"Evil genius." "Prince of Darkness." "Endearing with his music, offending with his personality." For nearly half a century, critics have come up with all sorts of phrases to describe the darkness and light that is Miles Davis... Robin Kelley
---------------
No shit!
Great essay, even if I disagree with the central metaphor. But there is a tone there that does bother a little, I wouldn't make much of point of it. It could be just a younger generation's difference of view, but the tone seems just a little off. Or it could be white v. black, old v. young. Probably a combination.
What's missing from my view is the connection to just about every movement in the arts since the romantic poets---many of whom were explicit seducers and exploiters of their own sexuality as power, in a fashion that could be seen in pop cult form as pimp culture. Just reading their biographies, you can see the similarities.
What's really going on is an international culture of bohemians, whose real bete noir was the bourgeois order of the day and a self-consciously deliberate avoidance of work---all of which make them heros to me. Fuck work. I am glad its over.
Miles was certainly one of them, central really for me. I used to listened to about five or six albums over and over and over until I wore them out and had to get replacements by the early seventies.
You get this other view, especially with the bop standard, Round Midnight---see the early Prestiage version with John Coltrain. This sounds like it or one recorded close to the same time:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5nVizoi_1Y&feature=related
After Miles Davis and John Coltraine, the other personnel are Red Garland piano, Paul Chambers Bass, and Philly Joe Jones, drums. The liner notes are Ira Gitler and the recording done by Rudy Van Gelder. The other cuts are just as stunning. The Man I Love has Davis's other group, with Milt Jackson vibes, Thelonious Monk piano, Perchy Heath bass, Kenny Clarke drums:
http://www.last.fm/music/Miles+Davis/_/The+Man+I+Love+(take+1)
You'll hear Miles tell Rudy Van Gelder to put all the conversation on the record.
In retrospect going from the forties through to the early seventies, I still get out maybe ten albums and just listen to them in sequence to follow as if in a history of the US avant guard.
In this more international or perhaps white view, I learned all the linkages to the French quasi-criminal set of the existentialist writers and cinema movements, Italian Neorealists, di Sica, Rosselini and its developments through early Fellini towards say Pasolini. Or in the French traces leading into Truffaut and Goddard, they are all alternatives to the bourgeois order. Miles actully did the sound track for one film, Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, elevator to the gallows (Louis Malle):
http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist/releases/default.aspx?pid=10492&aid=2952
If your patient the link will move from one sample track to another. There was a quick film made of Miles, with the movie playing on screen that he was vaguely keeping track of. He playes to the scenes to their motion and movement---very cool. Here is a youtube clip to get the effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saG7EELIfMM
with Jean Moreau. This is probably one of about three of the best scenes in the movie. The rest has nothing like this. It's worth a bored rental night for these few scenes. It's Miles playing Moreau that makes it.
This quasi-criminal side is completely ignored in art and literary histories, but it is certainly there, probably best drawn by Toulouse-Lauttrec. So Miles as pimp fits into this groove.
In any event, I guess that's were I want to leave it. Okay, not quite. If Miles Davis is the Saturday night round midnight, then you can cast John Coltraine as the Sunday Morning preacher. Here is Alabama:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8j_TDoOPnIA&feature=related
CG