Name: A Tribute To Jack Johnson
Brand: Miles Davis

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

19075950871

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Colour

Black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music US

Limited edition

Release date

2020-03-27

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier US

Sony

Tax rate US

Sales:8.875

UPC / Barcode

190759508718

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Miles Davis

Genre US

Jazz

Label US

Legacy / Columbia

Trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and one of the most important figures in jazz music history. Miles Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in his five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born on May 26, 1926 in Alton, Illinois, USA and passed away on September 28, 1991 in Santa Monica, California at the age of 65. He is best known for his seminal modern jazz album "Kind of Blue" (1959), which remains the highest selling jazz album of all time with six million copies sold.Miles Davis studied at an academic school for musicians in NYC where he met Charlie Parker and they started playing together from 1945. In 1948, Miles Davis formed his own ensembles and collaborated with Gil Evans to create The Miles Davis Nonet. Their recordings from 1949 to 1950 resulted in the album "Birth of the Cool" (1957) and laid the foundation for their future collaborations.A pioneer of 'Hard Bop' in the mid-1950s, Miles Davis constantly pushed boundaries throughout his career. In the late 1960s, he ventured into experimenting with electronic instruments and incorporating rock and funk rhythms into his music. Despite health problems leading to a hiatus from playing in the mid-1970s, he made a comeback with an 'electronical' sound in 1980.

Miles Davis' 1971 album A Tribute to Jack Johnson. Available here on CD and LP.

None of Miles Davis' recordings has been more shrouded in mystery than Jack Johnson, yet none has better fulfilled Davis' promise that he could form the "greatest rock band you ever heard." Containing only two tracks, the album was assembled out of no less than four recording sessions between February 18, 1970 and June 4, 1970, and was patched together by producer Teo Macero. Most of the outtake material ended up on Directions, Big Fun, and elsewhere. The first misconception is the lineup: the credits on the recording are incomplete. For the opener, "Right Off," the band is Davis, John McLaughlin, Billy Cobham, Herbie Hancock, Michael Henderson, and Steve Grossman (no piano player!), which reflects the liner notes. This was from the musicians' point of view, in a single take, recorded as McLaughlin began riffing in the studio while waiting for Davis; it was picked up on by Henderson and Cobham, Hancock was ushered in to jump on a Hammond organ (he was passing through the building), and Davis rushed in at 2:19 and proceeded to play one of the longest, funkiest, knottiest, and most complex solos of his career. Seldom has he cut loose like that and played in the high register with such a full sound. In the meantime, the interplay between Cobham, McLaughlin, and Henderson is out of the box, McLaughlin playing long, angular chords centering around E. This was funky, dirty rock &amp; roll jazz. The groove gets nastier and nastier as the track carries on and never quits, though there are insertions by Macero of two Davis takes on Sly Stone tunes and an ambient textured section before the band comes back with the groove, fires it up again, and carries it out. On "Yesternow," the case is far more complex. There are two lineups, the one mentioned above, and one that begins at about 12:55. The second lineup was Davis, McLaughlin, Jack DeJohnette, Chick Corea, Bennie Maupin, Dave Holland, and Sonny Sharrock. The first 12 minutes of the tune revolve around a single bass riff lifted from James Brown's "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud." The material that eases the first half of the tune into the second is taken from "Shhh/Peaceful," from In a Silent Way, overdubbed with the same trumpet solo that is in the ambient section of "Right Off." It gets more complex as the original lineup is dubbed back in with a section from Davis' tune "Willie Nelson," another part of the ambient section of "Right Off," and an orchestral bit of "The Man Nobody Saw" at 23:52, before the voice of Jack Johnson (by actor Brock Peters) takes the piece out. The highly textured, nearly pastoral ambience at the end of the album is a fitting coda to the chilling, overall high-energy rockist stance of the album. Jack Johnson is the purest electric jazz record ever made because of the feeling of spontaneity and freedom it evokes in the listener, for the stellar and inspiring solos by McLaughlin and Davis that blur all edges between the two musics, and for the tireless perfection of the studio assemblage by Miles and producer Macero.

A Tribute To Jack Johnson

Music US

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