiration for—Miles Davis. Is that true?

Martin Johnson: The first thing I ever wrote about Miles Davis, I was eight years old.

Howard Mandel: What was that, Martin?

Martin Johnson: My dad encouraged me to do my weekly book report on the liner notes to “Milestones,” because I had felt an affinity with the Miles’s green shirt on the cover. I owned a green shirt just like it. I looked nothing like Louis Armstrong or Duke Ellington, but to see Miles in that green shirt made me think, oh, that dude must be cool. He’s like me.

Howard Mandel: Must be cool. And isn’t that the motto of Miles? Whenever we think about Miles in the media, the presentation of him, this guy is cool. But he is also one of those people—one of the Black men who made this music take over the world. Do you think so, Melvin?

Melvin Gibbs: I’ve been thinking about the fact that the idea of cool is not a particularly resonant cultural concept right now. And yet Miles is still culturally significant. So he has kind of transcended the idea of cool itself.

Howard Mandel: That’s sort of what I was thinking when we put together this panel. Is Miles Davis still cool? He is cool. He represents something that still holds. Maybe Bob, you can weigh in on that.

Bob Gluck: When I think about it, Miles represents so many different things. Everybody has their favorite Miles and they’ll defend it to the end, and it’s all quite different. That’s an amazing thing. It’s his hundredth birthday, but every day is Miles’s birthday, in a way.

Melvin Gibbs: Well, we can revisit that question of cool, because I think in the larger culture it’s not as resonant, but in current jazz it actually kind of is. Though we might want to hit some other things first.

Howard Mandel: One of the things that strikes me is that we see Miles in the media mostly in the fifties or sixties—the suit, the narrow lapels, looking very cool. It takes him up to the period that Bob writes about with the Lost Quintet, or maybe just before that. The visual images we have of Miles—even though we have plenty of them from when he was married to Betty Mabry, on through the more flamboyant costume he’d wear on stage in his later years—aren’t getting much play. We see a lot of Miles looking sharp, looking cool, tapered. And the music we’re hearing now of Miles is still predominantly the second great quintet with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. That’s the predominant Miles image, at least in what I’m hearing.

Melvin Gibbs: As far as the visuals, what pops to mind for me is my friend Arthur Jafa. He tends to focus on the seventies, so that might be a counterpoint to the popular media version of Miles as the suit-and-tie guy. I would say the art world’s seventies Miles still has a lot of cache. As for what people are listening to, “Kind of Blue” is the bestselling jazz record, so that would still be the entry point for most people—and even the entry point to the idea of cool.

Bob Gluck: I think it’s a little problematic, though. When I think about my students over the years, the only ones who had any reference points for jazz at all had dads or grandparents who had records in the house. But among certain demographics, it’s just kind of hip to have a copy of “Kind of Blue” sitting on the table somewhere—the same way it is to have a piano, or a flower vase. It’s a thing, but not a thing that matters. It’s just a thing.

Howard Mandel: Do you think we’re looking at this all as a historical thing now? Is Miles history, or does he still have some immediacy?

Martin Johnson: I think Miles has some immediacy because there are still members of the second quintet alive and with us. You can’t see Herbie or Ron without Miles’s visage being in the room twenty seconds later.

Howard Mandel: But we are talking about guys who are in their eighties now. For the younger musicians, I think they admire Ron and Herbie, and both of those musicians are mentors. I think they’ve come into their own, though.

Martin Johnson: They certainly have come into their own, but the way you pursue lineages—you go to Ornette and you’re going to wind up at Don Cherry pretty straight away. You go to Miles’s second quintet and that whole jazz-by-association thing is still very prevalent. How people get into jazz by listening and then searching for the sidemen, searching for somebody.

Howard Mandel: Do you still have that early piece of writing, Martin?

Martin Johnson: To be honest, I don’t think I have much writing from when I was twenty-eight, much less when I was eight.

Howard Mandel: Melvin, did you have to deal with the Miles legacy while putting your book together? I have looked through it—I haven’t read it completely, just skimmed it since I just got it.

Melvin Gibbs: When I talk about the tonality of Black music, I talk about the blues and about more technical aspects of music—music based on the harmonic series. So “Kind of Blue” is mentioned in the book. And of course I grappled with the music back when—I guess it was about ten years ago now—it was the anniversary of the “Bitches Brew” record. A couple of different people put “Bitches Brew” bands together. Vince Wilburn put one together on the West Coast, and there was also one on the East Coast that Graham Haynes was running.

Melvin Gibbs: The East Coast band was myself, Cindy Blackman, a jam-band keyboard player whose name is escaping me right now, James Blood Ulmer, Antoine Roney, and me. We did some festivals that year. So I actually had to think seriously about the music. And of course I was also in the Children of Agharta band that Pete Cozy put together. I played with Gary Bartz and Stubblefield when Stubblefield was still around. So I had a couple of different looks at the later-period Miles music from people directly connected to him.

Howard Mandel: And what did you find the audience reaction was to those bands?

Melvin Gibbs: They were into it. It wasn’t like old music to them, so it came across.

Howard Mandel: Bob, have you played Miles’s music?

Bob Gluck: I had a trio for many years with Tani Tabbal and Christopher Gene Sullivan, which sort of went on leave during the pandemic and hasn’t quite gotten itself back together. I remember one gig where we were doing a vamp at the end, and Chris walked up to the front with a mic and just unfolded spoken-word poetry that went on for about ten or fifteen minutes. It was alive in a different kind of way than I think I’ve experienced just playing the music as instrumentals.

Melvin Gibbs: I just remembered that years ago at Symphony Space, Bill Bragin put a Wall to Wall Miles concert together, and I participated with the band. We did “Ife” and something else, with Pete Cosey, Joe Lovano, DJ Logic, and Terrell Stafford. Chris Haskett from the Rollins Band also played, so that later-period stuff I’ve touched on a bit.

Howard Mandel: I was at that performance—it was fantastic. I know Martin was there too. But again, this was about fifteen years ago now.

Bob Gluck: 2010.

Melvin Gibbs: I just put out the EA record a few months ago, and that’s touching on that same set of material. I’ve updated it a bit, but it still has a certain currency, I think. And it goes to the larger idea of cool. I was reading Hank Shteamer’s extended liner notes when he did the article about Flea, and he was talking about Jeff Parker and this kind of new sound coming out of LA—I can’t remember the exact terminology he used, but to me it feels like an updating of the Birth of the Cool–era Miles. There are no valleys, no peaks. It kind of just goes. So I feel like that energy is actually back.

Howard Mandel: Well, that’s sort of the cool feel, isn’t it—the dynamics are moderated, the push isn’t very loud? Is that the Birth of the Cool sound?

Melvin Gibbs: Yes. It’s a similar dynamic arc that you’re hearing with the current music—the crew connected to Jeff Parker, SML, those guys. Just a similar kind of dynamic arc.

Howard Mandel: I heard an interview that Christian McBride did with Flea, and Flea referenced Miles’s piece that’s a memorial to Duke Ellington, “He Loved Him Madly.”

Howard Mandel: I thought that was a very unusual reference to make—from the “Get Up with It” album, a full side-long piece that’s really a dirge and has some military elements in it too.

Bob Gluck: Howard, when I was in college I would stay up all night listening to “He Loved Him Madly.” It would just keep going. And Pete Cosey has come up a few times, and he doesn’t get spoken about enough in relation to Miles. These days when I want to listen to Miles, it’s a lot of Pete Cosey. It’s that particular era. It’s “Jack Johnson.” Much less the stuff I’ve written about—much more the stuff that’s in a groove, sometimes really cerebral and sometimes totally explosive. And I found my students related to that electric stuff more than anything else.

Howard Mandel: Do they go all the way to “Tutu”? I’m glad that they do. It’s just that, as Melvin was saying, cool isn’t such a resonant idea right now—in the advertising world, anyway. And even the flamboyance, the stuff he did that made him look like Prince, doesn’t work so much in the rock and pop world. Or Jimi Hendrix—I don’t know if anybody’s trying to be Jimi Hendrix anymore. Sad to say. Maybe you have a different view of that, if you’re touring or hearing people out in New York rather than me here in Chicago.

Melvin Gibbs: I would say we’re probably two or three years away from somebody rediscovering that and coming back, because it’s always cycles. If you’re looking to differentiate yourself right now, you would get back to being flamboyant. We’re starting to see that a bit. I mean, even thinking about groups like the Amigos—they would kind of dress more like Rick James or something. Again, to Bob’s point, there are so many different eras of Miles. It is a question, but we’ll see.

Howard Mandel: What’s your favorite era of Miles?

Melvin Gibbs: I started listening to him in the seventies, so that’s my favorite era. “Kind of Blue” and “Milestones” are also great musical statements, so it’s all good. Even his B-level stuff is A-level for anybody else. But if I had to keep just one record, it would be “Get Up with It.” That would be the one. If I get two, I keep that and “Kind of Blue.” But if I only have one, it’s “Get Up with It.”

Howard Mandel: Martin, what’s your desert island Miles record?

Martin Johnson: Am I going to be boring if I say “ESP”? Every time I go back to it, I find something new. Probably because growing up, once I was an independent listener and not just listening to records with my dad—which is how I came upon first quintet material—I was a huge “Nefertiti” person. It’s only been as I’ve advanced through middle age that “ESP” has come in along the rail and eclipsed it.

Howard Mandel: Bob, where are you on this?

Bob Gluck: Are you asking about studio albums, or live performance albums? The line between me as a teacher, a performer, and a writer really doesn’t exist at all. So I’m always playing the music whenever I’m writing about something—whether on gigs, or bringing it into the classroom and seeing which way it flies. My favorite Miles has been picking two great minutes from the ’67 European tour. You could spend five hours talking about those two minutes and what happens between those guys on the bandstand. And, in a different way, the ’69 Tour of Europe and “Agharta.” So many of those live albums are where things come alive for me in a way they don’t quite on “ESP.” I love “ESP.” I totally love “Nefertiti.” But there’s something about the live material—it’s not studio-overly-produced, there weren’t multiple takes. It’s just how it is, and miraculous things happen. There’s always something new to blow my mind every time.

Melvin Gibbs: It’s pretty amazing. He broke away from arguably the best jazz ensemble ever, and then went and did something totally different that was just as impactful.

Howard Mandel: Several times.

Melvin Gibbs: I love the story of him listening to them upstairs in the room and not trying to play with those guys for a week, because he had to really reinvent how he thought about playing music before he even jumped in with the second quintet. So for me, that has an almost spiritual resonance—you had Cannonball Adderley, Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Bill Evans, and all those guys, and you had to throw that all away and do something new. And then a few years later—okay, we had Wayne and Herbie and Tony—and again, he threw that away and did something new. You have to give it to him for his fearlessness in being able to move forward like that.

Howard Mandel: I’ve noticed that Miles depended on—or was energized by—different collaborators in different eras, and that these became very important. Is “Tutu” or “Siesta”—and I’m sorry, I’m blanking on the electric bass player’s name—Marcus Miller?

Melvin Gibbs: Marcus Miller.

Howard Mandel: Right. People say that “Tutu” is a Marcus Miller record and that Miles is just filling in. And Scofield was a really important collaborator, or Foley.

Melvin Gibbs: If you’re the person whose music he’s borrowing from, then you’re going to have legal issues to figure out. But his ability to know when and how to collaborate, and what was going to work—you just have to give it to the man.

Howard Mandel: I think we give it up to him on his hundredth birthday.

Bob Gluck: The other thing I wanted to add, listening to Melvin talk about that—trying to figure out what was the most important thing, why was he so important—part of it goes back to that story of him downstairs listening upstairs. He’s like a chemist. Each of these times, the people in the same room—he may have picked them very carefully, may have made replacements, they may have gone their own ways while they were there—but he put them in the room, and he had such an incredible sense of musical personalities.

Howard Mandel: I think “On the Corner” is the ultimate demonstration of that. Bringing in people like Badal Roy and Dave Liebman, not telling them what key they were playing in, and just really throwing people together.

Howard Mandel: And I wonder if that record is a secret reference for hip-hop producers—is it sampled a lot?

Melvin Gibbs: To my knowledge it’s not sampled that much. For me, it is not a secret reference—it’s more that I think of it as a dub record. I don’t even really think of it as a jazz record. I relate to it more like it’s King Tubby or a Scientist record. It’s a really great example of how to use the recording studio as a musical instrument.

Howard Mandel: But who produced that? Was it Teo? Actually, I believe that was Miles himself.

Melvin Gibbs: Miles’s name is on it. But obviously somebody who understands tape looping and knows how to construct a record was involved. If I had to guess, I would guess Teo Macero.

Howard Mandel: You have any insight into that, Bob?

Bob Gluck: I make the same guess, because of the way—as Melvin said—using the studio as a compositional space. That was something Teo was really good at.

Howard Mandel: Well, it seems like Miles pursued that idea—or let other people pursue it for him—right up through “Doo-Bop” and the last albums. I find those fascinating and I’m somewhat surprised they’re not getting much attention right now. Any last thoughts? Martin?

Martin Johnson: Growing up in the early sixties, these were the albums my parents owned, and so I thought of them as being as important as the Duke Ellington records. I’ve heard that sound my whole life. And I’m in an unusual situation—I run a cheese shop around the corner from where Maria Schneider lives, and she drops by from time to time. People ask, “Oh, is she a musician?” Given the lineage of the twenty-first-century jazz big band, I’m a little surprised that we don’t reach back to “Sketches of Spain” as much as we used to.

Howard Mandel: Bob, I would assume you’re most interested in digging further into the Lost Quintet.

Bob Gluck: Well, I’m into digging further into whatever is in front of me—it isn’t necessarily that. But that’s a whole other conversation.

Bob Gluck: I think the biggest musical impact on my life ever was the first time I heard Jimi Hendrix. I was a Juilliard pre-college division student—I felt very bad about myself and angry—and then I heard Hendrix, and Hendrix was going to take me to Miles after a bit. I’m so fascinated by the period where Miles is playing a lot of electric organ, and that whole Pete Cosey–Hendrix crossroads thing. I really think that might get attention in a particular demographic. My son-in-laws are really into jam bands, and I don’t think that world would exist—I don’t know that the Grateful Dead would have existed in the first place—without something about what people call the San Francisco sound. There’s so much Miles at the root of that, but it’s misattributed.

Howard Mandel: Interesting. I got into Quicksilver Messenger Service about the same time I listened to Miles in the beginning, with Red Garland and Philly Joe Jones and Paul Chambers. I never made that San Francisco-to-Miles connection before.

Bob Gluck: And all those Bill Graham double billings—getting all these rock fans and Laura Nyro fans and you name it, who had never heard of Miles before, and all of a sudden: this is interesting. You could get to Sly through Miles, having gone to see Iron Butterfly.

Howard Mandel: Melvin, anything to end with?

Melvin Gibbs: Well, I mean, I picked one record, but you can’t leave Gil Evans out of the conversation. There is just so much great music attached to the name of Miles Davis that to bring it down to one thing is really a question of how you entered—how it relates to your family, as opposed to how it relates to the music itself. Because he was just so chameleonic. For someone looking at it from the outside who didn’t have that experience at all, you really have the history of twentieth-century music in there. So there are just so many different levels from which you can approach what he’s doing.

Howard Mandel: A lot of images of Miles and a lot of music of Miles, and it’s interesting to see what surfaces in this hundredth year of celebration of him. Thank you all, gentlemen, for contributing to the discussion. And to anyone listening to this episode of The Buzz, I suggest you read Bob Gluck’s book “Miles Davis Lost Quintet and Other Revolutionary Ensembles,” or his latest book “Pat Metheny: Stories Beyond Words.” Take a look at Bob’s most recent postings on his Music and Our Lives Substack, and keep up with Martin Johnson on NPR, Bandcamp, and in the “Wall Street Journal.” Hear Melvin Gibbs and the collective band Harriet Tubman, and read his new book “How Black Music Took Over the World.” I’m Howard Mandel for the Jazz Journalists Association. Thanks a lot for listening to The Buzz. Thanks, guys.

Melvin Gibbs: Thank you, Howard.

Martin Johnson: Thanks, everyone.