Posted in Shows on Sep 17th, 2008
At the dawn of the 1980s trumpeter Miles Davis emerged from a five-year retirement and made his way back into the limelight. Dogged by health issues, by his own account Davis had spent much of his hiatus watching television, engaging in personal excess, and rarely picking up his trumpet. His chops were weak, and he also had his own legacy to contend with–a remarkable 30-year span of creativity from 1945 to 1975 that placed him in the middle or at the front of some of the most significant changes in jazz.
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Feb 22nd, 2008
Teo Macero, a saxophonist, composer, and record producer who helped craft many of Miles Davis’ late-1960s and early-1970s electric-jazz records, has passed away at the age of 82. Though he was best-known for the meticulous editing work that he did on Davis LPs such as Bitches Brew, Macero was an interesting musician himself–check out…
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Posted in Jazz Notes, Videos on Oct 5th, 2007
It just wouldn’t be a Sony/Legacy Miles Davis box-set without some strange, inexplicable delay. In the meantime, the Village Voice has a review up…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Sep 11th, 2007
Reaction to the death of keyboardist and composer Joe Zawinul will undoubtedly be pouring in today from around the jazz blogosphere for the man who wrote “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” “In a Silent Way,” and “Birdland.” Zawinul’s European and conservatory background, his key role in the great Cannonball Adderley soul-jazz groups of the 1960s, his time with Miles Davis, and, of course, his legacy as co-architect of Weather Report make him an important figure in post-1960 jazz–especially in the realm of electric piano, a still oft-disparaged instrument.
Zawinul had been enjoying a resurgence of attention in the past year, what with…
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Posted in Jazz Notes on Aug 7th, 2007
Release of Miles Davis’ On the Corner box is imminent, as Howard Mandel notes at his new blog. Has a domestic label ever covered an artist’s career so exhaustively? Put together, the Davis Sony sets equal roughly double the amount of music in the Duke Ellington RCA Victor box. Street date: Sept. 25. In the meantime, you can tap our archives…
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Posted in Shows on Apr 1st, 2006
In December of 1970 Miles Davis took what some consider to be his last great quintet into a Washington, D.C. jazz club for a four-night stand. Columbia Records recorded all four evenings, but until recently, only material from the last night…
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Posted in Shows on Jan 15th, 2005
Ken Burns’ new documentary about Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion, is not the first film about the boxer; in 1970 William Cayton made a documentary as well, with a soundtrack by Miles Davis. This edition of Night Lights features music taken from the Sony/Legacy box-set MILES DAVIS: THE COMPLETE JACK JOHNSON…
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