I finished up the Bach box late last night and picked up with Mira’s next box set choice, the complete Miles Davis Bitchess Brew sessions. ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down”… what an amazing track (and title)! ‘John McLaughlin’… really, some amazing music on this album. Miles described ‘Bitches Brew’ as rock music for black people. And ‘Bitches Brew’ does rock. As Miles’ career takes his music through rock, funk and towards the covering of Cyndi Lauper songs, he was a major innovator and risk taker. His genius let him jump into these areas, and he did it while finding the best young musicians around him.

And as much as I love this album, there is so much about what follows in jazz history that I negatively link to it. While rock music is brought into jazz, it also opened the floodgates to where way too many others decide they can simply do the same thing and be ‘innovative’. What we are left with now is a large number of ‘jazz’ musicians today that simply play rock (soft rock, pop, elevator music) without vocals and claim that they belong to the lineage that was established  by Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane.

I can never express how difficult it was for me to shelve Kenny G next to Red Garland, or the Yellowjackets ANYWHERE near Cannonball Adderley. Now – I don’t blame Miles Davis for the creation of smooth / bad jazz. It would have happened no matter what. But when you talk about the revolution that ‘Bitches Brew’ brought to jazz – how it led to Fusion, etc. – well, that’s a road that I wish Miles wasn’t associated with. ‘Bitches Brew’ may be ‘fusion’ but it certainly isn’t Fusion. It’s rough and edgy and gets a lot of energy from the influences brought in and the performances it creates. But it isn’t simply pop music with an instrumental melody. And this is what I feel most contemporary ‘jazz’ has become. Just adult contemporary bland trash.

I’m not saying that jazz is dead or that there isn’t innovation anymore. There certainly is. You have to look for it (and I don’t necessarily think that is a bad thing). Word of mouth really is how you find the best music out there. For those in the Seattle area, check out Cuong Vu, Evan Flory-Barnes, Sunship and the Tom Baker Quartet. Check out the recordings of  The Splatter Trio and Kip Hanrahan. Check out William Parker. Get to a Cecil Taylor show while you still can. These artists are all finding ways to expand the genre in interesting ways and the are bringing in wide and diverse influences. See how these groups and players connect to ‘Bitches Brew’, and see if that helps you get the 70s turn toward bad jazz taste out of your mouth.