Miles Smiles

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Miles Smiles
Studio album by Miles Davis

Publication
(s)

1967

Label (s) Columbia Records

Format (s)

CD, LP

Genre (s)

jazz

running time

41:44

occupation

production

Teo Macero

Studio (s)

CBS 30th Street Studio , New York

chronology
Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965
1965 		Miles Smiles Sorcerer
1967

Miles Smiles is a jazz album by Miles Davis , recorded on October 24th and 25th, 1966 and released by Columbia Records the following year.

The album

Miles Smiles was after ESP (1965) the second studio album by the Miles Davis Quintet. For Davis, the entry of Wayne Shorter was the ideal cast; As he wrote in his autobiography: “Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock , Ron Carter, and Tony Williams were great musicians; I knew that they worked as a group, as a musical unit ... In this band I embodied the inspiration, the experience and the connecting form, Tony the fire and the creative function, Wayne was the idea person, an artist when it came to that to translate new musical ideas into a concept. Ron and Herbie were the pivotal points. ”In Davis's view, Shorter's role as a composer also helped the band develop.

When the band went into the studio in October 1966, after two years they had "achieved an intensity of interplay that was not surpassed by any other formation in jazz history". On the studio album Miles Smiles , the extraordinary compositions Orbits and Footprints stand out in particular : “The abstraction possibilities of ESP are further advanced (here)”, noted Peter Wießmüller about this album, “on the other hand, the rhythmic foundation is more polyrhythmic compared to ESP , whereby the melodic lines are often played against the pulse. "" Shorter's compositions were harmoniously not very rich and structured in such a way that they gave the soloists maximum freedom ... Another striking aspect was that Hancock often skipped during the solos, which gave them even greater harmonic freedom, similar to Ornette Coleman's piano-less quartet. "

Two tracks on this album are not from the participating musicians. Freedom Jazz Dance is a composition by Eddie Harris who first became famous through the version of the Miles Davis Quintet and is strongly identified with Davis, who also changed the subject. Gingerbread Boy comes from an old friend and colleague of Davis, the saxophonist Jimmy Heath . The Shorter composition Footprints had already been published in an earlier and rather conservative version on the album Adam's Apple by Wayne Shorter.

Two pieces became part of Davis' live repertoire of the later 1960s in a special way: Gingerbread Boy and Footprints were often played and developed by the Davis band at that time.

Commenting on the album's genesis and rank, Bob Beldon wrote, “ Miles Smiles is an amazing album. All tracks were only recorded in one take . The band rehearsed the melodies, then rhythmic parts or the special "feeling" developed from a few sequences of the melody. When the melodic sequence was established, Miles counted off the tempo and at the moment, when he was satisfied with the melody and the rhythm section was playing optimally, he started with his solo. If he didn't stop the band playing, it was the take! Every Miles Smiles title came about this way. So there were no more complete takes from these two sessions. "

The titles

  1. Orbits (W. Shorter) 4:35
  2. Circle (M. Davis) 5:52
  3. Footprints (W. Shorter) 9:44
  4. Dolores (W. Shorter) 6:20
  5. Freedom Jazz Dance (E. Harris) 7:11
  6. Gingerbread Boy (J. Heath) 7:40

Impact history

The album won readers' poll in 1967 and (with "The Popular Duke Ellington") the critical poll of the Down Beat as "Record of the Year". For the historian Jeremy Yudkin, the “forms, tempos and meters are freer on this album, all compositions are new, and the band members are also used as composers.” It is music “that neither follows the conventions of bebop nor obviously informal freedom of new jazz . ”It is with this album that the post bop begins .

Jazz clubs in Vienna and Düsseldorf were named after the album . Miles Smiles was inducted into the 2015 Grammy Hall of Fame.

literature

Web links

Remarks

  1. ^ Miles Davis, p. 369 f.
  2. ↑ “He wrote the parts for each exactly as they should sound. Sometimes I just changed a few things ”. Quoted from Davis, p. 370
  3. ↑ Shorter joined the band before the quintet performed in September 1964 at the Berlin Jazz Days
  4. ↑ cit. after Nisenson, p. 153
  5. ↑ On Miles Smiles as well as on his subsequent albums Sorcerer and Miles in the Sky (1967), many compositions were by Shorter, although Davis is listed as a co-author.
  6. ↑ quoted from Wießmüller, pp. 145 f.
  7. ↑ cf. Nisenson, p. 154
  8. ↑ Gingerbread Boy appeared on the unofficial live CD from 1967 with the title Masqualero (label: "Jazz Bird's of Paradise"), which is also one of the most famous compositions of the following LP Sorcerer ; and Footprints, which also appeared on the Masqualero CD and on the unofficial live record from the Fillmore West performance in April 1970.
  9. ↑ cit. after Bob Beldon, liner notes
  10. ↑ "Forms, tempos, and meters are freer, all the compositions are new, and the band members themselves are featured composers ... [music] that did not follow the conventions of bop or the apparently formless freedom of the new jazz." quoted n. review of Yudkins Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post Bop in All About Jazz
  11. ↑ Grammy Hall of Fame Inducts 26 New Titles Jazz recordings include titles from Miles, Coltrane, Louis & Ella (2015) ( Memento of the original from December 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , in JazzTimes @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / jazztimes.com