Posts Tagged ‘Miles Davis’
Lost Betty Davis 1969 Sessions With Miles Davis Released (July 2, 2016)
The Columbia Sessions 1968-1969 also features Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Mitch Mitchell, and more
Betty Davis’ funk albums from 1973-1975 were reissued in recent years by Light in the Attic.
But before those records were made, Betty and her then-husband Miles Davis recorded sessions at Columbia’s 52nd Street Studios on May 14 and 20, 1969.
Miles and Teo Macero produced the sessions, which featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Mitch Mitchell (the Jimi Hendrix Experience drummer), and others. They covered Cream and Creedence Clearwater and recorded originals by Betty, but the songs were never released. Those sessions have now been unearthed and remastered, and are released today as The Columbia Years 1968-1969, via Light in the Attic.
The Columbia Years also features recordings from a 1968 Los Angeles Columbia session featuring Hugh Masekela and members of the Crusaders. All but one of the songs on the collection are previously unreleased. Since the 1969 sessions predate Bitches Brew, the album’s bio notes that these sessions are integral to Miles’ discography (“the true birth of Miles’ jazz-rock explorations”).
Andrew Bossone shared a link.
The album was made with Betty’s cooperation; the liner notes feature a new interview with her. It also comes with rare photos, a poster, and some vinyl copies will be pressed on “solid gold” wax. Watch a trailer for the album below.
As previously reported, Betty Davis is the subject of a new film called Nasty Gal: The Many Lives of Funk Queen Betty Davis. The movie is due early next year.
The Columbia Years 1968-1969:
01 Hangin’ Out
02 Politician Man
03 Down Home Girl (Take 4)
04 Born on the Bayou
05 I’m Ready, Willing & Able (Take 1)
06 I’m Ready, Willing & Able (Take 9)
07 It’s My Life (Take 8)
08 Live, Love, Learn (Take 12)
09 My Soul Is Tired (Take 9)
Kind of Blue: Remembrance of Miles Davis’s Masterpiece
Every music fan touches Kind of Blue.
It is the best-selling jazz album of all time.
Kind of Blue was recorded over two days, the first of which, March 2, 1959, was 56 years ago today. Miles Davis convened his sextet—Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Wynton Kelly—at Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio in New York City.
John Hendrickson posted this March 2, 2015
A look back at the afternoon that Miles Davis started recording Kind of Blue, one of the biggest albums of the 20th century
The first cut, “So What,” would go on to become one of the most familiar pieces of music in all of jazz. In a BBC documentary about jazz in the year 1959 (below), author Ashley Kahn likens Davis’s opening solo to a whispered confession.
More than anything, Kind of Blue remains a gateway to potential jazz listeners of all ages. Some finish side two and immediately dig deeper into the rest of Davis’s catalogue.
Some hear it and start exploring the various players on the record, like Bill Evans or John Coltrane (who may lead you to Thelonious Monk).
Before you know it, you’re crate-digging for names like Coleman Hawkins, Wes Montgomery, Ornette Coleman, then going back toward Duke Ellington or Louis Armstrong.
It just goes and goes and you’re never quite satiated, not since Kind of Blue whet your appetite.
But even if none of that happens, even if Kind of Blue is the only jazz record you ever hear or care to hear, you will have at least touched it, and you’re better off for it in the end.
Adonis Diaries 